Experts Advise Chinese WWII Laborers to File Class Action

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, January 15, 2002

Experts Advise Chinese WWII Laborers to File Class Action

Chinese lawyers are calling for former forced laborers in Japan to present class action rather than claiming individual legal compensation.

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Evidence of Japanese Troop's Forced Recruitment on Chinese Labors Discovered

Lawyer: coordination in civil actions

Chinese lawyers are calling for former forced laborers in Japan to present class action rather than claiming individual legal compensation.

Zhu Miaochun, chief attorney representing Shen Wenbao, a forced laborer in Japan during the Second World War, said, "Many forced laborers are currently stating different compensation claims, which leads to discrepancies in their civil actions."

Zhu said the All-China Lawyers Association -- the largest representative body for the nation's attorneys -- is considering setting up an agency coordinating the cases of Chinese forced workers.

"The agency can research all compensation claims that are relevant in the light of Japan's wartime atrocities, ranging from comfort women, forced laborers, victims of germ warfare to massacre survivors," said Zhu.

Former labor: case hearing as soon as possible

The now 74-year-old Shen Wenbao was trafficked by the Japanese army to work in a coal mine in Japan in 1944 when he was 16 years old.

Together with other 351 Chinese workers, Shen was forced to toil 16 hours a day and any sign of fatigue was met with a crack of the whip or kick by Japanese supervisors.

Only two simple meals were served a day and at night Shen was herded into a windowless house with hundreds of other workers.

Shen was among an estimate of over 40,000 Chinese forced laborers -- most of them teenagers or in their 20s -- taken by force to work as coolies in Japan during the war.

Shen managed to survive until Japan surrendered in 1945 when he was shipped back to China and now lives in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

Zhu said he has not decided whether to file Shen's case in the U.S., China or Japan. But for Shen, who is getting old and hard of hearing, the sooner the case can be heard in court, the better.

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