[ripples]

Interesting international legal precedent? Eg. Does this mean that Vietnamese or Korean orphans abandoned during the respective wars can claim compensation from the USA government? Having lived in Japan and knowing how difficult it is for ANYONE to get
compensation from the Japanese gov't for World War 2-related grievances, let alone adoptees who are so stigmatized there, I applaud these adoptees for their true courage and dedication.

Please see the two articles included below.
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"Japan war orphans settle dispute with government"
(Article from the China Post online)
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/international/114678.htm)
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
TOKYO, AFP

Japanese orphans abandoned in China after World War II on Monday accepted a compensation package and agreed to drop lawsuits against the government over their treatment.

Some 2,200 plaintiffs, who were left behind in China when the Japanese occupiers were defeated in 1945 and their parents either fled or were killed, had joined the legal action against the Japanese state.

The war orphans argued that the Japanese government should have acted more quickly to bring them back and help them adapt to their new lives, but decided to accept new support measures proposed by the government.

Under the new deal the war orphans, who currently receive only 80,000 yen (US$648) of social welfare per month, will be able to receive at least 146,000 yen in addition to pension payments or other income.

"I'm very happy today to see the new support measures after a six year struggle," Sumie Ikeda, 62, a representative of the orphans, said at an emotional news conference attended by a dozen plaintiffs.

"I've lived my life shedding tears of suffering, but today, those tears changed into tears of gratitude," added Toshio Matsuda, a 71-year-old plaintiff, speaking in Chinese through an interpreter.

"Until today I felt this was a cold homeland. But now I feel the warmth of homeland," he said.

Due to the difficulties in language and finding jobs, more than 60 percent of the repatriated war orphans currently depend on social welfare.
Most of them were adopted and became culturally Chinese before returning to Japan as adults after the two countries restored relations in 1972.

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"Taking aid deal, 'war orphans' to end suits"
Japan Times Online article
Taking aid deal, 'war orphans' to end suits | The Japan Times Online
Monday, July 9, 2007
Kyodo News

Japanese left behind in China at the end of the war decided Sunday to accept a new support plan and settle or drop their lawsuits over the government's failure to swiftly bring them back and provide adequate support.

The decision to end the lawsuits — first filed in December 2002 and now involving 2,200 plaintiffs — was made at a six-hour meeting in Tokyo among 60 representatives of the "war orphans" and their lawyers.

Under the support measures proposed by a task force of the ruling coalition parties, they will receive the full public pension payment of 66,000 yen a month. They currently get only a third of that amount.

A single-member household will receive up to an additional 80,000 yen in financial support. The government will also cover their doctor, nursing care and housing expenses.

Bills to revise the relevant laws are to be submitted to the Diet this fall with the aim of making the payments a reality by January.

The government and the war orphans are also in talks to spare them 250 million yen in revenue stamps needed to file the lawsuits.

"Almost all of the war orphans will be rescued by this plan, and we determined that they can achieve their biggest goal — to spend their life after retirement without worries," said To****aka Onodera, head of the lawyers representing them.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ordered the ruling coalition in January to consider new plans for supporting the war orphans.
The support plan was presented last month by Takeshi Noda, a Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker who headed the ruling coalition task force.

The war-displaced and their lawyers were initially opposed to a provision under which the government would regularly monitor household income and reduce the benefits if they receive salaries or employee pension payouts. They complained that such monitoring could effectively put their lives under government supervision.

The coalition team offered a compromise that eased the standards for cutting the benefits. It also agreed that each household's income situation would be examined no more than once a year.

"I can finally see an exit to the long, tough life that continued for 62 years" since the end of the war, Takayoshi Utsunomiya, 65, said in halting Japanese mixed with Chinese. He was separated from his father at age 3 and brought up by a Chinese family.
The meeting went on for about six hours because many of the war orphans do not speak Japanese and had to rely on Chinese translation.

In the chaos at the end of World War II, the war orphans were separated from their parents who had settled before and during the war in northeastern China, where Japan had established a puppet regime.

It was only after diplomatic ties were normalized between Tokyo and Beijing in 1972 that many of them began visiting Japan to search for relatives and to resettle here. In 1981, the government started inviting them in groups to look for their families.
So far, about 2,500 have resettled in Japan.

Their average is over 70, and more than 70 percent live on welfare, according to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry and a survey of the plaintiffs.

Sunday's decision came after the war orphans have lost all of the district court decisions except at the Kobe District Court, which in December ordered the government to pay a combined 468.6 million yen in damages to 61 plaintiffs for their delayed resettlement and poor support.

Lawsuits involving the war orphans are currently pending in 10 district courts and six high courts.