The Social Insurance Agency has revealed that log books containing information on 830,000 corporate employee pension accounts from the 1940s to 1950s were illegally disposed of, possibly causing 120,000 beneficiaries to lose pensions for that period.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>They are part of about 32.29 million records on pension premium payments from 1942, the employee pension's inaugural year, to the 1950s.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>The accounts in question include those held by subscribers as of 1957 and those who withdrew from the corporate employee pension scheme after quitting their jobs before 1954.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>'The disposal is illicit because the law on employee pensions dictates that the records be kept indefinitely,' the SIA said Friday evening.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>But the agency does not expect a problem in digitalizing pension records in the future because separate documents containing the same information as the records that were thrown out are supposed to kept at agency offices across Japan.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>The records are believed to have been mistakenly disposed of through a series of administrative steps between 1959, when the old Health and Welfare Ministry changed its bookkeeping methods, and around 1980, after the SIA was created in 1962.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>Of about 830,000 pension accounts, the agency said 710,000 were disposed of after beneficiaries completed paperwork to receive their pensions. But on the remaining 120,000, internal documents only describe them as 'others.'</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>The agency considers it unlikely that the records had been disposed of before beneficiaries completed the necessary paperwork. But it cannot rule out the possibility that holders of the 120,000 accounts did not receive benefits and plans to question employees from that time period. </PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>The issue came to light after Mizuho Fukushima, head of the Social Democratic Party, questioned the government on illicit disposal. </PARAGRAPH> <SUBHEAD> Abe to take bonus cut</SUBHEAD> <PARAGRAPH> ITOMAN, Okinawa Pref. –

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Saturday he plans to forgo part of his summer bonus to take responsibility for the pension record fiasco involving the Social Insurance Agency.

"I have caused worries among people over the pension records issue. I bear a grave responsibility for causing such a problem," Abe said in Itoman, where he was commemorating the 62nd anniversary of the end of the Battle of Okinawa in World War II.