A ruling by a California judge late last month is a major defeat for U.S. State Department and Japanese government officials who argued that former American POW slave laborers cannot sue Japanese firms for compensation because of the 1951 Peace Treaty, and a major victory for the ex-POWs and their growing number of Congressional supporters.
In his Oct. 19 decision, Judge William F. McDonald of the California Superior Court in Orange County ruled, in three slave labor suits, two against Mitsubishi and one against Mitsui, that it is the courts, not the executive branch, that determine the meaning or applicability of the treaty; that the court has a right to hear the POWs claims; and that there are legitimate factual issues concerning whether or not the 1951 treaty is applicable to the issue.
The ruling threw cold water on claims by the U.S. State Department, the Pentagon, the Japanese government and Japanese firms that repatriations were settled in 1951, and comes a year after both the State Department and Japan thought that they had scored a major victory.
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