Faced with a graying population and a decreasing birth rate, Japan is now publicly debating whether to allow greater immigration to alleviate potential labor shortages in the future. Half century ago, however, in the wake of Japan's defeat in World War II, Japan was considering quite the opposite. To relieve population pressures caused by a mass repatriation of soldiers and other citizens, the government encouraged Japanese nationals to emigrate to Central and South America. A court ruling last week shed light on shoddy government work that caused great suffering for many of these Japanese emigrants. Although the government won the trial on a technicality, it still must offer relief measures to these aging emigrants.

From the mid to late 1950s, as part of the emigration policy of the Foreign Ministry and the then Agriculture and Forestry Ministry, the Federation of Japan Overseas Associations (Kaikyoren) -- the predecessor of the Japan International Cooperation Agency -- was involved in an emigration program to the Dominican Republic. Kaikyoren lured people by publicizing the republic as a "paradise in the Caribbean Sea." The program's "sales point" was its free-of-charge transfer of large tracts of land to emigrants. From 1956 to 1959, 1,319 people, or 249 families, emigrated to the Caribbean country. But what they found upon their arrival were tracts of salty, stony soil unsuitable for farming. To make matters worse, the emigrants found that they were not given the land to own, as they had been promised, but they only had the right to till it. Their suffering was such that the Dominican Republic emigration program gained a notorious reputation and was dubbed a "policy of dumping people" overseas.

From 1961 to 1963, the government repatriated some of those who emigrated to the Dominican Republic and sent others to South America. But more than 50 families remained in the Caribbean country. In 1997, talks began between these emigrants and the Foreign Ministry over compensation for their hardships. The talks broke down in the fall of 1999, and in July 2000, 126 emigrants started a class action with the Tokyo District Court. By August 2001, 51 more people, including relatives of deceased emigrants, joined the lawsuit. The plaintiffs sought 3.1 billion yen in compensation.