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Ministry of Foreign Affairs to push for war compensation

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday it is continuing to press Japan over the issue of compensation for Taiwanese men who were drafted into the Japanese military during World War II.

The announcement came as veterans staged another in a decades-long series of protests to seek the government's help in their bid for what they say is fair compensation.

But an official from the from the Interchange Association, Japan's de facto embassy in Taipei, who refused to be identified, told the Taipei Times that Japan had met its obligations regarding compensation for wrongs committed during the war and that the former draftees are too late.

"The section [of this office] that used to dispense compensation no longer exists. We consider those who didn't come to apply for compensation before the deadline to have given up," she said.

Having fought in vain for more than four decades, 30 members from the Association for Tai-wanese Soldiers in the Japanese Army attended the public hearing held by DPP Legislator Chen Chao-lung (陳朝龍) at the Legislative Yuan yesterday.

Thousands of impoverished Taiwanese soldiers who had been drafted into the Japanese army had to make their way home from battlefields around East and Southeast Asia when the war ended. Most had received little or no pay and it took many of them more than a year to get back to Taiwan. Many of them took low-paying jobs in the countries where they were abandoned in order to save for the boat fare.

The soldiers are claiming US$20,000 each as compensation for being "abandoned" and to cover what they claim are unpaid salaries.

"After the war was over, I had nothing [proper] to eat for a year and a half. Shouldn't they [the Japanese government] give me compensation?" said Chen Chun-chin (陳俊欽), the head of the association.

The Japanese government attempted to pay compensation and unpaid salaries in 1960, 1962 and 1965, but the KMT government rejected the offers.

"Since the Japanese government held a `two-China' policy, there was no solution open to either side [Taiwan and Japan]," a document from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated in 1996.

Japan eventually decided in 1995 to pay the unpaid salaries at 120 times the wartime rate, bypassing the Taiwan government. Most of the soldiers, however, rejected the payments, saying they were too low.

Kuo Chung-shi (郭仲熙), section chief of the Department of East Asian and Pacific Affairs under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said his department would keep fighting for the soldiers.

"Our representative office in Japan is calculating a reasonable amount to charge the Japanese government, and we'll also seek help from Japanese lawmakers," Kuo said.
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