More than 60 years after their homes were turned into infernos by US B-29 bombers, a group of Tokyo residents has demanded compensation from the Japanese government for starting the war and not acting quickly enough to end it.
This past weekend marked the 62nd anniversary of the bombing on March 10, 1945, in which an estimated 100,000 people died in a firestorm that engulfed much of the city.
Local media reported that 112 people are seeking ?11 million (US$93,100) each in the first suit of its kind. The group, made up of survivors and relatives of the dead, claimed that the air raids would never have occurred had Tokyo ended the war in the summer of 1944, when it was clear that defeat was unavoidable.
Japanese civilians' right to claim reparations from Washington was waived as part of the 1951 peace treaty between the two countries.
The plaintiffs said they had the same constitutional right to compensation as soldiers and their families.
"The government should recognize that all of Japan was a battlefield at the time," the lawsuit said.
The group's leader, Hiroshi Hoshino, told reporters: "You might wonder why we are doing this after 62 years, but the fact is that the state has not studied the realities of the damage or provided any redress."
Mieko Toyomura, who lost four members of her family in the raid and was seriously injured herself in a later bombing, said: "I have lived and worked in desperation all these years with only one arm and with no assistance. The tears keep falling when I look back at what happened."
The lawsuit coincided with the publication this past weekend of diaries by the chamberlain to Japan's wartime emperor, Hirohito, showing that Hirohito had been initially reluctant to go to war against China in 1937, but had later said that Japan had to see the conflict through to the end.
In October 1940 Hirohito conceded that Japan had underestimated China.
"I did not want to see this war with China begin," he was quoted as saying. "China is stronger than expected. Everybody made mistakes in war projections."
But on Christmas Day 1941, soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hirohito talked enthusiastically about visiting islands in the South Pacific after the war, by which time they would be part of the empire.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of