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Japan Press Service Co., Ltd. is the only news agency providing information of progressive, democratic movements in Japan

Court recognizes government's responsibility for failure of post-war emigration policy

The Tokyo District Court on June 7 dismissed a lawsuit filed by Japanese emigrants to the Dominican Republic claiming for government compensation for its mismanaged emigration policy implemented more than half a century ago that forced them to suffer from dire poverty.

The plaintiffs were seeking 3.2 billion yen in compensation for their hardships, but the court turned them down on the grounds that the period of exclusion of 20 years had expired.

However, it acknowledged the government's responsibility for the failure to fulfill its duty to provide emigrants with adequate farmland at their destination.

At a press conference on the same day, the plaintiffs expressed their intention to appeal to a higher court. In a published statement, they said, "17 plaintiffs have passed away since the case was filed six years ago. Today's ruling has underlined the fact that the emigrants were indeed abandoned by the government. Their agony will never expire."

Takegama Toru, who left Kagoshima Prefecture when he was a high-school student, said, "We did not even imagine that our motherland would lie to us." The 68-year-old general secretary of the plaintiffs' group went on to say with tears, "How can the homeland cheat, torture, kill, and abandon its people?"

The Japanese government encouraged its people to move to Central and South American countries, including Brazil, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic, in order to reduce the population that had surged due to the returning of ex-soldiers and civilians after the end of the WWII. Between 1956 and 1959, 249 Japanese families or about 1,300 people moved to the Dominican Republic.

Despite the government's promise that each emigrant would be given 18 hectares of fertile farmland, what they got instead was a small piece of barren land covered with rocks. Their life there was so harsh that many of them committed suicide one after another.
- Akahata, June 8, 2006