3 British ex-POWs file suit in U.S. against Japan Energy

Japan Policy & Politics, Feb 28, 2000

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 24 Kyodo

Three former British prisoners of war (POWs) filed a class action suit Thursday with a U.S. court against Japan Energy Corp., seeking compensation for alleged torture and enslavement during World War II, their lawyers said.

Japan Energy, a Tokyo-based mining development and petroleum refining company, the successor to the wartime Nippon Mining Co., forced British prisoners to dig copper in Taiwan's Kinkaseki mine, according to the petition.

Arthur Titherington, Henry George Blackham and Fergus D. S. McGhie filed the case in the California Superior Court in Orange County.

The class action suit enables more than 500 POWs and their heirs to seek compensation for unspecified amounts of lost wages and punitive damages, the lawyers said.

According to Titherington, 78, and other plaintiffs, the prisoners were given clothes made of paper and cardboard, were denied adequate food, received no medical attention, and were frequently beaten by their captors.

After working at the mine from December 1942 to March 1945, Titherington returned to England, but suffered from nightmares and was unable to hold down his job as a police officer, the suit says.

In 1980, he started losing his eyesight, which doctors attributed to malnutrition during his imprisonment, it says.

There were 523 British POWs at the mine, of whom only 95 survived, according to the petition.

Under the California law, which was enacted last year, courts in the state have the jurisdiction to hear slave labor cases even if the plaintiffs are foreign citizens, provided the offending companies conduct business in California.

Japan Energy officials said they will decide on how to deal with the case after they receive notification of it.

Titherington is also a plaintiff in a class action suit filed in 1995 against the Japanese government, which sought an apology and $20,000 compensation.

After the Tokyo District Court dismissed his claim, he appealed to the Tokyo High Court, which is still considering the case.