june 2002
Ivo Pabbruwe, Secretary EJOS Inc, New Zealand wrote ...
Ivo Pabbruwe, Secretary EJOS Inc, New Zealand, wrote to:
The Honorable Koji Iwata, Asami Tejima and Eiichiro Shimada
Civil Court 18
1-1-4 Kasumigaseki, Chivoda-ku
Tokyo, JAPAN
Dear Judges Koji Iwata, Asami Tejima and Eiichiro Shimada:
I am writing on behalf of the Dutch victims of Japanese WW II occupation of the Dutch East Indies by the Japanese Imperial
Army. A group called EJOS Inc. New Zealand.
The Dutch situation with about 100.000 civilian Dutch internees was unique in S.E.Asia, because the British and Americans
had evacuated most of their civilians including families from their colonial territories before the Japanese struck.
There are not many survivers alive anymore. Many suffer syndromes and insomnia especially at an old age memories of
happenings in the Japanese Camps come back and haunt the person especially in their sleep.
One statement by a Japanese Camp commander was "apart from Japan being a very poor country. it had not signed the Geneva
Agreement, but had in fact its own rules for the treatment for war prisoners".
It is without doubt, that from the days of its formation and throughout its entire existence of the Japanese POW Camps,
the prisoners endured a tremendous amount of frustration and deprivations far beyond contemplation.
The barbaric and inhuman treatment of the prisoners by the Japanese has been adequately described in books and reports
written by survivers. With food as little issued as possible and deprivation of any medication the Camps were a very
sorry sight. If the encampment had lasted another couple of months most people would certainly have died.
It is true, that the Japanese turned desperate in 1945 and indeed had plans to exterminate all internees if the Allies
invaded Japan.
Japan is a war criminal state that killed tens of millions of innocent Asian people through wars of plunder and
aggression from the end of the 19th century to the first half of the 20th century.
Japan was pursuing a three-point policy which called for killing everybody, setting fire to everything and looting
everything in the occupied areas the Imperial Japanese Army perpetrated such inhumane acts as wounding or killing tens
of millions of peaceable civilians in Korea and China.
Japan has played every possible trick to keep acts of aggression and other crimes it committed in the last century
buried into oblivion, refusing even to admit them. It is the only country in the world that greeted the second year of
the 21st century without settling its past.
More than half a century has passed since the war, but Japan has neither apologized nor compensated for its hideous
crimes committed in the past. On the contrary it has worked hard to embellish and justify them.
Japan has neither honestly apologized nor compensated even a bit to the Asian population and those who suffered from
its crimes.
It is necessary to create an international consultative body to demand Japan's liquidation of its past.
It is a common task not only for the countries and peoples who fell victim to Japan's aggression but for the world
people to force Japan to admit its history of aggression and crimes and make reparation and compensation for them.
We strongly demand that the Japanese government not cover up and distort the true facts of the Japanese imperialists'
atrocities but make a thorough apology and compensation to the damaged countries and victims on the
basis of admitting its legal responsibility for the crimes.
Judge Yoichi Kikuchi said that under international law individuals have no right to seek compensation from a country
for wartime damages, concerning two Chinese women, Guo Xicui and Hou Qiaolian, who asked the court for a combined
$300,750 in compensation for their suffering at the hands of Japan's wartime military. Hou died three years ago.
The Japanese government has acknowledged that its wartime army set up brothels and forced thousands of Asian women into
service, but it has refused to pay direct compensation to individuals.
Historians say as many as 200,000 women, mostly Koreans but also Filipinas, Chinese and Dutch, were forced into sexual
slavery during World War II.
Several other court cases seeking compensation for former sex slaves are still pending in Japan. We demand fair
judgement, which includes compensation and apology to the victims, i.e. of Unit 731.
Yours respectfully, Ivo Pabbruwe, Secretary of the EJOS Inc, New Zealand with approx 700 members, mainly from Dutch origin.
|
16 juni 2002
Frits C.Holthuis
SVJ Support Group
<< Back
|
|
