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22 Whittier L. Rev. 35 (2000-2001)
Japan's Postwar Compensation Litigation

handle is hein.journals/whitlr22 and id is 45 raw text is: JAPAN'S POSTWAR COMPENSATION LITIGATION BARRY A. FISHER* I. INTRODUCTION A growing number of surviving World War II rape victims have come forth and filed legal actions in Japanese courts seekinj compensation for their injuries, and more will undoubtedly follow. While many of these cases remain pending,2 and two have settled at least in part,3 in only one of them, involving Korean Comfort Women, have the courts so far awarded the plaintiffs any relief.5 A Japanese lawyer sympathetic to the claim in that case has predicted that * Partner, Fleishman & Fisher, Los Angeles, California. Practice since 1969 focused on rights of ethnic, racial, and other minorities. Counsel in the consolidated German, Austrian, and Swiss Holocaust cases, including In re Nazi Era Cases Against German Defendants Litigation, MDL No. 1337 (D.N.J.), and In re Holocaust Victims Assets, Nos. CV-96-4849, et al. (E.D.N.Y.). Signatory to multi-national German and Austrian Settlements. Counsel in Japan wartime slave labor and military rape centers (Comfort Women) litigation including Hwang v. Japan, No. CV02233 (D.D.C., filed Sept. 18, 2000) (Comfort Women); Zhang v. Mitsui, No. BC235526 (L.A. County, Cal. Super. Ct., filed Aug. 22, 2000) (Chinese slave labor), and Korean slave labor cases. 1. Karen Parker & Jennifer Chew, Compensation for Japan's World War II War- Rape Victims, 17 Hastings Intl. & Comp. L. Rev. 497, 499 (1994). 2. Id. 3. Taihei Okada, The Comfort Women Case: Judgment of April 27, 1998, Shimonoseki Branch, Yamaguchi Prefectural Court, Japan, 8 Pac. Rim. L. & Policy J. 63 (1999). 4. Comfort Women is a euphemism for the over 200,000 women who were confined and forced to have sex with the Imperial Japanese soldiers during the war years of 1931-1945. 5. Okada, supra n. 3, at 63.