Japan's Mitsubishi Materials agrees to compensate, apologize to forced WWII Chinese laborers

Mitsubishi Materials Corp. agreed on Wednesday to compensate nearly 4,000 Chinese nationals for forcing them to work in labor camps during World War II, representatives from the company and groups representing the victims said.

The agreement negotiated between both sides marks an unprecedented number of people compensated by a Japanese company since the end of WWII at 3,765 Chinese nationals, and under the agreement Mitsubishi Materials said it would offer an official apology for its heinous actions and compensate each victim 100,000 yuan (15,000 U.S. dollars).

The document formalizing the deal was signed at a special ceremony in Beijing earlier Wednesday, local media reported. The document was signed by Mitsubishi Materials' senior executive officer Hikaru Kimura and three Chinese nationals on behalf of the groups representing the thousands of wartime victims.

"We will continue to seek a comprehensive and permanent solution with all of the former laborers and their families," Mitsubishi Materials was quoted as saying in a statement, with the firm also pledging to build a memorial to honor the victims.

The company also said that it would continue to probe into those who were forced into labor during the war, but have not been officially accounted for in records.

Initially, the damages claims were rejected by the Supreme Court in Japan, which deemed in 2007 that Chinese nationals had no basis to demand wartime compensation.

But the facts remain that at least 39,000 Chinese people were forcibly brought to Japan from China, which nowadays would be considered mass-kidnapping and human trafficking, between 1943 and 1945, and were forced into exceedingly hard labor.

Because of rigors of labor, squalid conditions and lack of basic essentials like food and water, almost 7,000 innocent Chinese nationals died during their hellish internment. Endit