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House of Commons
Wednesday 4 December 1996
The House met at half-past Nine o'clock
PRAYERS
[Madam Speaker in the Chair]
Former Prisoners of War (Compensation)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Mr. Knapman.]
9.34 am
Mr. Denis MacShane (Rotherham): This morning we shall talk about an historic problem that is still with us--that of compensation for British soldiers and civilians who suffered in the far east during the second world war.
The subject has been discussed in the House previously. We should remember the great efforts of Sir Bernard Braine, now Lord Braine. I am delighted to see the hon. Member for Teignbridge (Mr. Nicholls) in his seat because he made a deeply moving and effective speech on this subject last year.
Fifty-five years ago this weekend, Japan plunged the Pacific into a terrible war. Fifty thousand British men and women, soldiers and civilians, were taken into a dark captivity, in which many perished under the brutal treatment meted out to them by the Japanese authorities.
Those who survived have horror stories to tell which they will take to their graves; I shall not dwell on those today. Instead I want to salute the spirit of courage that kept those men and women--some of them in the Gallery today--alive. We are proud of them because they are British, but they spoke for all humanity as they refused to succumb to their torturers and jailors. They suffered not only because conditions in the prison camps were poor, but because the Japanese military-industrial complex made British prisoners and internees work as slave labourers for the giant zaibatsu, as they are called--conglomerates such as Mitsubishi, Nissan and Nippon Mines, which are household names today, but which in the war worked round the clock using slave labour to turn out tanks and Zero planes and the sinews of war for Japan.
The courage of those people during years of filth and brutality shows that it is under the worst of conditions that the human spirit, to quote Byron,
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The German Government have sought to say sorry for the evil carried out in their name during the war. About DM80 billion has been paid to victims of Nazi brutality. German companies have accepted their responsibilities for the use of slave labour.
Yesterday, I had a meeting with the Swiss ambassador, who revealed to me that the Swiss Government accept their responsibility on the issue of Nazi gold and the money placed with Swiss banks by Jewish victims of the holocaust.
Even the United States has accepted that it did wrong by the Nisei--the Japanese-Americans who were roughly interned in the USA after 1941. President Reagan authorised the payment of about £14,000 to each surviving Nisei internee.
Japan, alas, has done none of those things. It still, in my view, refuses to make or show sufficient repentance or adequate reparation for the crimes carried out by its soldiers, officials and businesses in the war.
I emphasise that today's political and business leaders in Japan carry no responsibility for what their predecessors did half a century ago. I visited Japan many times before entering the House. There are great similarities between our two island countries, offshore of a great continental mass, and a strong bond of friendship has grown between Britain and Japan, which must be nourished. I admire Japan's modern business skills. The goods the Japanese make have enriched the world, and they have exported not weapons of destruction but wonderful artefacts that help us to communicate with and learn from each other.
Mr. David Winnick (Walsall, North):
Just as the present German authorities are in no way responsible for the Nazi killings during the war and have wholly dissociated themselves from those killings and paid compensation, for what it is worth, surely the same applies to Japan? In no way were the present Government involved with the criminals who ran Japan in the war, so it is all the more ironic that no apology has been forthcoming from the Japanese Government.
Mr. MacShane:
My hon. Friend is quite right. In Japan there is a new quest for understanding and debate among the younger generation of historians, politicians and researchers, who are examining what went on in those years; I am sure that Japan is slowly coming to terms with the events of the 1940s.
There remains what I might call a pebble in the shoe of full and warm relations between Britain and Japan--the refusal of Japan publicly to offer adequate repentance or to make adequate reparation for the crimes committed against our citizens in the emperor's name. There have been debates in the House before on this issue, and the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and Sir Kit MacMahon have made efforts to move things forward; but each time those efforts have foundered on an unwillingness to move beyond the confining boundaries of diplomatic treaties and international obligations.
Behind what I might call this realpolitik is the fear--justified or not--of the politics of money and trade. Japan is a most valued inward investor in this country and an important free trade partner of the United Kingdom. But the right of our citizens to fair treatment comes before the profits to be made on this or that deal.
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We are asking that Japan finally come clean, unequivocally apologise and accept its obligations to pay reparations to individuals. Whether they are paid by the Japanese Government or by Japanese companies such as Nissan or Mitsubishi is neither here nor there--that is for them to decide. It is no accident that the Americans refer to "Japan Inc"--because of the seamless web of bureaucrats, business men and politicians who collectively represent Japan.
In financial terms compensation could be set at the same level as that received by the American Nisei. Such payments to the 10,000 survivors here in Britain would not even be noticed on the balance sheet of these giant Japanese multinationals.
It is not the money, however, but the act of saying sorry that remains the most important element--sorry individually, sorry clearly, sorry in the same way as Willy Brandt sank to his knees in the Warsaw ghetto 25 years ago to apologise for German crimes. The Japanese must say sorry publicly, clearly and honestly.
The Japanese will quote the 1951 San Francisco treaty of peace between our two countries which excludes further reparations. Pacta sunt servanda: treaties must be observed. That is one of the watchwords of diplomats and international lawyers. But there is nothing in the treaty to prevent Japan or the relevant Japanese companies from accepting their responsibilities today. International law is opening its doors to claims by individuals against Governments, so I hope that the Minister in his reply will make it clear that if Japan refuses to listen to today's appeal from the House, our embassy and officials in Tokyo will support by all possible means the legal actions being undertaken by claimants in the Japanese courts.
I wonder whether the Foreign Office fully understands the extent to which international law has been transformed in recent years. In 1951 it was a basic tenet that only states, not individuals, had rights in international law. Today it is accepted that one particular class of individuals--those who have been victims of crimes against humanity--have rights against the states whose official apparatus perpetrated the crimes. The other important advance has been to declare that states can never obliterate their own crimes against humanity.
Crimes against humanity such as the Japanese committed against British soldiers and civilians in the 1940s are so heinous that they engage the world's conscience sufficiently to attract what is called universal jurisdiction. I believe that, if they decided to do so, the United Kingdom Government could apply to the International Court of Justice in The Hague for a declaration that Japan has a continuing obligation at international law to compensate victims of its crimes against humanity; and this duty is not affected by the 1951 treaty.
Mr. Jacques Arnold (Gravesham):
Will the hon. Gentleman bear in mind the fact that the Dutch suffered a similar fate in the Dutch East Indies? A Dutch uncle of mine died as a civilian in the camps and some of my aunts and cousins were badly treated. The Netherlands therefore
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Mr. MacShane:
That is a most important and relevant point. Other member countries of the Commonwealth such as Canada and Australia face similar problems too. I ask the Minister to make it clear on behalf of the Government that he is willing to examine the legal remedies which I believe are open to the United Kingdom Government. I have sought and obtained counsel's opinion on this matter--that of Mr. Geoffrey Robertson QC, one of our most distinguished lawyers with a high international reputation in this field--to the effect that legal avenues are indeed open to the Government, who no longer have to accept the 1951 treaty as the last word.
I do not however believe that this matter should require the intervention of lawyers. The Japanese Government have already accepted their responsibility in one regard. With the help of private business, a fund has been set up to make financial reparations to the so-called "comfort women", those sad Asian women who were forced to be prostitutes for the Japanese forces of occupation. The whole House will find it distasteful if British women, in the forces or civilians, as well as British soldiers are considered by the Japanese Government to be less worthy of fair treatment than women shipped from Korea, Formosa or the Philippines and forced to be prostitutes for the pleasure of Japanese soldiers occupying Asia.
In the end this is about honour. Taking away a person's honour makes him or her less of a man or woman. Fifty years ago the Japanese sought to take away the honour of British men and women--but they failed. Instead, Japanese firms and soldiers lost honour themselves because of the way in which they treated their prisoners. The House may not realise that the Japanese army, which fought its previous major 20th century war against Russia in 1905, was held up around the world as a paragon of decency for the way in which it treated its prisoners. So the tradition in Japan is not of brutality. Something happened in the 1930s and 1940s, and the Japanese army lost all honour because of its brutality first in China in the 1930s and then elsewhere in Asia after 1941.
Today we welcome a strong, prosperous and democratic Japan which must play its full part as one of the world's leading democracies. But until Japan removes the stain of dishonour from its past by making restitution, morally and financially, to the British men and women it so mistreated, it will find it hard to have its self-defence forces accepted as comrades in arms in the work of securing freedom and democracy around the world--or to be seen as a candidate for a permanent seat the UN Security Council.
"appeals from tyranny to God."
Today perhaps about 10,000 of those men and women are still with us, but in the final stretch of their lives, which were wickedly usurped at the moment of their youth. Still, after more than half a century, no one has offered them adequate reparation for what they went through. The art of saying sorry and making good is an essential part of human existence. It applies to individuals, companies and Governments.
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