WASHINGTON -- Survivors of Bataan and Corregidor, detailing atrocities at the hands of their captors 40 years ago, asked Congress Thursday to let them sue Japan and its giant industries for forcing them to work as slaves.
Leo Padilla, 64, said the group, American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor, have not calculated a damage figure for the labor they performed as Japanese prisoners of war, but the amount could approach $70 million.
The two American outposts in the Philippines fell to the Japanese in the six months following Pearl Harbor. But the months of inch-by-inch American retreat gave the United States time needed to gear up its war machinery.
'I'm not hungry after the money,' said Padilla, a retired Albuquerque, N.M., businessman. 'I didn't do anything against Japan, but I paid for it. I had to pay for all of us.'
Appearing before a House administrative law subcommittee considering a bill by Rep. Manuel Lujan, R-N.M., the ex-prisoners said they are pressing the claims 'because we thought we were being forgotten,' and industries that profited from their labor in World War II are rich companies like Mitsubishi.
They detailed beatings, starvation and conditions so inhuman the prisoners broke each others' limbs to try to keep from being forced to work in condemned coal mines and other industrial sites for 11-hour days, 10 days at a stretch.
'I and aproximately 3,000 other American ex-prisoners of war are living evidence of the atrocities, humiliation, starvation and forced labor the Japanese caused us to endure,' said Agapito Silva, 64, of Albuquerque.
'I constantly have nightmares, get aggravated easily and cannot get a good night's sleep,' he said. 'I have waited 40 years for this day.'
Lujan said his bill would allow the survivors to take their case to court despite the 1951 peace treaty with Japan under which the allied countries pledged not to sue for reparations.
'My bill does not grant any awards, monetary or otherwise,' he said. 'It only permits survivors to petition the claims court. It will be under the jurisdiction of the court to determine if an apology or reparation should be awarded.'
'It is incomprehensible to think that these survivors have never been allowed to take their case to court -- a right inherent to American citizens,' Lujan said.
No witnesses represented the Reagan administration or Japan, but the State Department position is that 'the peace treaty ended the war with Japan.'
'They're afraid it will upset Japan,' Padilla responded.
Lujan said he may try to attach the bill to pending legislation that would compensate 60,000 Japanese-Americans detained in the United States during the war.
