Proposed class action lawsuits were filed Feb.27 against Mitsui and Mitsubishi, alleging they enslaved Koreans before and during WWII.

City News Service

Two separate proposed class action lawsuits were filed Tuesday against Mitsui and Mitsubishi companies, alleging the Japanese firms enslaved Koreans in the years leading up to and during World War II.

Attorney Barry A. Fisher, who represents the plaintiffs, alleges the Koreans were taken from their homes and forced to work at plants operated by Mitsui and Mitsubishi.

Those companies include Mitsui Mining Co. Ltd., Mitsui U.S.R. Lines Ltd., Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Mitsubishi Corp.

"They were living in horrendous conditions, had poorly provided food and medical care, worked very long hours and their lives were near worthless," Fisher said by phone.

An attorney representing several of the defendants in another alleged slave labor lawsuit against the companies declined to comment on the latest case.

"They were quite expendable," Fisher said of the Korean nationals. "If they were injured or didn’t perform the way the companies wanted, they were at (the companies’) mercy. Their life and death depended on the whim of the companies.”

Fisher said that during World War II, Japan controlled "an enormous area of the Pacific,

"There was a constant stream of slave ships for both industrial and sexual slavery; of men and women shipped from China to Japan and from Korea to Indonesia and Papua New Guinea," he said.

The purported "slave ship" operation was the biggest since the black slave trade, Fisher contended.

This is the third so-called "slave-labor" proposed class action lawsuit filed in the past year against the companies.

In June, a proposed class-action lawsuit was filed by a 74-year-old Filipino man who made similar allegations. And in August, Fisher filed a similar lawsuit on behalf of Chinese nationals against Mitsui and Mitsubishi companies.

The two prior cases were removed to federal court, but the judges there sent them back to state court because of a California law enacted by the Legislature.

"The California Legislature, a few years ago, enacted the Hayden Bill, which recognized the rights of slave labor victims not only in Europe but in Japan," Fisher said. The law "extended the statute of limitations to … the year 20l0."

The plaintiffs seek compensation for the profits the companies made off the alleged "slave laborers" and the value of wages and benefits they earned. They also want the creation of a constructive trust and general, special, punitive and exemplary damages.