Chinese plaintiff group submitted appeal to the Supreme Court of
Japan Wednesday, and the appeal was accepted by the court, said
Louxian, a member of the group.
The Tokyo High Court ignored Chinese plaintiffs' second appeal
concerning germ war Tuesday.
"We will persevere our demand for justice and dignity and hold
on the lawsuits," said Wang Xuan, the plaintiff group leader.
The Chinese plaintiffs have lost all their lawsuits in various
levels of Japan's courts from this March to April including the
appeals concerning the comfort women, the compensation to Chinese
warfare victims and the human experiments of the notorious Unit
731.
In 1939, Japan's Unit 731 of the Kwantung Army set up a
top-secret, germ-warfare research base in what is today's Pingfang
district of Harbin City. The army's medical officers experimented
on Chinese civilians, and Soviet, Korean, British and other
prisoners.
At the experimental base, some people were forced to be frozen
or infected with bubonic plague, others were injected with syphilis
virus and many were roasted alive in furnaces. It is said more than
200,000 people were killed or injured in the germ warfare launched
by Japan.
When the Soviet army took back Harbin in 1945, the Japanese blew
up the base. The secret could have remained buried forever, but a
tenacious Japanese journalist dragged out the truth in the
1980s.
(Xinhua News Agency July 21, 2005)