The Tokyo High Court on Wednesday reversed a lower court ruling and rejected a damages lawsuit filed by 13 Chinese against the government for injuries and death caused by weapons abandoned by the Japanese military in China at the end of the war.
Presiding Judge Katsumi Kobayashi ruled that the Japanese government was not responsible for the deaths or injuries caused by the weapons, saying it could not have prevented the outcome in the incidents even if Japan had provided China with such information as the locations of the abandoned weapons and how to dispose of them.
Seven of the 13 plaintiffs claim they have suffered health problems, including chronic respiratory ailments and skin blistering, from exposure to the poisonous gas that leaked from abandoned chemical weapons in Heilongjiang Province in an incident in 1974 and another in 1982.