Bad Timing Dept: Supreme Ct. Blocks Japanese-American Internment Suit Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit source - Michael Eisenscher JAPANESE-AMERICANS LOSE APPEAL SEEKING TO SUE US FOR WORLD WAR II INTERNMENT by Gina Holland Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON, Oct 1 (AP) --The Supreme Court will not decide if some Japanese-Americans can sue the U.S. government for discrimination for being held in camps during World War II. The court on Monday turned down an appeal in a case some people viewed as a test of America's commitment to human rights. The United States has already paid more than 81,000 people whose land was taken or who were forced into camps. The suit was filed by some who were turned down for the $20,000 stipends. A judge had dismissed the case filed by six people, including two Japanese-Americans and four members of a family in Japan, saying the statute of limitations had run out. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that the suit was filed 50 years too late. "These cases, and the international human rights issues they raise, are of substantial national importance," the lawyer for the six told the Supreme Court. The cases' outcome will be "an indicator of whether United States courts take international law seriously," wrote two law professors and a human rights lawyer, who asked to file briefs in the case. In 1988 Congress set up a $1.6 billion reparations program, with victims eligible for $20,000 each. The money was for people forced into internment camps or who had property seized by the government after the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. The suit includes a man who was denied $20,000 because he was not an American citizen when he was put into a camp. Kay Sadao Kato of Los Angeles was later granted citizenship. He was 91 years old when the suit was filed in 1999. Jane Natsue Yano, of Santa Clara, Calif., said she was born in 1947 in a camp in Texas, but was denied money because the government was supposed to have shut down all the camps in 1945. The other plaintiffs are members of the Ogura family from Okinawa, Japan. The suit claims they were abducted from their home in Peru in 1943 and 1944 and brought to U.S. internment camps for use as potential bargaining chips in hostage exchanges. The Oguras were imprisoned until Dec. 6, 1945, when they were forced to leave the United States, the suit said. The government said that any discrimination claims against an agency must be filed within two years of alleged wrongdoing. A federal judge agreed in April 2000. The appeal contends the United States was guilty of ongoing discrimination for refusing to right any wrongs from the 1940s. The two law professors from the University of Hawaii and Georgia State University and the private attorney from San Francisco said the case was being watched around the world. "The United States has been criticized for what is perceived as a failure to hold itself to the standards it promotes internationally, and the decisions of federal courts in international human rights cases are closely scrutinized by the international judicial community," they wrote. The case is Kato v. U.S., 01-07. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytrc-10.04.01-03:44:59-13109