ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, December 4, 1996 TAG: 9612040040
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press
After tracking Nazi war criminals for 17 years, the Justice Department took its first action Tuesday against Japanese army veterans suspected of performing medical experiments on prisoners and operating forced-sex camps during World War II.
Sixteen men who served in the Imperial Army were barred from ever entering the United States. They were the first Japanese placed on the government's ``watch list'' since it was established in 1979 to keep out people who engaged in persecution on behalf of Nazi Germany or its allies.
More than 60,000 people linked to Nazi persecution in Europe have been put on the list since 1979, including Kurt Waldheim, former United Nations Secretary-General and president of Austria. The list has prevented more than 100 people from entering since 1989, when record-keeping began.
Some of barred Japanese veterans were members of ``Unit 731,'' an army detachment in Manchuria that conducted frequently lethal pseudo-medical experiments on thousands of prisoners of war and civilians.
The other men are suspected of setting up and operating the Imperial Army's ``comfort women stations,'' where hundreds of thousands of women were forced to have sexual relations with Japanese officers and enlisted men.
Gilbert Hair, executive director of the Center for Internee Rights in Miami Beach, said his researchers have identified 200 living Japanese war criminals and volunteered to share the names with Justice investigators. The offer was welcomed by Eli Rosenbaum, director of Justice's office of special investigations, which hunts war criminals.
Rosenbaum expects more former members of the Japanese armed forces will be barred. As a result, the government declined to release the names of the 16. ``Withholding these names may serve as a deterrent to entry by others not yet listed.'' said spokesman John Russell.
Rosenbaum said his investigators have found no evidence any Japanese war criminals live in or have visited the United States.
``The first thing we do is to check names we get to see if they've come to the United States,'' Rosenbaum said. ``Unlike the massive postwar immigration from Europe in which hundreds, probably thousands, of Nazi persecutors concealed themselves, there was no large immigration from Japan after the war, and since then very few Japanese entrants of that generation.''
Since 1979, Rosenbaum's unit has stripped U.S. citizenship from 57 people accused of being Nazi persecutors and expelled 48; more than 300 remain under investigation.
In response to demands from international women's and human rights groups, the Japanese government released documents in 1992 that confirm the Japanese army's official operation of ``comfort women stations.''
Women and girls were taken from Korea, China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Burma and what is now Indonesia and held captive in the stations. A 1994 report by the International Commission of Jurists in Geneva said they ``were beaten and tortured in addition to being repeatedly raped day after day by officers and soldiers.''
LENGTH: Medium: 61 linesby CNB