FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CRM TUESDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1996 (202) 514-2008 TDD (202) 514-1888 SUSPECTED JAPANESE WAR CRIMINALS PLACED ON "WATCH LIST" OF EXCLUDABLE ALIENS First Time Japanese War Crime Suspects Have Been Placed on List The Justice Department announced today that 16 Japanese citizens have been placed on the U.S. Government's "watchlist" of aliens who are ineligible to enter the United States. Those placed on the watchlist either were members of Japanese Imperial Army units that conducted inhumane and frequently fatal experiments on humans or were involved in the operation of the so-called "comfort woman stations," where hundreds of thousands of women were forced to have sexual relations with Imperial Army officers and enlisted men. Eli M. Rosenbaum, the Director of the Office of Special Investigations, said that the men whose names have been added to the watchlist are now prohibited from entering the United States by 8 U.S.C. Section 1182(a)(3)(E), known as the "Holtzman Amendment." That law bars individuals who, in association with or under the direction of Nazi Germany or any government that was an ally of Nazi Germany, participated in acts of persecution during World War II. Some of the men being barred from entering the United States were members of "Unit 731," an infamous Japanese Army detachment in Manchuria that conducted inhumane and frequently lethal pseudo-medical experiments -- including vivisection -- on thousands of non-volunteer prisoners of war and civilians. These acts have been documented and described in U.S. and Japanese publications. The other men ineligible to enter the United States are suspected of involvement in the Imperial Army's establishment, maintenance and utilization of forced sex centers. Women and girls were taken principally from Korea, China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Burma and what is now Indonesia. They were held captive in the "comfort stations" and, as noted in the 1994 report, Comfort Women, issued by the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists, "were beaten and tortured in addition to being repeatedly raped day after day by officers and soldiers." Only a few of the perpetrators were tried, all by the Dutch government, for victimizing Dutch women in Indonesia. In response to demands made by international women's and human rights groups, the Japanese Government undertook an investigation, and in 1992 released numerous documents that confirm the official involvement of the Japanese Army in the operation of the Comfort Women stations. This is the first time that individuals not involved in European atrocities were placed on the watchlist under a 1979 law barring individuals implicated in acts of persecution committed under the auspices of Nazi Germany or its wartime allies from travel to the United States. Mr. Rosenbaum, whose office enforces the law, said it was expected that additional former members of the Japanese armed forces would be added to the watchlist as the investigation continues. More than one hundred suspected participants in Nazi- sponsored persecution in wartime Europe have been prevented from entering the United States since 1989, when the Office of Special Investigations began compiling statistics on this aspect of its work. More than 60,000 individuals associated with Nazi persecution have been placed on the watchlist since OSI's 1979 creation. Today's action became possible as increased documentation and witness testimony about Japanese war crimes became available to researchers in recent years. The Office of Special Investigations hired a Japanese-speaking staff member to work on these cases. Said Director Rosenbaum, "A veritable explosion in interest in these crimes on the part of scholars and the international human rights community made it possible to conclusively identify suspects." Rosenbaum expressed gratitude for the "outstanding assistance" his office received from contacts in the academic world and human rights organizations in the United States, Japan and elsewhere. "By barring from the United States those suspected of acts of persecution in Unit 731 or in the forced sex centers, the U.S. Government is demonstrating that it remember the victims and their suffering, and that it wants to deter others from committing such heinous acts," said Rosenbaum. # # #