Three Taiwanese born during the Japanese colonial period in Taiwan are planning to seek legal action to ask the Japanese government to restore their Japanese nationality, the Sankei Shimbun reported on Thursday.
Yang Fu-cheng (楊馥成), 97, Lin Yu-li (林余立), 92, and Hsu Hua-chi (許華杞), 85, will soon take the case to an Osaka local court to restore their Japanese nationality, which they lost after the end of World War II, the report quoted their lawyer, Shinichi Tokunaga, as saying.
It would be the first such case to be filed in a Japanese court by Taiwanese born in Taiwan when it was ruled by Japan, the lawyer was quoted as saying.
The three are asking the Tokyo government to restore their Japanese nationality based on the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states: “Everyone has the right to a nationality” and “no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality,” the report said.
After the Treaty of San Francisco that Japan inked with 48 other countries to end the US-led Allied occupation of Japan came into force on April 28, 1952, Tokyo renounced its jurisdiction over Taiwan.
However, this treaty also introduced the problem of the legal status of Taiwan, as it did not specify to which country Taiwan was to be surrendered. As a result, the sovereignty of Taiwan remains undetermined, Taiwanese independence campaigners say.
Neither the Republic of China (ROC) nor the People’s Republic of China were invited to sign the Treaty of San Francisco due to disagreements by other countries as to which government was the legitimate government of China during and after the Chinese Civil War.
Under pressure from the US, Japan signed the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty with the ROC (also known as the Treaty of Taipei) in April 1952 to bring the war between the two sides to an end, with victory for the ROC.
The Japanese Supreme Court in December 1962 ruled that after the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty took effect in August 1952, people born in Taiwan as Japanese nationals automatically lost their Japanese nationality.
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
BITTERLY COLD: The inauguration ceremony for US president-elect Donald Trump has been moved indoors due to cold weather, with the new venue lacking capacity A delegation of cross-party lawmakers from Taiwan, led by Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), for the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump, would not be able to attend the ceremony, as it is being moved indoors due to forecasts of intense cold weather in Washington tomorrow. The inauguration ceremony for Trump and US vice president-elect JD Vance is to be held inside the Capitol Rotunda, which has a capacity of about 2,000 people. A person familiar with the issue yesterday said although the outdoor inauguration ceremony has been relocated, Taiwan’s legislative delegation has decided to head off to Washington as scheduled. The delegation
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
Another wave of cold air would affect Taiwan starting from Friday and could evolve into a continental cold mass, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Temperatures could drop below 10°C across Taiwan on Monday and Tuesday next week, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. Seasonal northeasterly winds could bring rain, he said. Meanwhile, due to the continental cold mass and radiative cooling, it would be cold in northern and northeastern Taiwan today and tomorrow, according to the CWA. From last night to this morning, temperatures could drop below 10°C in northern Taiwan, it said. A thin coat of snow