Tokyo firebombing victims sue government--media

TOKYO, Mar 10 (Reuters) Victims of US firebombing raids on Tokyo in World War Two and their families have sued the Japanese government seeking compensation for starting the war and taking too long to stop it, media reports said today, the 62nd anniversary of the bombings.

The March 10, 1945 bombing of Tokyo, which took place just after midnight, engulfed the capital in a firestorm that killed an estimated 100,000.

Kyodo news agency said the plaintiffs, a group of 112 people, were seeking 11 million yen (93,000 dollar) each in compensation, arguing that had the government ended the war sooner, the raids would not have taken place.

Japan surrendered on Aug 15, 1945, shortly after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The plaintiffs also criticised the government for offering compensation only to military veterans and their relatives, saying that it violated constitutional principles of equality.

Eighty-year-old Mieko Toyomura, who lost four of her family in the raid and had her right arm severed in a subsequent bombing, urged the government to treat civilian victims equally.

''I've lived and worked desperately all these years with only one arm, and without getting any assistance. Tears keep falling when I look back on what happened at that time,'' Kyodo quoted Toyomura as saying.

''I want (the government) to treat people equally without discriminating between civilian war victims and soldiers.'' Kyodo said the plaintiffs were aged between 57 and 88, with the average 74.

A previous suit was filed by two women demanding government compensation over the bombing of the central city of Nagoya, but the Supreme Court rejected that suit in 1987, ruling: ''In an emergency situation where the fate of the nation is at stake, people just have to endure.'' Yesterday, media reported that Emperor Hirohito, in whose name Japanese soldiers fought in World War Two, was reluctant to start the war with China in 1937 and had believed in stopping it earlier, citing a diary by his former chamberlain.

The diary also quoted Hirohito as saying in December 1942, a year after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, that the timing for ending a war was important.

''One you start (a war), it cannot easily be stopped in the middle ... What's important is when to end the war,'' the diary quotes him as saying.

Hirohito's remarks may provide insight into his war responsibility, which academics say has never been fully pursued in Japan due to a decision by the US Occupation authorities to retain him in place and turn the emperor into a symbol of a newly democratic Japan.

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