CODE 18-77
Reference
30
нивого 12
020CT 1990cc Mr Bond (FED)
Mr Stone (HKD WH312)
HONG KONG: JAPANESE REPARATION
1.
Mr Fifoot (Legal Advisers)
REPARATY @
29
I refer to your minute of the 3 September concerning the above matter. I think that to some extent I may be being asked to reinvent the wheel on this issue given that in February I advised FED on a letter from Austin Mitchell concerning wartime Japanese bank-notes paid to a British POW and very recently I have been advising FED on claims by Hong Kong residents for compensation for Japanese military currency referred to in Osborne's teleletter of 10 August to Claims Department. Have you seen FED's papers in these respects?
2. I would nonetheless offer the following comments on the
The material from the Hong Kong "Reparation Association". UK ratification of the 1951 Treaty of Peace with Japan bound
The treaty Hong Kong as well as other parts of the UK. settled, among other matters, questions relating to claims and property. Article 14(b) provided that "Except as otherwise provided in the present Treaty, the Allied Powers waive all reparations claims of the Allied Powers, other claims of the Allied Powers and their nationals arising out of any actions taken by Japan and its nationals in the course of the prosecution of the war, and claims of the Allied Powers for direct military costs of occupation" (emphasis added).
3. The words "Except as otherwise provided" pick up, among other things, a right of the Allied Powers provided in Article 14 (a) 2(1) to sieze, retain, liquidate or otherwise dispose of all property rights and interests of Japan and Japanese nationals, but Article 14(a) 2(ii) (v) excepts from that right "obligations of Japan or Japanese nationals... expressed in Japanese currency".
4.
Article
My conclusion from the above is as follows. 14(b) would appear to exclude HMG from pursuing on grounds. of legal title any claim of its nationals in respect of military bills issued by the Japanese during the war and the effect of Article 14(a)2(ii) (v) would appear to have precluded HMG from liquidating or disposing of Japanese notes and interests in respect of these bills in exercise of the power under Article 14(a)2(i). One assumption being made in this respect is that the military bills and indeed the "Japanese currency" referred to in the material attached to your minute can be said to have been issued by Japan or
JR4AAP