Though the Tokyo High Court ignored Chinese plaintiffs' second appeal concerning germ war Tuesday, the warfare victims will persevere in their demand for justice and dignity, said the plaintiff group leader Wang Xuan.

The Chinese plaintiff group will submit their appeals to the Supreme Court of Japan, though "it is almost impossible to win the lawsuit," said Wang.

The judgment of the Tokyo High Court basically remained identical with the previous one made by the Tokyo District Court, which acknowledged the facts that the Japanese intruding army used germ warfare and harmed many Chinese during its aggression of China but refused to make compensations or apologize.

"We are not surprised at this result," Wang said.

Chinese plaintiffs have lost all their lawsuits in various levels of Japan's courts from this March to April including the appeals concerning the comfort women, the compensation to Chinese warfare victims and the human experiments of the notorious Unit 731.

"But we will continue our appealing activities, because it is more than a normal lawsuit," said the plaintiff group leader.

"From the very beginning, the lawsuit was imbued with the task to reveal the crimes that the Japanese army committed in China and to uphold justice and retrieve national dignity."

"The transnational and time-consuming task is destined to be an odyssey," Wang said.

For a long period of time, the Chinese plaintiffs have demanded that the Japanese government tell the truth about the germ war in China and apologize to the victims.

The Tokyo District Court has already admitted the fact of germ warfare in its court verdict, but the plaintiff group will still have a long way to go to retrieve the dignity of the victims.

"It is a kind of ridiculous and irrational judgment," said 71-year-old Ding Dewang, a relative of the germ war victims in Changde, central-south China's Hunan Province.

"Now that they admitted the crimes, they must shoulder the responsibilities," the old man said with indignation when he heard of the news that the Chinese plaintiff group lost their appeal again.

Seventy-six-year-old Zhou Honggen from Chongshan village of Yiwu, east China's Zhejiang Province said "the loss in the second appeal fully shows that the injustice and cowardice of the Japanese government."

In 1942, 16 of Zhou's kindred were killed in a rat plague war by the Japanese army. A 13-year-old boy, Zhou witnessed the scene of how his grandmother and uncle scratched their chests and died all of a sudden.

"I have already given all the material evidences to my two sons. We will not stop our appeals until the Japanese government makes apologies," he said.

The Tuesday lawsuit was brought by 180 Chinese plaintiffs who are the survivors or relatives of the victims of Unit 731, which conducted human experiments and bombed cities with the plague, cholera and other germs.

The plaintiffs, who were in Zhejiang and Hunan provinces from 1940 to 1942, had demanded a court order that the government apologize and grant them each 10 million yen (about 90,000 dollars) in compensation.

The Tokyo Distrcit Court rejected their demands in 2002.

Prof. Yuan Chengyi from Hangzhou Normal Institute said after the second World War, Germany made compensations to numerous nations and people who were harmed by the Nazis.

In comparison, Japan failed to resolve the compensation problems, Yuan said, who stressed that the allegations of the Japanese government "can not hold water."

What the Japanese government has done goes against the developing tendency of the world.

The professor said whether Japan can correctly interpret international norms and settle its pending historical problems with many Asian countries is of vital importance to the future role it will play in the international community.

Source: Xinhua