Then the surgery began.
He was left with a thick, v-shaped scar on his lower body and
questions about what had happened. Months later, talking with a
friend, he learned that he had been sterilized. So had two others
from the same institution in Miyagi, northern Japan.
"There was no explanation, ever," said Kita, now 75, who uses the
pseudonym in media to avoid questions from his late wife's family.
"I was left with a body that couldn't create children."
But he did not realize until January that his surgery was part of a
government program to prevent the birth of so-called "inferior
descendants" that saw tens of thousands sterilized, often without
their consent, under a law not revoked until 1996.
Most were physically or cognitively disabled. But others suffered
from leprosy - curable, and now known as Hansen's disease - mental
illness or simply had behavioral problems. Kita had been sent to an
institution for fighting at school.
Now the victims, many of whom were in their teens or younger when
they were sterilized, are fighting back, demanding justice from a
government they say violated their human rights. A mentally disabled
woman in her 60s has sued for an apology and 11 million yen
($100,328) in compensation, and other suits may follow soon.
All could embarrass the government, which insists the surgeries were
done legally, and Japan, where attitudes about the disabled still
lag other advanced nations even as it prepares to host the
Paralympic Games in 2020.
"Right after the war, rebuilding the country and its people was
paramount, so in the name of building better citizens for the
nation, the law came into effect," said Keiko Toshimitsu, a
bioethics researcher and head of an activist group supporting those
who were forcibly sterilized. "It was to build a better Japan -
along, of course, with prejudice against the disabled.
"Then in the 1960s and 1970s there was rapid economic growth so they
needed people born who could keep the growth going."

An official at the Health Ministry, who declined to be named due to
the sensitivity of the issue, would not discuss the law or the
lawsuits in detail.
"It was an operation that was carried out according to a law that
was in force at the time, so we are contesting it with the stance
that it is not a matter for compensation," he said.
EMBRACING DISCRIMINATION
Though the most notorious eugenics laws were imposed by Nazi
Germany, Japan is not the only nation with similar programs in
peacetime. Sweden sterilized 63,000 people under a 1935-1975
program, almost all women, in the name of racial purity.
Thirty-two U.S. states embraced eugenics at some point, with the
number of sterilizations climbing after a 1927 Supreme Court
decision upholding a Virginia law. In the majority opinion, Chief
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes compared the state's duty to sterilize
a woman to the need to protect the public against smallpox with
compulsory vaccinations.
But laws overseas, by and large, were revoked in the 1970s; Sweden
apologized and paid compensation after media reports brought the
problem to light in 1997. The U.S. states of North Carolina and
Virginia have also offered compensation.
Japan's "Eugenics Protection Law" came into effect in 1948 as it
struggled with food shortages and rebuilding a ravaged nation.
Sterilizations peaked in the 1960s and 1970s. The last surgery under
the law was carried out in 1993, and the measure was revoked three
years later.

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Of the estimated 25,000 people sterilized during this time, at least
16,500 did not give consent - unneeded if a eugenics board signed
off on it after an often cursory review. Few records remain.
"It seems there were zealous doctors who took the law up
systematically, promoting it as a truly noble way to save the
nation," said Koji Niisato, a lawyer overseeing the lawsuits.
Methods varied. Hysterectomies were recommended for disabled women
in institutions on the pretext they couldn't handle their
menstruation. One woman born with cerebral palsy was subjected to
high doses of radiation to her reproductive organs.

The reasons varied as well, in some cases going beyond the scope of
the original law.
A woman now in her 70s known as Junko Iizuka in the Japanese media,
who had limited schooling because of poverty, was given an
intelligence test as a teenager and did badly. She was then
diagnosed as "feeble-minded" and sterilized.
"When you look at lots of victims' statements, none of these are
disabilities that were inheritable," said lawmaker Mizuho Fukushima,
secretary-general of a multi-party lawmakers group working on the
issue. "It was definitely due to prejudice, or poverty ... an
accumulation of discrimination and black marks."
LEGAL FRAMEWORK
Fukushima hopes by next year to present a law proposing compensation
for the victims, and lawyer Niisato expects more will come forward,
emboldened by publicity around the court cases.
"The idea they were sterilized because they were disabled isn't
something anybody wants to bring up," he said. "They were afraid
that if they did, people would say 'well, you're disabled, it can't
be helped.'"
Though overt discrimination has fallen, attitudes toward the
disabled lag those overseas, sometimes in harmful ways. In 2016, 19
people at a facility for the disabled were killed in their sleep by
a man who had advocated euthanasia for the physically and mentally
impaired.
With the Paralympics rapidly approaching, the government has doubled
down on public education, advocating kindness and urging people to
offer help to disabled people they may see.
But some consider that view just as alienating because it doesn't
recognize the right of disabled people to live life just like
everyone else, said Ryoji Hoshika, an associate professor at Tokyo
University.

"The image people have of the disabled is as if they're not human -
those who try really hard and have super-achievements, and those who
can't do anything at all," added Hoshika, who himself is visually
impaired, warning that the Paralympics could just reinforce this
view by showcasing only the elite athletes.
"There still isn't any really clear consensus within society on
dealing with the disabled - and given this, hosting the Paralympics
in a shallow way risks side-effects," he said.
For Kita, who often looks at fellow train passengers and thinks his
children might have been that age, anger remains strong.
"I just can't stand the way the nation's handled things. They
sterilized me, then now they say 'oh, we don't know anything,'" he
said, speaking to Reuters in his narrow, dark, Tokyo apartment.
"An apology is not enough. What I want to say is: give me back my
life."
(Reporting by Elaine Lies; Editing by Gerry Doyle)
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