TOKYO, Japan.– Fifty years ago, Toru Takegama joined hundreds of Japanese farmers on a one-way voyage to the Dominican Republic in search of fortune on a promised "paradise in the Caribbean Sea". But his dreams, he says, perished in barren soil and his hopes turned into a "hellish nightmare."  

Takegama, 68, was among 1,320 Japanese who took part in a project between 1956 and 1959 to migrate to the Caribbean island to engage in large-scale farming.  

Japan at the time was agonizing over intense population pressure and double-digit unemployment rates after millions of citizens and war veterans returned from abroad following Tokyo's defeat in World War Two.  

"Japan's government advertised its immigration project with the phrase 'A paradise in the Caribbean Sea'," Takegama told Reuters. "That's why we all decided to go there to realize our dreams of farming on vast, rich land."  

Takegama heads a group of 177 ageing Japanese settlers who filed a lawsuit in July 2000 demanding the Japanese government pay a total of 3.1 billion yen ($28 million) in damages.  

The Tokyo District Court is to hand down its ruling on Wednesday.  

"In search of a vent for population pressure, the government had crafted plans to send off a large number of settlers abroad," the plaintiffs said in their lawsuit.  

The plaintiffs say Japan's Foreign Ministry had told applicants they would receive fertile farmland and houses free of charge, along with other daily necessities.  

But the settlers said the land provided was less than one-third of what was promised in the immigration guidelines prepared by the Japanese government, and the land was not suited for farming as it was filled with rocks, salt or limestone.  

In addition, they were not given ownership of the land but only the right to cultivate it, the plaintiffs said.  

SHATTERED DREAMS  

Japan's government has argued that it provided information to potential emigrants as an administrative service and did not have legal responsibility for their woes, a lawyer for the plaintiffs said.  

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, however, in 2004 acknowledged "mismanagement" of the 1950s emigration policy, Japanese media said.  

"We were dreaming of farming on vast, fertile land on a paradise in the Caribbean Sea," Takegama said. "But it was a far cry from a paradise. It was a hellish nightmare."  

He said the Japanese farmers were confined to settlements surrounded by barbed wire and patrolled by armed guards in areas bordering Haiti.  

"Our dreams were shattered in a matter of seconds. We all knelt down in despair when we saw the wasteland," he said, describing the scene in July 1956 when the settlers first visited the bare, red farmland dotted with cactus.  

"There was little water available and no electricity, no movies, no places for entertainment whatsoever in the settlements. They were just like prisons," he said.  

Takegama said several Japanese settlers killed themselves because of the harsh living conditions and their lack of hope.  

"Some of them committed suicide because they thought if they died, their wives and children would be returned to Japan," he said.  

Takegama said the Dominican Republic used the Japanese settlers as a "human shield" against possible intruders from Haiti, locked in a border dispute with the Dominican Republic.  

"The tragedy is that the Japanese government, knowing that the plans were wrong, pressed ahead with its original plans to send settlers there," Takegama said. "We had never thought of being betrayed or deceived by our fatherland."  

About 600 Japanese settlers returned home in 1961 and 1962 when Japan's government provided them with travel expenses after Dominican Republic strongman Rafael Trujillo was assassinated.  

But Takegama said it was not easy for the cash-strapped Japanese settlers to go home.  

"We had sold all our properties in Japan to move to the Dominican Republic," he said. "So we could not return to Japan, no matter how harsh the conditions were and even if we wanted to, because we had nothing left in Japan."