WHEN Junko Iizuka was 16, she was taken on a jaunt to the countryside. Now in her seventies and in failing health, she dimly recalls enjoying a picnic of rice balls before being taken by her foster parents to a hospital and told to lie on a bed. When she woke, she had been sterilised, though she did not know it.

A panel of “experts”, she learned later, had decided she should not be allowed to bear children, after a welfare official had accused her of theft and aggressive behaviour. The procedure was carried out under something called the Eugenic Protection Law, passed in 1948 to prevent the birth of “defective descendants”. Local governments set up review boards of judges, police and doctors to decide who should be sterilised. Most of the targets were disabled people or those with hereditary conditions such as epilepsy. But some, including Ms Iizuka, were operated on just for being “difficult”. In all, around 25,000 people were sterilised under the law, which was repealed in 1996. The youngest were just nine years old.

Eugenics flourished around the world in the 20th century. Sweden had a policy of “ethnic hygiene” until 1976 (20 years ago it agreed to compensate some of the 63,000 people sterilised as a result). Norway and Denmark ran similar programmes, as did some American states. Forced sterilisation was part of China’s one-child policy, introduced in 1980.

In Japan, boards in each prefecture competed to fill quotas. Victims who objected were coerced or tricked. Many were so young they may not even have been aware that they had had surgery, says Osamu Nagase, a disability specialist at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto.

The victims are starting to seek compensation. One woman filed suit at a local court in March, demanding ¥11m ($100,000) in damages. Her fallopian tubes were tied in 1972 after she was diagnosed with “hereditary feeble-mindedness”. More lawsuits are on the way. A hotline set up by legal experts has attracted dozens of calls.

The government is resisting the claims. The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare argues the policy was legal at the time. It says only that it will look into the matter. Shame may prevent many victims from pursuing redress.

Ms Iizuka never married, fearing that her infertility would put off any suitors. She did not get her hands on her case file until she was 55. Anger—and pain from the operation—kept her going, she says. “I had to know what they did to me.”