On November 30th, 2018 The Japan Times waded into the interminable controversy over Japan's wartime misdeeds with a small editor's note tacked onto the end of a story about conscript labor. The previous day, South Korea's Supreme Court had ruled that Mitsubishi Heavy Industries should compensate Korean forced laborers. That followed a similar ruling against Nippon Steel in October. With another dozen lawsuits pending against about 70 Japanese companies, Japan's most venerable English-language newspaper appeared to question whether these laborers were actually forced to work at all.