|
Express-News: Military
VA chief says Japan owes apology to U.S. POWs
By Sig Christenson
San Antonio Express-News
Web Posted : 07/31/2001
In what could be a first, Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi said Monday that Japan should apologize for its mistreatment of American prisoners of war during World War II.
Addressing a VA seminar in San Antonio on treating former prisoners of war, he called for the apology and suggested he'd personally back the efforts of ex-POWs to seek compensation from Japanese firms that used them in slave labor camps.
"I believe they should (apologize)," Principi told reporters. "As the advocate of those who survived the
(Bataan) Death March, I feel for them. I've been entrusted by the president to do everything I can to care for them. They're not asking for very much ... relative to what they endured for years in captivity."
Principi's comments were the latest volley in a controversy over attempts by former POWs to extract formal apologies and cash compensation from Japanese firms that used up to 26,000 U.S. soldiers in slave labor camps during the war.
Nearly three dozen lawsuits have been filed against the companies, among them Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Matsui Mining USA, but those actions have been opposed by Washington.
Former POW Frank Bigelow, who had his right leg amputated in 1945 without anesthesia while working in a Mitsui coal mine near Nagasaki, was elated by Principi's comments.
|
|
|
Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi speaks at La Mansion del Rio Hotel Monday.
Photo by John Davenport/Express-News |
|
"This is good news," said Bigelow, 79, of Brooksville, Fla., just north of Tampa. "This will help us a great deal. If we can make these Japanese lose enough face, I know damned good and well they will pay us."
Principi's stance may be the first time a U.S. official has said Japan should apologize for its treatment of U.S. POWs. A State Department official said he was not aware of similar comments having been made in the Bush or Clinton administrations.
The White House was mum on the issue, referring questions to the State Department. The Japanese Embassy in Washington did not return phone calls.
The Bush administration, however, opposes the suits. The State Department official, speaking on background, said the United States waived all claims against Japan and its nationals arising from the war in the 1951 San Francisco Treaty.
He also said ex-POWs were given compensation from the liquidation of Japanese assets seized in allied countries, but couldn't say how much money they received or how many soldiers were included in the deal.
Former POW Lester Tenney, an 81-year-old San Diego survivor of the Bataan Death March, said the compensation amounted to $1.50 a day for the period each American was held.
Though he doesn't recall receiving the money, Tenney said the suits he and others have filed are against Japanese firms that prospered as a result of their labor. With most Japanese men serving in the Army, he said, the companies relied on slave labor to stay in business.
Getting an apology is a core demand of the former POWs.
They accuse Japan of having never formally apologized for their treatment of American prisoners during the war.
The ex-POWs say they were fed meager rations of rice and water, were beaten often, worked long hours in subhuman conditions and slept in squalor.
Retired Army Col. Morris L. Shoss, 86, of San Antonio said, "we were living like dogs." At war's end he weighed just 85 pounds.
The State Department official said it isn't clear that Japan has ever apologized for its treatment of American POWs. He said one general apology for Japan's role in the war was offered in 1995 by then-Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama.
Whatever the case, the ex-POWs aren't satisfied.
"I want them to admit that they did things wrong, that they did not feed us, they didn't take care of us and they did not pay us. In all respects they made slaves out of us," said Tenney, a retired Arizona State University finance professor.
"We'd like a written apology," said 77-year-old retired Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Tillman J. Rutledge, a San Antonian who worked in a Mitsubishi-owned coal mine not far from one Tenney toiled in near Nagasaki. "It's just too easy to say they're sorry."
sigc@express-news.net
|