POW Descendants undertake trip of reconciliation and healing

Hellship Hokusen Maru

On October 7, 2018, seven descendants of American POWs of Japan who were surrendered on the Philippines in April and May 1942, left for a week in Japan as guests of the Japanese government. Below is the ADBC-MS press release and a link to full biographies of the POWs represented. We wish them well.

Seven children and descendants of POWs are visiting Japan this week as guests of the Japanese government. They are the 10th delegation of the U.S.-Japan POW Friendship Program to promote reconciliation and remembrance between the two countries. This program began in 2010.

The families represent five American POWs of Japan who were members of the U.S. Army, U.S. Coast Artillery Corps, and U.S. Army Air Corps. Japan attacked the Philippines and other American Pacific territories hours after their surprise air raid on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. All the men fought to defend the Philippines against invading Japanese forces and all endured years of brutal captivity. Four survived the Bataan Death March, four were slave laborers for Japanese companies, and one perished in the bombing of the “hellship” Enoura Maru in Takao Harbor, Formosa.

The delegation is composed of:

LINDA, 70, and DAVE ANDERSON, 70, of El Paso, Texas are the daughter and son-in-law of the late Clarence Delbert Neighbors, a Private with the U.S. Army Air Corps, 20th Air Base Group, 28th Materiel Squadron at Nichols Field. He survived the Bataan Death March, work details on the Philippines, a hellship to Manchuria, slave labor for Mitsubishi at Mukden, and slave labor for Mitsui at their lead mine in Kamioka.

CAROLYN BUNCH DIAZ, 82, of Santa Ana, California and CATHY MATZEK, 55, are the daughter and granddaughter of the late Wilbur J. Bunch, who was a Master Sergeant with the U.S. Army, 54th Signal Maintenance Company (Aviation) stationed at Ft. Stotsenburg. He survived the Bataan Death March, work details at the Cabanatuan POW Camp, and the sinking of the hellship Oryoku Maru. He died January 9, 1945 from the bombing of the hellship Enoura Maru in Takao Harbor, Formosa.

ANNA KEEVER LYON, 69, of Greensboro North Carolina is the daughter of the late Joe W. Keever, a Staff Sergeant with 60th Coast Artillery Corps of the U.S. Army stationed on Corregidor. He survived imprisonment on Corregidor and at Cabanatuan as well as a hellship to Manchuria to be a slave laborer for Mitsubishi at Mukden.

DAVID A. TOPPING, JR, 65, of Chestertown, Maryland, is the son of the late David A. Topping, a Private with the 27th Bomb Group (Light), 91st Bomb Squadron. He survived the Bataan Death March, work details on the Philippines, hellships to Japan, and slave labor for Kawasaki Steel in Maibara.

JAMES WRIGHT, 82, of Madison, Alabama is the son of the late William R. Wright, a Tech Sergeant with the 24th Pursuit Group, 17th Pursuit Squadron. He survived the Bataan Death March, work details on the Philippines, a hellship to Japan and slave labor for Meiji Mining in Keisen.

Full profiles of the POWs can be found HERE

They will visit the sites of their loved ones’ imprisonment and rescue as well as a number of Japanese cultural properties.

This is the 10th trip of this much appreciated Japanese government-funded program of remembrance and reconciliation. Jan Thompson, president of the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society that works with the U.S. State Department to identify participants, applauded the inclusion of POW children and grandchildren in the program.

Ms. Thompson said, “It confirms Japan’s commitment to overcoming its dark history and shows their modern understanding that the traumas of past atrocities and war crimes are intergenerational and enduring. The goodwill and healing resulting from these trips are a model for more Japanese efforts to acknowledge and console Imperial Japan’s wartime victims. The result strengthens the personal ties that undergird the U.S.-Japan Alliance.”

Japanese Corporate Use of U.S. POWs as Slave Labor

American POWs at Yawata Steel Mill
 part of  Nippon Steel in Fukuoka*

On 15 December 2011, Representative Russ Carnahan (D-MO) submitted a Statement for the Record to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Hearing on California's High-Speed Rail Plan on behalf of Mr. Joseph A. Vater, Jr. who is President of the Descendants Group, an Auxiliary of the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor.

Congressman Carnahan visited Corregidor last year and learned first hand of the historic battle of the Philippines and how its American defenders ended up as POWs facing over three years of unimaginable hell. Earl Szwabo, a survivor of the battle of Corregidor and member of the first POW trip to Japan, is one of Mr. Carnahan's constituents.

Below is Mr. Vater's testimony where he outlines how most of the Japanese companies that plan to bid on California's and other American high-speed rail projects were major users of American POW slave labor. He suggests that it is time for these companies to offer their apologies and make amends for this gross violation of human rights and the Geneva Convention.

Japanese Corporate Use of U.S. POWs as Slave Labor

Mr. Chairman, I am President of the Descendants Group, an Auxiliary of the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor, Inc. (ADBC). The American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor was founded in 1946 and represented the surviving prisoners of war of Japan and their families. I would like to call your and the Committee’s attention to the fact that many of the Japanese companies that intend to bid on California’s High-Speed Rail contracts profited from the use of American and Allied (POW) slave labor in the most brutal of conditions during World War II.

These companies, unlike those in Germany, Austria, and France, have never acknowledged nor apologized for this gross violation of human rights and breach of the Third Geneva Convention on the treatment of POWs. It is a concern to me and other members of the Descendants Group that taxpayer dollars may go to Japanese corporations that still do not respect the American veterans they once enslaved.

My father, Joseph A. Vater, was one of these men.

After fighting in and surviving the Battle for the Philippines he was taken prisoner by Japan in May 1942 on Corregidor. He was held months in a fetid POW camp where thousands died. He was then shipped to Mukden, China (today's Shenyang) in October 1942 on Mitsubishi's Tottori Maru via Formosa and Korea. My father became a slave laborer at MKK factory (Manshu Kosaku Kikai, possibly Manchuria Mitsubishi Machine Tool Company, Ltd.), working as a machinist. He still carries many scars and continues to have frightening nightmares that remind him on a daily basis of his forced labor.

There was a broad government program in which over 60 private Japanese corporations requested, paid for, and effectively enslaved POWs in order to maintain wartime industrial production. Tens of thousands of Allied POWs endured abuses at the hands of the employees of these companies that were comparable to, and sometimes worse than, that inflicted upon them by the Japanese military. As a result, more than a 1,000 American POWs (over 3,500 Allied POWs) died on the main islands of Japan alone. Those who survived found themselves with permanent physical or mental damage.

The POW slave laborers of Japan were subjected to starvation rations, minimal medical treatment, constant physical abuse, summary punishment, murder, and other degradations. The death rate of Americans captured by the Japanese and who died as prisoners of war was nearly 40 percent, as compared to a little over one percent held in German stalags.

Nearly all of the Japanese companies that want to bring High-Speed Rail to California used POW slave labor. Many of these corporations boast over 100 years of continuous operation spanning three centuries. Many utilized labor from multiple POW camps for their mines, factories, foundries, and docks. Some of the camps were in Japan’s occupied territories. Current research finds the number of camps associated with some of the Japanese companies bidding on California contracts as follows: Mitsui-9; Mitsubishi-5, Hitachi-7, Kawasaki-2, Sumitomo-5, and Nippon Sharyo-2.

None of these companies has acknowledged their involvement in POW forced labor and maltreatment, much less apologized for it. That is in stark contrast to German and French bidders for the High-Speed Rail projects, both of which have not only apologized for their war crimes during WWII, but also committed themselves to supporting projects of remembrance and reconciliation.

Last year, for the first time, the Government of Japan offered its apology and established a visitation program (modeled on a longstanding Japanese program for POWs of other allied nations) for American former prisoners of war of Imperial Japan.

It is time for Japan’s private companies to follow their government’s lead and offer their own apologies. Further, commitment to this apology can be demonstrated through the establishment of a foundation for the remembrance of the POW experience in the Pacific.

To date, the two consortia headed by Japan’s leading passenger rail firms, JR East and JR Central, which are planning to bid on American High-Speed Rail projects, have been silent. As rail operators both companies’ forbearers were complicit in POW abuses; both have roots deep in Japan’s wartime government Railway Ministry.

JR East’s antecedent transported prisoners to 46 POW camps including the infamous Ofuna Interrogation Center where American Naval officers were routinely tortured to death. JR Central’s predecessor transported prisoners to 12 POW camps, including the ones supplying workers to Nippon Sharyo. Now owned by JR Central, Nippon Sharyo made the engines used on the Thai-Burma Death Railway (one of which sits at the entrance of the museum at the Yasukuni Shrine).

That the transportation of POWs to “death-by-work” camps and widespread forced labor constitute war crimes is self-evident. Yet, the Japanese companies involved have refused to publicly acknowledge this history. Their counterparts in the European Axis countries, by contrast, have apologized and atoned for similar wrongdoing.

In 2000, the German government and industrial sector established and funded in equal measure the “Remembrance, Responsibility and the Future” Foundation. Among the fund’s continuing objectives are “anchoring the history of forced labour” in European memory, “fostering commitment to democracy and human rights through history learning,” and “engendering respect for the life histories of those persecuted.”

Over the past three years, the former commander of the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor has written three times to Japan’s premier business organization, Keidanren, to which most companies that enslaved American POWs belong, asking that it apologize on behalf of its members to the American POWs. Keidanren’s corporate responsibility charter states a commitment to “respect human rights” and to “conduct business in a socially responsible manner.” Keidanren has never replied. Further, it refused to meet in with any of the visiting POWs who were guests of the Japanese government in the fall of 2010 and 2011.

For both business and moral reasons, JR East, JR Central and the other Japanese companies that profited from the forced labor of POWs and others now have a chance—and incentives—to right past wrongs. The American POWs do not seek compensation. Justice for my father and his fellow prisoners is a public apology and a meaningful program of visitation, dialogue, memory, and research on the American POW experience in Imperial Japan.

I and other members of the Descendants Group sincerely hope that the State of California will advise these Japanese companies to promptly acknowledge their involvement in wartime forced labor and offer an apology to the American POWs.

These veterans of America’s greatest generation should not be forgotten and Japan’s corporations should no longer be allowed to forget.

Mostly, we ask them to respect these veterans’ dignity and to acknowledge their sacrifices for peace in Asia.

After doing so, these Japanese companies can join in the bidding on California’s High-Speed Rail contracts as honorable, socially responsible companies.

*Yes, there were Black Americans who were POWs of Japan. The POWs above were from the USS Grenadier the only submarine crew that did not go down with their boat. Thomas James Trigg was a Mess Attendant First Class. We will do a post shortly on the Black American POWs of Japan. 

Congressional Hearings on American POWs of Japan

It was not until 2000, that the U.S. Congress held hearings on how the 1951 San Francisco Peace treaty with Japan abrogated the right of American former POWs of Japan to sue Japanese companies for compensation for their forced labor or on how the POWs were treated in Japan in violation of the Geneva Convention.

There had also never been congressional discussion on how the POWs were treated upon return. Many were forced to sign military gag orders not to discuss any details of their imprisonment. Researchers have found that American POWs of Japan died at four times the rate of other veterans of WWII after their first year back. Further, POWs of Japan suffered the highest rate of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD, which was not given an official name until 1980) of any WWII veteran. (Soldier from the War Returning: The Greatest Generation's Troubled Homecoming from World War II by Thomas Childers, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009)

In 2000, the full Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on if and how the U.S. can assist POWs to obtain compensation for forced labor and inhumane imprisonment. In 2002, the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims of the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the Justice for POWs Act, H.R. 1198 [107].

This legislation was popular in the 107th House of Representatives. Introduced by Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), there were 230 co-sponsors. Despite this strong support, much of it promoted by then-Majority Whip Tom "The Hammer" Delay, the bill never made it out of the three committees it was referred to, thus never getting to the floor of the House for a vote. There was also no companion legislation in the Senate (necessary for bill to become a law).

For a full analysis of all the legislation concerning the American POWs of Japan see "Critical Documents" on this blog: Legislative History. Below are the tables of contents of both hearings and the links to these documents. They are excellent compendiums of the issues involved with reconciliation and Japanese war crimes.

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

ON

DETERMINING WHETHER THOSE WHO PROFITED FROM THE
FORCED LABOR OF AMERICAN WORLD WAR II PRISONERS OF
WAR ONCE HELD AND FORCED INTO LABOR FOR PRIVATE
JAPANESE COMPANIES HAVE AN OBLIGATION TO REMEDY THEIR
WRONGS AND WHETHER THE UNITED STATES CAN HELP
FACILITATE AN APPROPRIATE RESOLUTION

JUNE 28, 2000

STATEMENTS OF COMMITTEE MEMBERS

Hatch, Hon. Orrin G., U.S. Senator from the State of Utah ................................ 1

Feinstein, Hon. Dianne, U.S. Senator from the State of California ...................... 5

Grassley, Hon. Charles E., U.S. Senator from the State of Iowa ....................... 22

Leahy, Hon. Patrick J., U.S. Senator from the State of Vermont ...................... 23

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

Statement of Hon. Jeff Bingaman, U.S. Senator from the State of New Mexico.... 3

Panel consisting of David W. Ogden, Acting Assistant Attorney General,

Civil Division, U.S. Department of Justice; and Ronald J. Bettauer, 

Deputy Legal Adviser, Department of State, Washington, DC............................. 6

Panel consisting of Harold W. Poole, former World War II prisoner of war

in Japan, Salt Lake City, UT; Frank Bigelow, former World War II prisoner

of war in Japan, Brooksville, FL; Maurice Mazer, former World War II

prisoner of war in Japan, Boca Raton, FL; Lester I. Tenney, former World

War II prisoner of war in Japan, LaJolla, CA; Edward Jackfert, former

World War II prisoner of war in Japan, and commander, American Defenders

of Bataan and Corregidor, Inc., Wellsburg, WV; and Harold G. Maier,

professor of law, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN .................................. 28

ALPHABETICAL LIST AND MATERIALS SUBMITTED

Bettauer, Ronald J.: Testimony.......................................................10

Prepared statement ....................................................................... 14

Bigelow, Frank: Testimony ............................................................ 31

Bingaman, Hon. Jeff: Testimony .......................................................3

Jackfert, Edward: Testimony .......................................................... 35

Maier, Harold G.: Testimony.......................................................... 38

Prepared statement ....................................................................... 39

Mazer, Maurice: Testimony ........................................................... 32

Ogden, David W.: Testimony .......................................................... 6

Prepared statement ......................................................................... 8

Poole, Harold W.: Testimony ......................................................... 28

Prepared statement ........................................................................ 29

Tenney, Lester I.: Testimony ........................................................... 33

APPENDIX

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Responses to questions of Senator Hatch from:

The Department of Justice ............................................................................ 47

Ronald J. Bettauer ......................................................................................... 53

ADDITIONAL SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD

Text of e-mail message to Senator Hatch from Rabbi Abraham Cooper of

the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Berlin, Germany, dated June 26, 2000 ............ 55

Prepared statements of:

Bruce R. Harder, director, National Security and Foreign Affairs, Veterans

of Foreign Wars of the United States .......................................................... 55

Linda G. Holmes ............................................................................................. 56

Chalmers Johnson .......................................................................................... 59

Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, dated Aug. 15, 1995....................... 61

Michael D. Ramsey ......................................................................................... 61

Paul W. Reuter ............................................................................................... 65

John M. Rogers ............................................................................................. 67

Joseph A. Violante ......................................................................................... 72

Letters to:

Senator Hatch from Edward Jackfert, past national commander, American

Defenders of Bataan & Corregidor, Inc., dated June 20, 2000 .............. 73

Stuart Eizenstat, Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, from Michael

Engelberg, M.D., the American Center for Civil Justice, 

dated June 10, 2000 ..................................................................................... 74

Hiroaki Yano, president, Mitsubishi International Corp., from Michael

Engelberg, M.D., the American Center for Civil Justice, 

dated June 13, 2000 ..................................................................................... 74

Hiroshi Noda, Kawasaki Heavy Industries U.S.A.), Inc., from Michael

Engelberg, M.D., the American Center for Civil Justice, 

dated June 13, 2000 ...................................................................................... 75

Senator Hatch from Michael M. Honda, California State Legislature,

dated June 30, 2000 ..................................................................................... 75

Senator Hatch from Gilbert M. Hair, executive director, the Center for

Internee Rights, Inc., dated June 22, 2000 ............................................... 76

Chart: Information on U.S. POW’s held in World War II ........................ 78

Senator Hatch from John E. Julian, first selectman, Office of Selectman,

State of Connecticut ...................................................................................... 79

Senator Hatch from John F. Sommers, Jr., executive director, the American

Legion, dated June 27, 2000 ....................................................................... 79

Senator Hatch from Charles L. Taylor, AMVETS national commander,

dated June 26, 2000 .................................................................................... 80

Senator Hatch from Bob Weygand, Member of Congress, House of
Representatives, dated June 23, 2000 ...................................................... 80

      Senator Hatch from Frank G. Wickersham, III, national legislative director,

Military Order of the Purple Heart, dated June 23, 2000 ...................... 81

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