UNESCO and Japan's campaign to forget

Mitsui Miike Mine Omuta POW camp barracks
nominated World Heritage site

During the July 4th weekend, UNESCO World Heritage Committee members will meet in Bonn, Germany to approve the Government of Japan's nomination of 23 sites for designation as bearing "universal value" as world industrial heritage sites.

As the letter below shows, most of these sites have long histories of slave and forced labor combined with dangerous working conditions, labor strife, and seminal accidents. For the American POWs of Japan, a shocking number of the sites are at or are near POW camps that used Allied POW slave labor.

Unfortunately, the US government no longer has a seat at UNESCO. But possibly, Washington can speak to its Japanese ally to remind them of the debt they owe to American veterans for defending their freedom. 

American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society

June 22, 2015*


Mr. Kishore Rao
Director
World Heritage Centre
7, place de fontenoy
75352 Paris
France

Dear Mr. Rao:

I am writing in regard to the Government of Japan’s nomination of the “Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution: Kyushu-Yamaguchi and Related Areas” for the UNESCO World Heritage List. As president of the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society (ADBC-MS), which represents surviving POWs of Japan, their families, descendants, and researchers, I have serious reservations about whether the application meets the UNESCO criteria of “universal value” and meaning.

The goal of the ADBC-MS is to preserve and to teach the history of the American POWs held captive by Imperial Japan during World War II. Japan’s use of Allied POW slave labor in its corporate metal and mineral mines is an essential part of POW history, and a central and long-term feature of the history of the nominated sites. From late Meiji onward, Japan used forced convict labor in its extractive industries and created “industrial prisons” to supply workers to factories and mills at private companies.

The Japanese World Heritage nomination focuses on the history of Japan’s mining and steel industries, but completely omits the history of POW labor. As such, it violates UNESCO’s mandate of ensuring that World Heritage sites have “Outstanding Universal Value.” The story of the thousands of foreign workers who maintained these Japanese industries remains untold.

We do not object to Japan highlighting its modern history, but the story is incomplete without a full and complete history of the use of slave labor. Forced and conscripted labor was as much a convention in Meiji Japan as it was during World War II.

Japan’s nomination features eight industrial “areas.” Five of these held 26 POW camps to provide slave labor to Japan’s industrial giants, such as Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, Aso Group, Ube Industries, Tokai Carbon, Nippon Coke & Engineering, Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corporation, Furukawa Company Group, and Denka.

The nomination does not mention the OVER 13,000 POW slave laborers who worked at or near the nominated sites. The POWs included 4,385 Dutch, 3357 British, 3,023 Americans, 1,207 Australians, 358 Canadians, 133 Indians, 5 New Zealanders, 22 Chinese, 9 Portuguese, 6 Norwegians, 2 Czechs, 2 South African, 2 Arabians, and 2 Malays.

Over all, at war’s end, there were close to 200 sites for POW internment throughout all of Japan—163 facilities to incarcerate POWs and about 33 facilities for civilian internees. There were 27 on the island of Kyushu where the majority of Japan’s nominated sites are located.

In addition, the key ports at Kitakyushu, then called Moji, and Nagasaki —both nominated sites—were the entry points for nearly 35,000 Allied POWs, of which approximately 11,000 were American. Over 7,000 American and Allied POWs perished traveling to Japan aboard the aptly called “Hell ships”, and 3,500 more perished in Japan, 25 percent within the first 30 days of arrival.

As shown at the UNESCO World Heritage site of Liverpool-Maritime Merchant City, there is a benefit to including a country’s darker history. The telling of the port’s role in the triangular transatlantic slave trade has helped the city attract a wider group of tourists while stimulating learning and international connections. For example, since establishment of its World Heritage status in 2004, Liverpool opened in 2007 the International Slavery Museum on the dock and in 2006 a Centre for the Study of International Slavery (CSIS) at the University of Liverpool. Identical memorials to the victims of slavery stand on the docks of Liverpool, Richmond, Virginia, and Cotonou, Benin, linking the shared memory among them.

In 2011, a Repatriation Memorial was unveiled at Liverpool’s Pier Head as a remembrance for the former POWs and civilian internees who returned from captivity in the Far East. My members would welcome appropriate memorials at the POW arrival ports of Moji and Nagasaki in Japan as well as Kaohsiung, Taiwan and Busan, South Korea.

Nationals from six of the 21 nations represented on today’s UNESCO World Heritage committee were POWs held on mainland Japan. These nations are: India, Malaysia, Jamaica, Finland, Poland, and Portugal. There were also thousands of Koreans who were used as conscripted labor during the war.

It is our hope that Japan can be persuaded to amend its application to tell the full history of their industrialization by including its history of POW labor. We believe this request is reasonable. It enriches the nomination by conveying the totality of the story, helping it transcend national boundaries, and highlighting its universal importance.

After all, the many visitors to the nominated World Heritage sites who will arrive at Fukuoka International Airport will land on runways originally leveled and constructed by British, American, and Dutch Prisoners of War.

Thank you for your time and attention. Please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions.

Sincerely yours,

Ms. Jan Thompson
President
Daughter of PhM2c Robert E. Thompson USN, Bilibid, Fukuoka 3B, & Mukden, POW# 2011

*This letter was amended June 29, 2015 to reflect a better calculation of the POW camps strengths and numbers at liberation, August 1945. With existing records, it is difficult to be exact.

A POW responds to Abe's Yasukuni visit

One Za of the Chinreisha

On December 26th, Christmas Day in the United States, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited the Yasukuni Shrine. At the Shrine, Abe also visited the Chinreisha, which is to pacify and acknowledge Imperial Japan's enemy combatants both domestic and foreign. This small shrine gated to the south of the main Yasukuni sanctuary is intended to keep the souls of these former adversaries, who are enshrined collectively, from causing mischief to the living.

Abe said

I paid a visit to Yasukuni Shrine and expressed my sincere condolences, paid my respects and prayed for the souls of all those who had fought for the country and made ultimate sacrifices. I also visited Chinreisha, a remembrance memorial to pray for the souls of all the people regardless of nationalities who lost their lives in the war, but not enshrined in Yasukuni Shrine.

While praying for the souls of the war dead, the preciousness of peace Japan enjoys today really came home to me. 

The peace and prosperity Japan enjoys today is not created only by those who are living today. The peace and prosperity we enjoy today is built on the precious sacrifices of numerous people who perished on the field wishing for the happiness of their loving wives and children, and thinking about their fathers and mothers who had raised them.

An American former POW sees this visit differently. He was not convinced that Abe's visit to the Chinreisha included contrition for the American soldiers. To be "pacified" is not enough.

Never should it be forgotten that Japan's victims were not all Asian. Westerners put in Imperial Japan's care, refugees, internees, laborers, POWs, all became victims of the barbarity of Japan's Armed Forces.

Lester Tenney, Survivor of the Bataan Death March, a Hellship, and a Mitsui coal mine; and Past National Commander of the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor wrote his feelings to his local newspaper, the San Diego Times Union. Although the newspaper published the letter, it did not post it (text below) online.

“Leader’s war shrine visit raises questions.”

Letter to the Editor, December 27, 2013

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said his visit to the Yasukuni war shrine in Tokyo was to pay respect to fallen soldiers. After reading about his recent visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, I felt that it is important that I share with you my thoughts and the thoughts of many survivors like me.

I assume he was are referring only to the Japanese soldiers, because if he had intended to include all soldiers then I ask what the respect would have included. Would you have included the Americans who died as a POWs on the Bataan Death March, or those proud American soldiers who perished while being transported to Japan on unmarked Japanese freighters, and those who died while forced to work for Japanese companies? If he thought of these soldiers, then we survivors thank him for understanding these sad events. On the other hand, if these Americans were not remembered then I ask, how dare he to say he paid respect to all fallen soldiers?

The Yasukuni war shrine you visited is known as The Tokyo War Shrine, a most unusual place to visit while preaching the need for Peace. I, like many others reading about the recent visit to the shrine, are confused. What is he trying to convey?

Appeal to Vice President Biden

Robert E. Thompson's POW Badge

Below is a letter sent to Vice President Biden last week by the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society. It suggests that the path being taken by the American POWs of Japan to achieve justice can be a model for Tokyo to pursue historical reconciliation with its other victims. The Memorial Society asks the Vice President to continue to press the Japanese to achieve full and meaningful contrition toward the POWs and work to preserve their history. The goal is the establishment of a permanent fund for educational and research activities on the POW experience in the Pacific.

November 25, 2013

Dear Mr. Vice President:

As you meet next week with members of Japan’s government to confirm the significance of the U.S.-Japan Alliance, I hope that you will share with them the importance of remembering those American veterans who became prisoners of war of the Imperial Japanese during World War II.

With the help of President Obama’s Administration one aspect of Japan’s reconciliation with American POWs began. In 2009, a Japanese government Cabinet-approved apology was offered and in 2010 a program of understanding and visitation to Japan was initiated for former POWs. This year it was expanded to include widows. The visitation program’s success should encourage Japan to do more: educating future generations in Japan and the U.S. on the POW experience in the Pacific and its lessons for war and peace needs to be the goal.

How Japan addresses its responsibilities toward the American POWs can be a model for Tokyo on how the historical reconciliation process can proceed. The American POWs ask for respect and that history to be not revised, but preserved. They want Japan’s great multi-national corporations to acknowledge their use of POW slave labor. They ask the United States Government to aid and preserve their experiences under Imperial Japan for future generations

We ask that you take a moment in your talks in Tokyo, to speak up for those veterans who defended America in the Philippines, Java, and Wake Island and how, as captives, endured the horrors of the Bataan Death March, the “Hell Ships,” enslavement on the Thai-Burma Railway, and the brutal conditions in slave labor camps in Japan.

We ask that the United States Government express its strong desire for Japan to establish a permanent fund for education, remembrance, and reconciliation. The goal is to: continue the POW visitation program for former POWs, widows and descendants; a program for research, documentation, education, and people-to-people exchanges and national memorials to the POWs who slaved and died on Japanese controlled soil or aboard the “Hell Ships.”

Respectfully yours,

Ms. Jan Thompson
President
American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society
Daughter of PhM2 Robert E. Thompson USN, USS Canopus, Corregidor, Bilibid & Mukden