Lessons of our 75th Anniversary

American Defenders of Bataan & Corregidor Memorial Society, President’s Message, Ms. Jan Thompson, delivered to annual convention on May 20, 2017 in Kansas City, Missouri

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the fall of Bataan, the Bataan Death March and the surrender of Corregidor. It is also the 75th anniversaries of the sinkings of the USS Houston, USS Pope, USS Langley, and USS Perch as well as the capture of a Texas National Guard unit on Java that came to be known as the “Lost Battalion.”

As the years have passed, it can be argued that there is a fear that the sacrifice and the history of the POW experience under Imperial Japan will be forgotten both in the United States and in Japan.

But, the ADBC-MS has undertaken a number of activities and initiatives to prevent this from happening and to try to ensure that the history of our men and women is preserved and honored.

We have worked to provide visual, scholarly and political remembrance of the struggles, sacrifice, and stories of the POWs of Japan.

Maybe no better reflection of the success of our efforts was at last weekend’s Liberty University’s commencement. President Trump took six minutes out of his 30-minute speech to celebrate the life and “grit” of former POW of Japan George Rogers, a founding financial director of the University.

Trump, said to the graduates what we here already know, but we welcome it repeated by a contemporary American president:

If anyone ever had reason to quit, to give in to the bitterness and anger that we all face at some point, to lose hope in god's vision for his life, it was indeed George Rogers. But that's not what he did. He stood up for his country; he stood up for his community. He stood up for his family and he defended civilization against a tide of barbarity, the kind of barbarity we're seeing today and we've been witnessing over the last number of years

Presidential pronouncements aside, the ADBC-MS has worked hard to created and place memorials in Japan at locations of former prison camps. And we are pressing Japan to recognize POW slave labor at their newly established UNESCO World Industrial Heritage sites.

We have contributed funds and prose for the building of these. Our friends in Japan--the POW Research Network—have worked tirelessly and selflessly with us in coordinating the placement and maintenance of these memorials.

Two years ago, we received our first, and so far only public corporate apology to POWs for there slave labor. But it was an important one. It came from Mitsubishi Materials Corporation, which is part of the larger, Mitsubishi Group, Japan’s largest and most important multi-national. Mitsubishi Materials still owns the land where Mitsubishi had four mines that are now closed.

This historic apology was the result of a lot of hard work and political savvy of our longtime friend and advocate, Ms. Kinue Tokudome in Japan.

Words are one thing. Seeing a permanent marker of contrition is another. Thus, this past November, Mitsubishi Materials allowed and paid for the installation of visual reminders of their dark history. Plaques, in English and Japan, were placed at the entrances of their four former mines. These memorials say:

Working conditions for the POWs were exceedingly harsh and left deep mental and physical wounds that the lapse of time would not heal. Reflecting on these tragic past events with the deepest sense of remorse, Mitsubishi Materials offers its heartfelt apologies to all former POWs who were forced to work under appalling conditions in the mines of the former Mitsubishi Mining Company, and reaffirms its unswerving resolve to contribute to the creation of a world in which fundamental human rights and justice are fully guaranteed.

[APPLAUSE]

Feeding into this success, are our eight years of organizing and managing the POW trips to Japan.

How many of you have participated in the Japan POW friendship trips? [Hands raised.]

For those who have gone to Japan you have found that these are not vacations—but days filled with meeting Japanese officials and citizens; American diplomats and students, and continuing to tell the POW story. These trips are also an important part of the US-Japan Alliance---where once we were fierce enemies, we have come to respect each other.

The Japan/POW Friendship trips were the brain child of Lester Tenney, who could not understand why such trips were offered to our allies, but not to Americans. He had made it his mission to correct this wrong. And he succeeded. As many of you know, Lester passed away only this past February.

The Friendship trips have been successful in helping people in Japan to understand the bitter experience of the POW—and for many of the participants it has helped them to realize that Japan has been transformed into a democracy and an ally, a very different country from the militaristic Imperial Japan that abused them.

These trips are an important legacy that Lester created.

The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has told us that there will be another trip this year. And officials have noted that their continuation is a sign that the government sees a great value in them.

There are also other initiatives in the United States to remember the POW history.

Those of you who went to White Sands this year in New Mexico saw that it has grown over the past 27 years [since 1990] to more than 7,000 participants who now annually march, run, walk to remember the Bataan Death March.

There are other Bataan Memorial marches around the country, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and South Dakota to remember the sacrifice the POWs of Imperial Japan made for our freedom.

And last year, California approved an initiative to include the history of the POWs of Japan in their State high school curriculum. The ADBC-MS will be working with California educators to ensure that that is curriculum is substantive, truthful, and meaningful.

[APPLAUSE]

Much has been accomplished, yet there is much to do.

The stories of the POW experience continue to inspire; they speak to the American spirit of resilience, persistence, and allegiance. We do not give up without a fight.

Most important, these "stories" are not just history. Americans still fight tyranny and we never give in; we do not yield to force, to injustice, to oppression, or to an enemy. This history ties us to our future.

But we all need to do things to continue to tell the POW story—we need to preserve and protect this history. We cannot be passive. We as descendants and historians cannot leave it to others.

We cannot stop telling our story and we must continue to look for and create opportunities for us to tell our history. We must use that same determination and perseverance that kept our men alive through their darkest hours to keep the memory and lessons of their history alive.

Thank you

Singapore Botanic Gardens

click for more photos of steps built by Australian POWs

On July 4, 2015, Singapore's Botanic Gardens became an UNESCO World Heritage Site. Established since 1859, the 74-hectare Singapore Botanic Gardens is thrice the age of the Singapore nation-state. It joins the ranks of picturesque, historically valuable sites around the world such as Italy’s Cinque Terre, the UK's Kew Gardens, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, and the Great Wall of China.

For this blog, its wartime history is what is fascinating. This history was included, unlike in Japan's UNESCO application, in Singapore's description of the site and its application.

Biography

On February 15, 1942 Singapore fell to Imperial Japanese forces. Within a few days of the Japanese occupation, Professor Hidezo Tanakadate of Tohoku University assumed control of the Gardens and Museums, and asked some of the senior staff who were not in uniform to resume their work in the Gardens. Other staff members were not as fortunate, and were sent to work on the Siam-Burma Railway, where many lost their lives.

The Japanese kept the Gardens as a center of research activity. This was made possible because the Gardens and Japanese staff shared a common goal and belief in preserving the cultural and scientific heritage of Singapore. Their motives were different, but both placed science above animosity. The result was preservation of the Gardens and its invaluable research properties.

Kwan Koriba, Botany Professor from the Imperial University of Kyoto, became Director in December 1942. With a background in the relations between plant behavior and climate, Koriba immersed himself in research on the growth habits of selected Malayan trees using both the Garden’s Rain Forest and the Nature Reserves and produced a scientific paper entitled “Periodicity of Tree-growth in the Tropics”.

During the war, a set of brick steps down to the Plant House were built by Australian POWs. In August 1995, upon the 50th anniversary of the cessation of hostilities, a group of veteran POWs from Australia came to the Gardens to examine the steps they had built with bricks marked with arrows. The POWs had made bricks at a brickworks in Changi Prison.

Marks of defiance 

As an act of rebellion against their Japanese captors, the POWs carved arrows into the bricks to show that the staircases belonged to the state instead of the soldiers. The bricks were state property, they were not.

The Japanese were likely not aware of the meaning of the arrows, and if discovered, the prisoners would probably have been punished severely. Today, the arrows serve as a reminder of their bravery at a time of great hardship.

Annals of Mitsui's Miike Mine: Karel Aster

Karel Aster

For nearly four years, Karel Aster was forced into slave labor. He was a prisoner of war in a series of Japanese POW camps on the Philippines and Japan. His last six months were in a Mitsui-owned coal mine in Omuta, Japan. Without mention of Aster's ordeal, this mine became a UNESCO World Heritage site on July 5, 2015.

Aster suffered countless beatings, starvation and illness, and witnessed hundreds of killings. All because he volunteered to fight for the freedom of his homeland. He knew he had to fight somewhere against fascism, and if not in Europe, it was the Philippines.

Aster, 95, is the last survivor of 14 Czech nationals who volunteered for the U.S. Army in the Philippines when Japan invaded the Philippines Islands in December 1941* He was presented with an award from the Central European nation for his work to benefit society, for the promotion of friendship among nations and for the promotion of the Czech Republic around the world, documents from the Czech Republic say. In short, it was for bravery and valor.

“The conditions were so terrible it is hard for me to describe them. We no longer behaved as human beings and the only thing that helped us survive was one’s instinct for self-preservation. ” said Florida resident Karel Aster.

The Czech ambassador to the U.S., Petr Gandalovic, presented him with the Gratias Agit award on April 23, 2015 in Captiva, Florida.

Aster at 20

The Czech government held an award presentation last year in Prague where it "rolled out the red carpet for three days," said Michael Murray, whose wife Jenny is Aster's granddaughter. Aster was unable to make the trip, so Gandalovic vowed to travel to Captiva, Florida to hand-deliver the award, Murray said.

But, frankly, Aster said he doesn't know what makes him special.

"I'm surprised there's all this fuss after 70 years," he said. "It's an honor, but I don't know why he chose to come here and honor me with his visit."

Aster with the Ambassador

Like millions of people who came back from World War II, Aster grappled with memories of his departed friends and struggled with reoccurring nightmares of the horrors he experienced.

And like thousands of other POWs in Imperial Japan's POW camps, he was pushed into backbreaking labor and forced into some of the most inhumane conditions people can imagine.

However, Aster is very different in his own way.

He was not a trained soldier, nor was he persecuted for faith or ideals. He was just a 21-year-old in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Aster was sent to the Philippines in 1941 to establish local retail stores and a shoe factory on behalf of the European-based Bata Shoe Company. Meanwhile, the Axis powers continued to gain strength as the war grew. Yet, Aster had faith in the company's leadership and was confident the war wouldn't affect him, he said.

But on December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and invaded the Philippines the following day. As Aster explained to his parents in a letter, four years latter while recuperating in the United States: "The Japanese were now our enemies, as much as the Germans, and we fully understood that if we wanted to regain our liberty for our fatherland, we would have to do whatever we could to contribute to their defeat."

Within weeks, Aster was one of 14 Czech* nationals who volunteered as civilian employees of the U.S. Department of War.

But while Aster has no regrets about his decision to volunteer, he said he's fortunate that he didn't know what was ahead of him.

"If I knew in advance what was waiting for me, I would've committed suicide," Aster said stone-faced. "Death would've been a wonderful escape."

Dodging bullets
Aster's first duty as a volunteer was to patrol the roads on the Bataan Peninsula and salvage as many vehicles or parts as possible.

But even as a volunteer in the Philippines, Aster said he managed to walk away from scary situations and avoid certain death multiple times.

Whether it was a 7-foot python sliding across his legs while he slept, a bad case of dysentery that hospitalized him for weeks, or bombs destroying buildings that he had just left, Aster had his fair share of close calls.

The most dangerous bullet that he dodged, though, came when he managed to escape from the Bataan Death March, where about 75,000 Filipino and American troops on Bataan were forced to make a grueling 65-mile march to Camp O'Donnell.

After U.S. forces surrendered to the Japanese on the Bataan Peninsula on April 9, 1942, everyone was ordered to head south to Marviles begin the march.

But when Aster and his friend Joseph Varak traveled south along the coastline, they happened upon a man and his disabled boat.

Varak quickly repaired the boat, and the man led them through the mine-laden waters to escape the Japanese to Corregidor, an island fortress about five miles off the coast.

More than 60 years later, Aster met Varak's daughter, Hanna Witherspoon, and one of the first things he said to her was, "Your father saved my life."

Aster believes had Varak not been able to repair the boat, he would have died during the march, like so many others.

"It's an awesome thing," said Witherspoon, who now lives in Tennessee, of her meeting Aster and what he said to her. "But it's also a sad thing because my dad didn't make it. I never saw him and he never saw me.

"I was so thankful that there was someone who knew my father and could tell me about him."

Varak died January 1945 on the Hell ship Enoura Maru from American bombing enroute to a prison camp in Japan.

Hokusen Maru

Hokusen Maru Hell ship
On October 1, 1944, without warning, Aster and thousands of other prisoners were loaded onto ships to go to Japan.

Along with fellow Czechs Leo Hermann and Otto Hirsh, he was put on the Hokusen Maru  (aka Benjo Maru or Haro Maru).

One by one, hundreds of prisoners climbed down the narrow hatch and into the cargo hold of the ship to begin their trip to Japan. Aster calls it his "decent into hell."

More than 700 prisoners were crammed into the cargo hold with little room to move – more closely resembling a giant pile of twisted bodies.

During the daytime, a single ray of light managed to pierce the darkness through a hole from above. Otherwise, it was pitch black.

Guards lowered two buckets from the hole: one filled with boiled rice and the other for human waste. Aster said the rice bucket never had enough to go around, and the bucket for waste was never big enough to service everyone.

And while everyone was starving, nothing compared to suffering from thirst, Aster said. With a tongue of sandpaper and lips of small, cracked twigs, many prisoners resorted to drinking their own urine or the blood of the dead.

Aster said he watched men go crazy.

Prisoners would fight for position or comfort, sometimes to the death, and those who lost were thrown into the pile of dead bodies, which grew by the day.

"The conditions were so terrible it is hard for me to describe them," he wrote in the letter to his parents. "We no longer behaved as human beings and the only thing that helped us survive was one's instinct for self-preservation. It shows the human can endure more than most animals."

Aster gains his freedom
After a stop in Hong Kong, the ship arrived in Formosa in early November. The Japanese, realizing that none of the survivors were healthy enough to continue the trip to Japan, imprisoned the men for two months on Formosa at Takao. But, in early February 1945, Aster and others were herded back onto another Hell ship, the Melbourne Maru (possibly  the Enoshima Maru) and transported to Japan. He arrived at the port of Moji like thousands of other POWs.

He and his two fellow Czechs were assigned to Fukuoka #17, Omuta in Kyushu, Japan. One of Japan's oldest and largest coal mines, it was and remains owned by Mitsui. It was closed in 1997. On July 5, 2015, it was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site "as providing a valuable picture not only of the outward appearance but also of the inner workings of an early industrial system critical to the development of modern Japan."

Aster, the shoe salesman, became a slave coal miner for Mitsui at their Miike Mine. Barely 30 miles from Nagasaki, he and many of the POWs held at camp, saw the red atomic cloud rise over the city on August 9, 1945.

Leo Hermann died not long after they arrived in the Camp. Otto Hirsh and Aster survived. At his release from Fukuoka #17, the 6-foot tall Aster weighed 90 pounds, had lost his teeth, and was blind in his left eye. Malnutrition, disease, beatings, and slave labor all took their toll. Harsh memories, lost comrades, and nightmares haunted him for decades.

After the war, Aster emigrated to Chicago, became an American citizen, and continued his career in the shoe industry. He retired to Florida in the 1990s.

NB: The above essay borrows heavily from and corrects this News-Press article.

In memoriam
At Camp O’Donnell is a memorial plaque to the seven Czech War Volunteers who died on in captivity as POWs of Imperial Japan. The Camp was an American military facility that the Japanese turned into a concentration camp. Nearly 30,000 Filipino and American soldiers died from sickness, brutal treatment, deprivation and hardships of war between 1942 and 1945. It is now the Capas National Shrine.

Memorial to Czech Heroes at Camp O'Donnell

One Czech died in Camp O´Donnell, five others perished in 1945 on Hell ships bound for Japan, and one succumbed to illnesses and malnutrition shortly before the end of the war in Japan at Mitsui's Miike Mine POW Camp Fukuoka #17.

Most of these men worked for the Bata Shoe Company. Others were businessmen, diplomats, and refugees from occupied Czechoslovakia.

The following is a list of Czech defenders of Bataan. It is a work in progress. We will be refining it as we our research expands.

US Medal of
Freedom

ASTER Karel (sometimes as Astor, Karl or Charles) - Bata Shoe Company. Upon the surrender of Bataan, escaped by boat to Corregidor to continue with the USAFFE. Later forced onto the Japanese Victory March through Manila, he was imprisoned in Cabanatuan POW Camp and Las Pinas but on October 1, 1944 moved to Hokusen Maru Hell Ship at Manila. Transported to Japan via Hong Kong and Formosa, he was sent to Mitsui's Miike Mine serviced by POW Fukuoka Camp #17 near Nagasaki. Awarded the Philippine Medal of Victory and Philippine Defense Medal as well as on 25 April 2015 the Czech Gratias Agit Award.

BŽOCH Jan (engineer John or Jan V. Bzoch) - Businessman, Trade Official at the Czechoslovak Consulate in Manila and representative of the Czechoslovak Foreign Institute. Survived the infamous Bataan Death March. Imprisoned at Cabanatuan Camp 3. On December 13, 1944 he was put aboard the Oryoku Maru Hell ship to Japan. He survived the American bombing of the ship near Subic Bay, but was killed in the bombing of the Enoura Maru on January 9, 1945 in Takao, Formosa. Received US Medal of Freedom in 1945 and Philippine Defense Medal and Medal of Liberation in 2004.

DANČÁK Karel - Bata Shoe Company. Upon the surrender of Bataan, he escaped by boat to Corregidor to continue the fight with the American. Forced onto the Japanese Victory March through Manila with those surrendered on Corregidor. On February 4, 1945, he was rescued at Bilibid Prison, Manila by American Forces. Received the US Medal of Freedom in 1945 and Philippine Defense Medal and Medal of Liberation in 2004;

Dr. FUCHS Pavel (Paul Fuchs) - Survived Bataan Death March but died shortly after in Camp O'Donnell on 25 May 1942 alongside thousands of other Filipino and American soldiers. Received US Army Medal of Freedom in 1945 and Philippine Defense Medal and Medal of Liberation in 2004.

HERMANN Leo - Upon the surrender of Bataan, escaped by boat to Corregidor to continue with the USAFFE. Later forced into the Japanese Victory March through Manila. Imprisoned in Las Pinas Camp, On October 1, 1944 moved to Hokusen Maru Hell ship as #202, arriving in Formosa in early November 1944. Transported to Japan in January 1945, he died April 2, 1945 of beri-beri in Fukuoka Camp #17 near Nagasaki, Japan, now a World Heritage site. Received US Medal of Freedom in 1945 and Philippine Defense Medal and Medal of Liberation in 2004.

HERMAN Bedřich (Fred P. Hermann) - Bata Shoe Company. Survived Bataan Death March and was liberated at Bilibid Prison in Manila. Bedřich then emigrated to the United States where he died in an accident. Received the US Medal of Freedom in 1945.

HIRSCH Otto - Upon the surrender of Bataan, escaped by boat to Corregidor to continue with the USAFFE. Later forced into the Japanese Victory March through Manila. Imprisoned in Las Pinas prison. On 10/1/1944 transported on the Hell ship Hokusen Maru as #203 to Japan to be a slave laborer at Mitsui's coal mine Fukuoka Camp #17 near Nagasaki. He survived and moved to California. He died October 4, 1987. Received the US Medal of Freedom in 1945.

HRDINA Jaroslav - Director of Bata Shoe in Manila. Upon the surrender of Bataan, escaped by boat to Corregidor to continue with the USAFFE. Later forced into the Japanese Victory March through Manila. Imprisoned in Cabanatuan Camp 3. On December 13, 1944 moved to Oryoku Maru Hell ship. Survived its bombing by American forces, but killed during the bombing of the  Enoura Maru Hell ship January 9, 1945. Received Philippine Defense Medal and Medal of Liberation in 2004.

LENK Hans - a Jewish refugee from Dachau Concentration camp with his brother Fred. Survived Bataan Death March. Rescued at Bilibid Prison, Manila by American Forces on February 2, 1945 with a serious case of tuberculosis, his immigration to the US had to be resolved by a specific Act of Congress.

LENK Fred - a Jewish refugee from Dachau Concentration camp. Survived Bataan Death March. Imprisoned in Cabanatuan POW Camp. On December 13, 1944 transported to Oryoku Maru in Manila for shipment to Japan. Died during the American bombing of this Hell ship as it left the harbor. Received the US Medal of Freedom in 1945 and Philippine Defense Medal and Medal of Liberation in 2004.

MORÁVEK Arnošt (Ernest Moravek) - businessman and Czech community leader in Manila. Upon the surrender of Bataan, escaped by boat to Corregidor to continue with the USAFFE. Later forced onto the Japanese Victory March through Manila. Imprisoned in Bilibid prison, Received the US Medal of Freedom in 1945. Returned to Czechoslovakia.

SCHMELKES Norbert - deputy Consul of Czechoslovakia in Manila, businessman, after almost dying from malaria fled from Bataan Death March to Manila where he joined the resistance. He acquired a contraband shortwave radio, printed and distributed flyers. Wanted by the Japanese, he escaped to Mindanao in 1944 where he worked with the American guerrilla fighters and even though a foreigner, became US Lt. Col. After the war received US citizenship and became National Vice Commander of the American Legion. He is mentioned at length in the book Code Name: High Pockets about wartime resistance activities in Manila.

click to order

VAŘÁK Josef - Bata Shoe technician. Skillful technician helped a group of Czechs to flee the Japanese after the US surrender on Bataan. After repairing a boat engine he transported them to Corregidor Island to continue with the US Army there. Imprisoned in Cabanatuan prison from where he was transported on December 1, 1945 to Oryoku Maru Hell ship. Survived its bombing by American forces, but died during the bombing of the Enoura Maru en route to Taiwan on January 9, 1945.  Received Philippine Defense Medal and Medal of Liberation.

VOLNÝ Antonín - (Anthony G., or Tony Volny or Volney) - Czech diplomat, Fluent speaker of Japanese who had worked nine years at the Czechoslovak Embassy in Tokyo. Worked for the Bata Shoe Co. in Manila before Japan's invasion. Helped US intelligence during the battle for Bataan in Mariaveles. Captured and survived the Bataan Death March. Imprisoned in Cabanatuan POW Camp from where he was transported on December 13, 1944 to the Oryoku Maru Hell ship. Survived its bombing by American forces. Known to actively help the US prisoners and was shot by a Japanese soldier while seeking permission for the other prisoners to evacuate the ship. Died during the bombing of the Enoura Maru en route to Taiwan on January 9, 1945 on his 41st birthday.

GERBEC Ludvík, CEO of the Manila branch of Bata Shoe Co, should also be honored even though as a hemophiliac he was not able to volunteer. Gerbec was imprisoned by the Japanese for financing the resistance in Manila. Imprisoned in Fort Santiago prison, which was used for torture and punishment and then to Bilibid Prison where POWs were sent to die. He barely survived. He died January 2, 1960 in the United States and is buried in Abingdon, Maryland.

UNESCO and Japan’s Act of Forgetting

Front gate Fukuoka #17 Mitsui Omuta POW Camp

Designation of Japan’s Meiji-era sites overlooks some important history.

By Mindy Kotler
The Diplomat, July 3, 2015

This is Karel Aster’s year. In April, the Czech Republic granted the 95-year-old Florida resident the nation’s highest honor, the Gratias Agit, for his valor and bravery during World War II. Aster had volunteered to fight with the Americans in 1941 to defend the Philippines against the Japanese invasion. He survived the battle, the Bataan Death March*, a hell ship to Japan, and years as a slave laborer at a Mitsui coal mine at Omuta, Kyushu Island.

Also at the Mitsui site were American Lester Tenney and Australian Tom Uren. Tenney, another survivor of the Bataan Death March, persuaded the Japanese government in 2009 to apologize to the American POWs of Japan. Uren, who died last January, was a leading Labor Party politician who secured supplementary payment to Australia’s 900 surviving prisoners from World War II and the Korean War.

Account of being a Scottish POW
at Mitsui's Miike Mine Omuta
click to order

This coming weekend, UNESCO will designate the Mitsui Miike coal mine at Omuta as a World Heritage site of Japan’s early modernization. The Japanese nomination, however, makes no mention of the history of any WWII POWs or of the thousands of Asian slave laborers at this site.


UNESCO is expected to approve 23 similar Japanese-nominated sites. Absent will be any accounting of the dark histories associated with these mines, foundries, and shipyards. Silence about the full history of these would-be global landmarks undermines UNESCO’s international goals and the U.S.-Japan alliance.

Currently there are 1,007 sites on the UNESCO World Heritage List. They are to serve as “instruments of international understanding and international cooperation.” The World Heritage accolade brings prestige and international attention to unique cultural accomplishments.

World Heritage sites often become tourist attractions and many nations view the designation as a path to reviving fading regions and cities. That is one motive behind Japan’s nomination of its sites. But the selective telling of their history is part of the Abe administration’s broader policy of restoring Japanese pride in their past.

Under the Samurai Sword
by CM Graham, best account
of Miike Mine slave labor
click to order

The regions of Japan’s UNESCO nominations are in search of tourist dollars as they are among the hardest hit by the country’s economic downturn. Tourism is a growth industry in Japan with visitors from China nearly doubling and Korea not far behind. Many of the nominated sites are also located in the home districts of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Taro Aso, and Agriculture Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi.

The family companies of Aso and Hayashi, The Aso Group and Ube Industries respectively, used Allied POW slave labor at company sites included among the nominations. Of the eight industrial areas nominated, five held 26 POW camps with nearly 13,000 Allied POWs providing slave labor to Japan’s industrial giants, including Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, Aso Group, Ube Industries, Tokai Carbon, Nippon Coke & Engineering, Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corporation, Furukawa Company Group, and Denka. The POWs came from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, India, New Zealand, Norway, Jamaica, Portugal, South Africa, Malaya, Arabia, and Czechoslovakia.

In addition, the nominated ports at Kitakyushu, then called Moji, and Nagasaki, were the entry points for nearly 35,000 Allied POWs, of which approximately 11,000 were American. Over 7,000 American and Allied POWs died 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.

Slave labor in Japan did not begin with World War II. Forced and conscripted labor was a critical part of the mining and manufacturing industries in nineteenth-century Meiji Japan. From late Meiji (1868-1912) onward, Japan used “industrial prisons” to supply labor to factories and mills at private companies. Up until the 1930s, the majority of the miners were convicts with the rest being peasants made landless by Meiji land reforms and “outcastes.” One-third were women. Cheap Chinese and Korean labor became important in Japan’s mines and factories, and on the docks.

Lester Tenney's account of
Mitsui's Miike Mine
click to order

Tokyo’s World Heritage nominations fail to address the full historical significance of these sites. Japan’s industrialization included Japanese and foreigners, nobles and outcasts, POW slaves and conscripted Koreans, as well as women and children. Without taking these into account, the story Japan wants to tell fails to meet UNESCO criteria of “universal value and meaning.”

Japan and UNESCO should look to the perhaps surprisingly positive experience of other World Heritage sites that do acknowledge their darker histories. The Liverpool-Maritime Merchant City site is a striking case in point. The Liverpool port served a key role in the triangular transatlantic slave trade of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Liverpool has acknowledged its substantial role in a deplorable (and what would today be a criminal) business. Liverpool opened in 2007 the International Slavery Museum on the dock and, in 2006, a Centre for the Study of International Slavery at the University of Liverpool. Identical memorials to the victims of slavery stand on the docks of Liverpool, Richmond, Virginia, and Cotonou, Benin, linking this shared memory among them. These resources have drawn scholars and others and have in fact bolstered Liverpool’s reputation has a place where history – both good and bad – can be studied and understood.

An Australian's account of
slave labor at Mitsui's
Miike coal mine

Of the 21 nations represented on today’s UNESCO World Heritage committee, nationals from six were World War II POWs held on mainland Japan. These are: India, Malaysia, Jamaica, Finland, Poland, and Portugal. A seventh, South Korea, had hundreds of thousands of its men and women conscripted to work in near slavery conditions.

The U.S. does not have a vote in UNESCO. But Washington can speak to its Japanese ally to remind them of the debt they owe American veterans for defending their freedom.

On the morning of August 9, 1945, all the POWs in Omuta saw the red cloud rise from Nagasaki across the bay. Although a very modern weapon ended their ordeal at the Miike mine, they had experienced labor in Japan that had changed little since Meiji times. They would not want such forced labor to be repeated and certainly none would want it forgotten.

As it stands, Japan’s nomination of Meiji industrial sites is an act of forgetting. It omits the full history of Japan’s industrialization. For UNESCO to accept this is a disservice to its charter and to the memory of the thousands that slaved for Imperial Japan.

*Correction: Mr. Aster avoided the Bataan Death March by escaping to Corregidor. He was forced to participate in a "Victory March" of POWs six miles down Manila's Dewey Boulevard to Bilibid Prison. Where the Corregidor POWs stayed until they were packed on freight trains for the 90-mile trip to Cabanatuan Prison Camp. Mr. Aster was a POW in the Philippines until October 1944 and did not arrive in Japan until March 1945. Thus, he was less than six months at the Miike Coal mine, unlike Dr. Tenney who was there nearly three years. Czech government biographies, from which this article drew, are incorrect.

Grammatical corrections made July 7, 2015.