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Japan Should Follow the International Trend and Face Its History of World War II Forced Labor [Japanese Translation Available]

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Michael Bazyler
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Japan Focus first reported in May 2006 that 300 Allied prisoners of war performed forced labor for Aso Mining Company in 1945. (See English and Japanese versions.) The ensuing Aso POW controversy led then-Foreign Minister Aso Taro to hastily withdraw an invitation to a POW memorial service near Osaka that he had issued to foreign ambassadors, as reported in August 2006. When a New York Times reporter mentioned forced labor at Aso Mining in November 2006, the Japanese government launched a counteroffensive. (See English and Japanese versions of Norimitsu Onishi's article.) The Consulate General of New York, reportedly at Foreign Minister Aso's direction, published an online rebuttal (reproduced below with a Japanese translation) insisting that the news article was not grounded in historical evidence. A 1946 report produced by Aso Mining, detailing living and working conditions for the POWs, was mailed to Foreign Minister Aso's office in June 2007. (See English and Japanese articles about the report and the English version of the document itself.) Aso's policy secretary was subsequently interviewed about the POW records at length (see English and Japanese accounts), but the prime minister stated in parliament earlier this month that the records were never brought to his attention.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 7 , Issue 5 , January 2009 , e3
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Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2009

Footnotes

Japan Should Follow the International Trend and Face Its History of World War II Forced Labor [Japanese Translation Available]: http://japanfocus.org/data/Bazyler%20in%20Focus%20JP.pdf

References

Notes

[1] For example, Swiss Banks settled the case of WWII dormant accounts while Germany and Austria created foundations to compensate their WWII slave/forced labor victims. Historical commissions were created by such countries as Switzerland (Bergier Commission), France (Matteoli Commission), Sweden, Italy, and even the United States (Bronfman Commission). See Michael Bazyler, Holocaust Justice (New York: New York University Press, 2003) pp. 300-301.

[2] Burger-Fischer v. Degussa A. G., 65 F. Supp. 2d 248 (D. N. J. 1999).

[3] Iwanowa v. Ford Motor Co., 67 F. Supp. 2d 424 (D. N. J. 1999).

[4] In re World War II Era Japanese Forced Labor Litigation, 114 F. Supp, 2d 939 (N. D. Cal. 2000), affirmed in Deutsch v. Turner Corp, 317 F.3d 1005 (2002).

[5] David Sanger, Report on Holocaust Assets Tells of Items Found in the U.S., N.Y. Times, Jan. 17. 2001, p. A3. Quoted in Bazyler 2003.

[6] For example, Yale University historian Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., was given access to General Motors company archives and wrote a book on the subject. See General Motors and the Nazis (New Heaven: Yale University Press, 2005).