[1] Another large scale forced labor took place immediately after WWII when 600,000 Japanese soldiers in Manchuria were taken to Siberia by Soviet forces. Approximately 10% of them died while in captivity.

[2] “Slave laborers” were mostly Jewish workers who were earmarked for extermination and “forced laborers” were almost exclusively non-Jewish workers who were conquered civilian population and prisoners of war.

[3] According to the Japanese government, the number of Chinese forced laborers was 38,935, and their death rate was 17.5%. It is difficult to determine the number of forced workers from the Korean peninsula and other parts of Asia. South Korea informed the Japanese government during the 1965 normalization talks that 1.03 million South Koreans were forced to work for the Japanese military or companies. For detailed accounts of Asian forced labor, see Yumi Wijers-Hasegawa, “Korean Forced Laborers: Redress movement presses Japanese government,” and William Underwood, “Chinese Forced Labor, the Japanese Government and the Prospects for Redress.”

[4] Chaen Yoshio, ed., Daitoa Senka Gaichi Furyo Shuyojyo (Tokyo: Fuji Shuppan, 1987), pp. 23-24, pp. 35-36. This book was compiled from the records kept by the Furyo Joho Kyoku, available at Boei-Cho, Boei Kenkyujo (The National Institute for Defense Studies).

[5] CRS report for Congress, “U.S. Prisoners of War and Civilian American Citizens Captured and Interned by Japan in World War II: The Issue of Compensation by Japan,” Updated December 17, 2002. pp. 6-7.

[6] In addition to forced labor victims, 143,000 Jewish slave labor victims were compensated. For more information, see “Report to Congress: German Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility, and the Future,’ “U.S. State Department, Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, March 2005.

[7] For more information on the German Foundation, see this.

[8] For details on these cases, see Kinue Tokudome, “POW Forced Labor Lawsuits Against Japanese Companies,” Japan Policy Research Inst. Working Paper No. 82 (Nov. 2001).

[9] For the federal court decision, see In re World War II Era Japanese Forced Labor Litigation, 114 F. Supp. 2d 939 (N.D. Cal. 2000). For the California court decision, see Mitsubishi Materials Corp. v. Superior Court of Orange County, 130 Cal. Rptr. 2d 734 (2003).

[10] “The Views of the Government of Japan on the Lawsuits against Japanese Companies by Former American Prisoners of War and Others,” Embassy of Japan (2000).

[11] For a more detailed discussion on these records, see Kinue Tokudome and Azusa K. Tokudome, “Individual claims: are the positions of the U.S. and Japanese governments in agreement in the American POW forced labor cases?”, UCLA Pacific Basin Law Journal 21:1 (Fall 2003), pp. 1-28.

[12] The U.S. government interprets 14(b) and 19(a) of the Peace Treaty as having the same effect. “Article 19 (a) similarly closed off the possibility of claims being brought by Japanese nationals against the United States or its nationals arising out of both the war and the subsequent occupation of Japan.” Former U.S. World War II POWs: A Struggle for Justice Before the Senate Judiciary Committee, 106th Cong. 12 (2000) (statement of Ronald J. Bettauer, Deputy Legal Adviser, U.S. Department of State).

[13] Horimoto v. Japan (Tokyo Dist. Ct., Aug. 20, 1956).

[14] Shimoda v. Japan (Tokyo Dist. Ct. Dec. 7, 1963).

[15] Nikaido v. Japan (Sup. Ct., Mar. 13, 1997).

[16] Matsumoto et al. v. Japan, (Osaka Dist. Ct. 2000).

[17] Roman Kent, “It's Not about the Money: A Survivor's Perspective on the German Foundation Initiative,” Michael Bazyler and Roger P. Alford, eds., Holocaust Restitution: Perspectives on the Litigation and Its Legacy (New York: New York University Press, 2006), p. 207.

[18] Lothar Ulsamer, “German Economy and the Foundation Initiative: An Act of Solidarity for Victims of National Socialism,” Michael Bazyler and Roger P. Alford, eds., Holocaust Restitution: Perspectives on the Litigation and Its Legacy, p. 183.

[19] Yukie Sasa, “Bataan Shino Koshin Onna Hitori De Toha,” Bungei Shunju (December, 2005), pp. 200-209. For an English summary of this article and subsequent developments, see the 1/14 and 2/13 entries of the NEWS section.

[20] Conditions on Hellships are described in the inscription on the recently dedicated Hellships Memorial in Subic Bay, the Philippines.

[21] It was only recently that a group of volunteers, not the Japanese government, compiled an online list of wartime POW camps in Japan and a roster of those who died there.

[22] For more information on educational projects supported by the Foundation, see this.

[23] Email response by the Japanese Foreign Ministry to the inquiry from the author. June 16, 2004.

[24] See, for example, two well-researched books recently published by children of POWs. Duane Heisinger, Father Found: Life and Death as a prisoner of the Japanese in World War II (Xulon Press, 2003), and John A. Glusman, Conduct Under Fire: Four American Doctors and Their Fight for Life as Prisoners of the Japanese 1941-1945 (New York: Viking, 2005).

[25] Even an American foundation, the Humanitarian Aid Foundation, tries to assist not only European forced/slave labor survivors but also those of Japanese forced labor. Stuart Eizenstat, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton Administration who represented the U.S. government in the German slave/forced labor settlement negotiations, helped to create this foundation. More information can be found here.