Bill pushes for World War II POW rights

Paul Clinton

A local congressman is fighting for reparations for World War II

veterans who were mistreated and exploited for slave labor in the

factories of several Japanese companies.

Hearings were held Wednesday on a bill sponsored by Rep. Dana

Rohrabacher that would allow the veterans to file claims against the

companies that enslaved them. Several of the veterans spoke before a

House Judiciary sub-committee urging lawmakers to adopt the measure.

“These American veterans have been denied the right to sue their

torturers,” Rohrabacher said during the hearing. “The guilty parties,

by the way, are now some of the world’s top corporations.”

Rohrabacher singled out Mitsui Mining Co., Hitachi Shipbuilding,

Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries as

corporations that should be held accountable for mistreatment of

POWs.

About 30,000 American soldiers, captured when the Japanese raised

their flags over the Pacific islands of Corregidor and Bataan during

the spring of 1942, were forced to work for these companies during

the war. Many were a part of the Bataan Death March.

Slightly more than 3,000 of these men are still alive. The

nonprofit advocacy group Justice for Veterans has pressed for an

apology from the Japanese companies.

“What they’re looking for is an apology for these atrocities, for

these companies to own up to what they did,” said Brett Ethridge, a

spokesman for the veterans. “That’s the goal, to put pressure on them

to come clean.”

A group of about 5,000 men, led by Dr. Lester Tenney, who shoveled

coal 28 days a month for three years for Mitsui, filed a suit against

the companies in 1999. In his testimony Wednesday, Tenney said he

wasn’t paid and was brutalized by company officials. He said his

teeth were knocked out, his back was broken and his shoulder was

smashed during his enslavement.

However, the veterans’ suit has been stalled by the U.S. State and

Justice departments, which say that a 1951 treaty between the U.S.

and Japan waives the rights of the men to be compensated for the

acts.

The Treaty of Peace with Japan, as it is known, lets the companies

off the hook because the U.S. government seized Japanese assets after

the country’s surrender to pay POWs for their mistreatment. Some

payments have been made, Ethridge said.

On Oct. 19, 2001, Orange County Superior Court Judge William F.

McDonald, who was assigned the case, ruled that the veterans were

entitled to the claims.

While American veterans from the Pacific Theater haven’t been

compensated for their suffering, POWs who were captured and tortured

in Europe have received some payments from German companies.

Also, the Japanese government has entered into settlement

agreements with the Netherlands, North Korea and China for

mistreatment of POWs from those countries.

“The hypocrisy of Japan’s position toward American veterans was

exposed last week,” Rohrabacher said, “when the Japanese government

offered to pay billions of dollars in aid and indirect war

reparations to North Korea, a totalitarian country that admitted to

kidnapping and causing the deaths of private Japanese citizens.”