News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: Japan and POWs Study

Date: May 28, 2000

US organization to study condition of US POWs taken by Japan
Kyodo News Service

WASHINTON, May 27 (Kyodo) - An adviser to a US government organ that last week launched an investigation into war crimes committed by the Imperial Japanese Army said Saturday the group's main task is to explore the conditions of US prisoners of war (POWs).

Linda Holmes, who has been appointed to the Historical Advisory Panel of the Nazi War Criminal Records Interagency Working Group, said the organ will work toward declassifying Japanese war crimes records held by the US government.

Investigations into and declassification of such records would be ''helpful'' to former US POWs during World War II, many of whom have filed damages lawsuits against Japanese companies over forced labor during the war.

''The issue of slave labor for Japanese companies is a major unresolved issue of the Pacific War,'' said Holmes, a historian who has been researching Japanese crimes of World War II for more than 20 years.

''Our first responsibility is to examine the treatment of Americans...while performing slave labor for Japanese industries or their treatment as interned civilians at various locations in Japanese-occupied territories in the Pacific,'' she told Kyodo News.

The working group was established in January 1999 by an executive order issued by President Bill Clinton with the aim of locating and identifying classified records of war crimes committed by Nazi Germany and its allies.

It is to declassify all records and make them available to the public, except those whose disclosure could affect the national security of the United States.

The investigation into Japanese war crimes comes amid congressional moves to seek the greater disclosure of information on such crimes.

Earlier this month, the Judiciary Committee of the Senate passed a bill that would require the US government to disclose the war crime records on the Imperial Japanese Army.