News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: Ex-POWs Testify Before Senate

Date: June 30, 2000

Fifty sum-odd years after their journey through hell, five American Ex-POWs of the Japanese testified before Congress this week.

"POW Victims of Japanese Slave Labor Testify Before Senate Judiciary Committee

WASHINGTON, June 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Five American POWs forced into slave labor by Japanese companies during World War II testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee today. The American servicemen told the Committee their stories of being taken prisoner at Bataan and Corregidor, surviving the Bataan Death March, being shipped on "hell ships" to Japan and then being forced to work under inhumane and brutal conditions in mines and factories for companies like Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Ishihara and Nippon Steel. Because of the conditions and forced labor, death rates for American POWs in Japanese prison camps were 30 times higher than for those in German prison camps.

Taken prisoner at Corregidor, Frank Bigelow, 78, Brooksville, Florida, was sent by ship to Japan in August 1943 to labor in a coal mine owned by the Mitsui company. "We were told to work or die," Mr. Bigelow testified. Fed tiny rations of rice and seaweed soup, Mr. Bigelow, who was 6 feet 4, weighed 95 pounds. Weakened by malaria as a POW and severe malnutrition as a slave laborer, Mr. Bigelow's infected broken leg was amputated by a fellow POW without anesthesia.

Dr. Lester Tenney, 80, La Jolla, California, became a prisoner of war on April 9, 1942, with the fall of Bataan in the Philippines. A survivor of the Bataan Death March, he was sent in a "hell ship" to Japan, where he became part of the slave labor force in a Mitsui company coal mine. "I was forced to shovel coal 12 hours a day, 28 days a month, for over two years," he testified. "The reward I received for this hard labor was beatings by the civilian workers in the mine" if he did not work fast enough or if American forces had won an important battle.

Howard Poole, 80, Salt Lake City, Utah, joined the Army Air Corps in 1941, was captured in the fall of the Philippines, and endured the Bataan Death March. Transferred to Japan in a "hell ship," he spent three years in slave labor for Nippon Steel Corporation, "working 7 days a week, 10 hours a day. We were starved, beaten and abused. We suffered disease, deprivation and depression. I almost died twice, once from malaria and the other time from pneumonia." When he was liberated, Mr. Poole weighed less than 100 pounds.

In addition to being a POW, Edward Jackfert, 78, Wellsburg, West Virginia testified on behalf of veterans groups across the country. Mr. Jackfert recently completed his second term as national commander of the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor, Inc., a veterans organization. He was a POW for three years and four months on Mindanao and in Kawasaki, Japan, where he was forced to work as a slave laborer for the Nippon Steel, Showa Denko, Mitsui and Kokosho companies.

Maurice "Mo" Mazer, 86, Boca Raton, Florida, an Army radar specialist, became a prisoner of war on April 9, 1942. He survived the Bataan Death March and was moved to numerous camps in the Philippines and Japan. He was forced into labor for Mitsubishi Mining, where he "was beaten unmercifully by the Mitsubishi guards and had his back broken in the mines when one of the guards ran a car into him and slammed him against a wall." Mr. Mazer served as national commander of the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor during the 1952 and 1953 terms.

The POWs are asking for recognition, honor and justice from the Japanese companies that enslaved them and from the US government that has turned its back on them. Dr. Tenney said, "We want the Japanese companies to disclose what they did to us, we want an apology for what we endured and we want compensation from the companies for our labor." Currently, the Japanese companies have refused to acknowledge or apologize for any wrongdoing. Based on this conduct, former POWs are seeking justice through US courts.

According to David S. Casey Jr., a partner at Herman, Middleton, Casey & Kitchens, the law firm handling lawsuits on behalf of many of the POWs, "This case boils down to one thing -- American soldiers who are entitled to payment for their labor and who are also owed an apology for their suffering." "