News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: Ex-POWs Seeks Apology & Compensation

Date: September 09, 2001

"50 Years On, Critics Assail US-Japan Peace Treaty
By Andrew Quinn

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The United States and Japan this week will toast the 50th anniversary of a treaty that brought peace to the Pacific and set the stage for Japan's rise as Asia's most prosperous economy.

But amid the celebrations are angry recriminations.

According to some, the treaty that formally ended World War Two was a shameful bargain -- bought and paid for with the lives, blood and honor of untold millions of Japan's victims in the war.

"Japan Inc. is still in denial," said San Francisco activist Ignatius Ding. "This treaty glosses over Japan's responsibility, which has never been fulfilled, to acknowledge responsibility for its atrocities, let alone make reparations."

Ding is one of several protesters planning to mark what they call "50 years of denial" by the United States and Japan designed to excuse Japan's wartime aggression and block compensation for some of the most horrific war crimes of the 20th century.

The United States, they argue, gained a prosperous, stable and democratic ally in the Pacific. Japan's wartime victims received nothing except pain and bitter memories.

The critics gathering in San Francisco for the Sept. 8 commemoration of the 1951 U.S.-Japan peace treaty include Asian-American groups and former U.S. prisoners of war, who were enslaved by Japanese companies and forced to endure such infamous agonies as the Bataan Death March of 1942.

Asian women forced into prostitution -- the Japanese army's so-called "comfort women" -- will also be here, as will be witnesses to some of Japan's most brutal wartime onslaughts such as the "Rape of Nanking" in China in 1937.

The voices of dissent may be muted during the official celebration, which culminates on Sept. 8 when Secretary of State Colin Powell and Japanese Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka commemorate the 1951 treaty at San Francisco's War Memorial Opera House, where the original document was signed.

Protesters will, however, be outside -- chanting, singing and shouting to make sure their view of this chapter of U.S.-Japan relations is heard.

"This treaty swept a lot of unfinished business under the rug, the most important of which were Japan's atrocities in the 14 countries it invaded, occupied and brutalized during the war," said Ling Chi Wang, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

POWS SEEK APOLOGY, COMPENSATION

Among those protesting on Saturday will be Lester Tenney, a survivor of the Bataan Death March who spent three years shoveling coal in the Omuta mines operated by the Mitsui Miike Coal Mine Co.

Like other POWs, Tenney says his argument is not with the people of Japan or their government but with Mitsui, Mitsubishi and other companies which used U.S. slave labor. "These industrial giants owe us a debt, and we want that debt repaid," said Tenney, now 81. "Is that too much to ask ... justice for us?"

POW advocates say that of the 36,000 U.S. soldiers held by the Japanese, only 21,000 survived -- a death rate far higher than for internees held in German prison camps.

There are now only about 5,000 of these former POWS left, and many feel they were betrayed by the United States when it signed the peace treaty that absolved Japan of compensation claims.

While the POWs have launched suits to push their claim, most have been denied in U.S. federal court. The U.S. State and Justice Departments have both sided with Japan, arguing that the 1951 treaty blocks such suits and saying Tokyo has already made all the apologies it needs to make for the war.

Advocates of the POWs say they are as entitled to reparations as the victims of Germany's Nazi Holocaust, and that time is growing short to put the situation right. Several bills pending in Congress offer some hope, calling for a reinterpretation of the 1951 treaty to allow the veterans to press their suits.

"Our guys are dying off, so we have to press this one through," said one lawyer close to the POWs' case. "Japan cannot be allowed to rewrite this part of history."

ASIAN-AMERICAN GROUPS CITE ATROCITIES

Many Asian and Asian-American groups say Japan has never truly been held accountable for the rampage of murder, torture and looting its troops went on during the war. These groups allege the United States was a major conspirator -- if not the main architect -- in a plot to underplay Japan's true wartime record and reinvent the country as a U.S. ally in the Pacific.

Berkeley's Wang, who as a 6-year-old child saw the Japanese army overrun and occupy his home city of Xiamen in China, said the 50th anniversary of the 1951 treaty marked the perfect moment for Japan and the United States to come clean about their shared history.

"America likes to see itself as the greatest defender of human rights. I would like to see the U.S. use its leadership and influence to convince the Japanese that is time to do something right," he said."