Japanese company honors American POWs
HANAWA, JAPAN When Candie Blankman’s father was released from a forced-labor camp here at the end of World War II, he was near death from starvation, beatings and lack of medical care.
He and 500 other American prisoners of war spent nearly a year digging copper ore under slave-like conditions in a camp operated by then-Mitsubishi Mining Co. Eight died, and many if not most of the others never fully recovered from the physical and emotional damage.
Last week, representatives of former POWs and the mining company took a major step toward reconciliation with a formal apology and a memorial plaque to honor those who suffered and died at the Hanawa mine.
“Our purpose here is to explain the hardships that wartime POWs endured and express our deepest remorse and sincerest apologies. We are determined to do everything we can to create a world in which this can never happen again,” Hikaru Kimura, a senior official at Mitsubishi Materials Corp., the successor to Mitsubishi Mining, said at the Nov. 28 dedication ceremony.
The action came shortly before the 75th anniversary of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and amid a growing, if somewhat grudging, willingness of the country to examine its wartime past.
“This was a very bold and courageous step for Mitsubishi,” said Blankman, a Presbyterian pastor from San Clemente, Calif., who attended the dedication. “Yes, it’s late in coming. But what matters is that it has come. It’s not an easy thing to do.”
Blankman’s father, Army Sgt. Kenneth Early Davis, was captured in the Philippines in the opening months of World War II. He survived the infamous Bataan Death March and more than two years’ imprisonment in the Phil- ippines before being transported to Japan in September 1944. Her father died in 2006.
The Hanawa mine is located in the cold and snowy mountains of northern Japan. Prisoners lived in flimsy wooden barracks with little or no heat, scant food, no medical care, little rest and little hope of survival.
Although some camp guards showed extraordinary kindness, beatings and abuse were the norm, said Jim Nelson, whose father suffered permanent blindness at the camp because of poor nutrition and working as welder without eye protection.
“It was slave labor. My father survived only with the help of his friends,” said Nelson, a retired history teacher from Burlingame, Kan., who also attended the ceremony here. Nelson’s father, James Leonard Nelson, was captured on Corregidor island in the Philippines. He died in 2005.
The Hanawa plaque is believed to be the first such memorial to American POWs erected by a major Japanese company, said Kinue Tokudome, of the U.S.-Japan Dialogue on POWs, a Californiabased support organization.
About 27,000 U.S. troops were captured by the Japanese during World War II; of those, about 11,000 died in captivity, according to the Dialogue on POWs group.
Japan issued a formal apology in 2009 for its treatment of American POWs. A year later the government started a program that brings former POWs and family members to Japan on goodwill visits.
“To me, this is a sacred place,” Nelson said here at the service. “Despite all the horrible things that happened to him, my father never hated the Japanese. He put all that behind him. I think this act will bring greater cooperation between Japan and the United States, and it will bring closure to some of the families of the veterans who worked here.”