Proposed Exchange Program Again Ignores History Of Japan's American POW Slave
Laborers
SAN DIEGO, July 15 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A proposed joint
American/Japanese program designed to boost educational and cultural exchanges
between the two countries is a missed opportunity to make amends to Americans
who were held by the Japanese as prisoners of war and slave laborers during
World War II.
That is the conclusion of Dr. Lester Tenney, National Commander of the
American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor (ADBC), who recently returned from
a trip to Japan. While meeting with members of the Diet, he questioned them on
why American prisoners of war - most of whom had worked as slave laborers for
such well-known Japanese companies such as Mitsui, Mitsubishi, and Kawasaki -
have been excluded from all previous exchange and reconciliation programs with
Japan.
The new initiative, developed by Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and President
George W. Bush and announced at a summit between the two on July 6, 2008,
appears to be similar to the 1995 "Peace, Friendship and Exchange Initiative"
that provided for former POWs (and their families) from Great Britain, the
Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand to visit Japan as guests to develop a
cultural exchange and friendship dialogue.
No former American POWs were invited to participate in the 1995 initiative.
"With our deaths, Japan wants to bury its sordid history of having kept its
greatest industries alive through the illegal use of our labor," said the 88
year-old Tenney.
The former American POWs have asked President Bush and members of Congress and
the Diet to delay any approval of the new exchange initiative until it is
determined why Americans POWs were excluded from the Japanese-sponsored
"Peace, Friendship and Exchange Initiative," of 1995. The ADBC wants the
Government of Japan to establish with the US government and Japanese
corporations a permanent Fund of Remembrance and Reconciliation to foster
projects of exchange and education between Japan and the US for better
understanding of Imperial Japan's Pacific War.
The American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Inc., a nationally recognized
veterans' organization, is comprised of remaining survivors of the Bataan
Death March and those captured on Corregidor, who all became prisoners of the
Japanese during World War II. The Bataan Death March is considered one of the
era's worst war crimes.
SOURCE American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor
Lester Tenney of American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor, +1-760-704-1106
