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June 30, 2007 Former POWs of the Japanese on the “Comfort Women” resolution
We American former prisoners of war have raised on numerous occasions the issue regarding the barbaric, inhumane treatment and forced labor actions of the Japanese military, as well as the private Japanese companies during WWII who failed to provide the POWs with the basic necessities of life: food, medical care and a life without the day-to-day fear of being tortured to death. We have been seeking a formal apology from Japanese leaders for more than 60 years, and we have been pushing for honesty as well as admission of wrongdoing by Japan during events of WWII. When we filed our first lawsuit in Los Angeles in August of 1999, it was specifically against those Japanese industrial giants that allowed their employees to physically abuse the POWs who were working for them in their mines, on their docks and in their factories. The position the Japanese took was to declare that the Peace Treaty resolved all issues, and they egotistically refused to acknowledge that a wrong was committed by both their military and their private companies. We American former prisoners of war had hoped for the House Foreign Affairs Committee to call on Japan to formally acknowledge, apologize and accept historical responsibility for both the Japanese sexual exploitation of the Comfort Women, and the barbaric treatment of American POWs placed into slavery. We want the POW issue to be resolved as much as the former “Comfort Women” want theirs to be resolved.
Lester Tenney, Vice
Commander
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