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January
4, 2011
The
Honorable Rick Scott Dear Governor Scott: As a resident of Tampa, an Army Air Corps veteran of World War II, a former American Prisoner of War of Japan, a slave laborer for the Japanese multinational company Showa Denko, and a past commander of the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor, I ask that you tell Japan’s Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara that his country’s greatest corporations involved in bidding for Florida’s high-speed rail contracts need to come clean about their wartime use and abuse of American POWs. In your upcoming meeting with Mr. Maehara, I hope you can persuade him to tell these Japanese corporations that they, like France’s SNCF, must make a commitment to good corporate citizenship. They have a duty to apologize to American former POWs of Japan for their slave labor and abuse and to establish a fund for reconciliation, research, exchange, and education. Over 36,000 American GIs suffered the brutality of Japan’s POW camps and slave labor for many of the Japanese companies involved in the high-speed rail bids. Nearly all the Japanese train component manufacturers, such as Sumitomo, Hitachi, Kawasaki, and Nippon Sharyo, used POW forced labor that they purchased from Japan’s military to maintain war production in violation of the Geneva Conventions. Further, the predecessors of Japan’s rail consortia, such as JR Central and JR East, were paid to transport American POWs to these death-through-work camps. SNCF, the French bidder on high-speed rail contracts, finally apologized last November for its complicity in the Holocaust for transporting Jews to transit centers on to extermination camps. It also committed itself to educating new generations about their war crimes by funding dialogues, historical research, and remembrance projects with museums, libraries, and private organizations. By contrast, the Japanese rail companies have yet to acknowledge or apologize for their enslavement and torture of American POWs. Japan’s corporations have remained silent even after their own government this fall officially apologized to American former POWs of Japan and invited me and five other survivors to Japan. Unlike SNCF, the Japanese companies refuse to establish a fund to show that they are “eager to do whatever is necessary” to ensure that the historical questions raised are examined and the history of their victims preserved. The need for an educational program, similar to SNCF’s, was made abundantly clear in a recent article in a prominent Japanese magazine that essentially denied the Bataan Death March. The piece implied that the descriptions, by my fellow POW and former ADBC Commander Lester Tenney who led the delegation of former POWs to Japan in September, of the abuses and tortures he endured as a POW were merely Jewish lies! A translation of this outrageous anti-Semitic and revisionist article is attached. We American POWs of Japan do not ask for compensation. We simply ask for an honorable apology for our slave labor and the establishment of an educational fund to ensure that the sort of history outlined in this popular Japanese publication is never again written. With the encouragement of Governor Charlie Crist, SNCF acknowledged its complex Holocaust history. I hope that you will ask Mr. Maehara for comparable acknowledgments and contrition from Japan’s high-speed rail bidders. I welcome an opportunity to talk with you further about this important issue affecting Florida veterans. Sincerely,
Edward
Jackfert
See:
http://www.us-japandialogueonpows.org/Tenneyop-edMainichi.htm
cc:
Congressman Gus M. Bilirakis, Fx: (202) 225-4085 SNCF's website where it explains its WWII history. English translation of the Japanese article casting doubt on the Bataan Death March can be found here
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