FEATURE: Ex-POW wants apology from Japanese firms seeking U.S. rail contracts

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LOS ANGLES, Feb. 18 Kyodo -
As Japanese companies ready themselves to bid on California's high-speed rail
project this year, one man is asking them to pause and remember the past.
Lester Tenney, 90, is using the occasion to renew his call for an apology from
Japanese companies that used him and other prisoners of war as forced laborers
more than 65 years ago.
''We are not opposed to the Japanese companies winning the high-speed rail. But
only after they acknowledge that they treated us exactly like slaves,'' Tenney
told Kyodo News in a phone interview.
In a letter in January, Tenney asked California officials to press Japanese
corporations to acknowledge human rights violations committed against U.S. POWs
at their manufacturing and other sites during World War II.
Tenney was captured in the Philippines after U.S. troops surrendered there in
1942. He survived the Bataan Death March and was sent to Japan to work in the
Mitsui Miike coal mine in Omuta, Fukuoka Prefecture.
''During my time in the Mitsui coal mine, my arm and back were broken and my
head split open due to the beatings in the mine by Mitsui employees,'' Tenney
wrote in his letter.
Japanese companies have yet to announce partnerships to bid on high-speed rail
projects. But they have been involved throughout the planning stages.
''Kawasaki wishes to take a lead role in the California high-speed rail
project,'' said Yoshinori Kanehana, head of Kawasaki Rail Car Inc., a U.S.
subsidiary of Japan-based Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd., one of the potential
Japanese bidders, at a presentation in Los Angeles in January. The company
already has a strong presence as a railway car provider for states on the east
coast of the United States.
The California high-speed rail authorities said they value Japanese companies
for their experience in the field.
For Tenney, these are ''the very same companies that used and abused us.'' The
companies, or their subsidiaries, are among more than 50 that used American
POWs as forced laborers during the war, according to documents published by a
professor at Japan's National Defense Academy in 1983.
According to researcher Linda Goetz Holmes, about 25,000 U.S. military and
civilian POWs toiled at Japanese factories and mines both in Japan and
Japanese-occupied territory during the war. They were not paid for long hours
of dangerous work. In some cases workers were not provided proper tools, or had
supplies and letters sent from home withheld.
The petition may be one of Tenney's last campaigns in his long fight for
recognition. He attempted to sue Mitsui Mining Co. in 1999 but his claim was
dismissed.
The efforts of Tenney and other POWs to bring suits against Japanese companies
also saw the opposition of the U.S. State Department. The 1951 treaty with
Japan waived American rights to bring wartime claims against Japanese
nationals.
Holmes estimates that a few thousand American POWs in Japan during the war are
alive today. Most of them are in their 90s.
American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor, one group that lobbied with
Tenney, disbanded last year because most members could no longer make it to
meetings.
Tenney is not the first to try to address old grievances via the project. A law
proposed in 2010 would have required bidders on high-speed rail projects to
disclose their complicity in transporting people to concentration camps during
the war.
Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill, saying it would
needlessly place the state ''in a position of acknowledging the activities of
companies during that time.''
But the French National Railway (SNCF) voluntarily took the dead law to heart.
In press statements, the company discussed its role in transporting prisoners,
expressed ''profound sorrow and regret for the consequences of its acts'' and
vowed to contribute to education on the Holocaust.
Wholly owned by the French state, SNCF is in a different position from the
companies to which Tenney appeals. Nevertheless, he hopes that Japanese
companies will make similar efforts.
When asked about Tenney's petition, Kawasaki Heavy Industries Chairman Tadaharu
Ohashi questioned the appropriateness of bringing up the events of the war in
relation to the rail project.
''This issue has been resolved between the governments involved,'' he said.
The Japanese government invited Tenney and other American POWs to visit Japan
in September 2010 to offer a ''heartfelt apology'' for the inhumane treatment
they suffered.
While expressing gratitude for the apology, Tenney called Ohashi's stance ''a
cop-out,'' emphasizing that the corporations are independent of the government.
''It seems to me (the companies) probably should apologize, depending on the
nature of their involvement and the degree to which it was a prevalent
practice,'' Norman Mineta, former U.S. secretary of transportation, told Kyodo
News. ''If they did those things, then it's probably the right thing to do.''
Mineta spent part of his childhood in an internment camp for Japanese-Americans
during the war.
As adamant as Tenney is that he and others are owed an apology, he holds no
grudge against Japan itself. In his book recounting his POW experience, he even
recalls forming a cordial relationship with a worker in the Mitsui mine. Tenney
also held a long friendship with a Japanese man who visited the United States
as an exchange student.
In the end, he wants the best contractor to win the right to build California's
high-speed rail.
''All we are saying is, if you want the contract, you should be responsible on
social issues, and you should show your responsibility,'' Tenney said.
''What we're looking for is nothing more than the satisfaction of knowing that
after all these years of telling people what went on, the Japanese companies
will finally acknowledge that it happened and apologize.''
==Kyodo
2011-02-19 23:22:16