Unjust Enrichment - Hardcover

Holmes, Linda Goetz

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0811718441 ISBN 13: 9780811718448

Publisher: Stackpole Books, 2000

Synopsis

During World War II, 32,260 Americans were held as prisoners of war of the Japanese. Thousands were shipped to do forced labor in the factories, shipyards, and mines of Japan-at the specific request of major Japanese companies. For more than fifty years, this story has gone untold-until now. Combining investigative research, personal interviews with more than 400 ex-POWs, excerpts from POW diaries, and samples of the more than 300 recently declassified documents, Pacific War historian Linda Goetz Holmes reveals the brutal and exploitative practices of Japanese companies during World War II. Her research forms the basis of a landmark class-action lawsuit against five of the Japanese companies filed on behalf of 500 former POWs in U.S. District Court in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on September 13, 1999.

About this title

From the Publisher:

Exclusive Author¹s Essay for Amazon.com February 22, 2001 UNJUST ENRICHMENT:
How Japan's Companies Built Postwar Fortunes Using American POWs

After interviewing over 100 Allied ex-prisoners of war who had survived building the infamous Burma Railway for my 1994 book, 4000 Bowls of Rice: a prisoner of war comes home, I began to wonder how the companies of Japan had been allowed to use so many of these prisoners, along with thousands of survivors of the Bataan Death March, as slave laborers in their factories, mines and shipyards.

By using white prisoners as unpaid skilled laborers during World War II, the mega-corporations of Japan were able to keep producing -- and profiting -- throughout the war, positioning themselves to build on those profits enormously in the postwar years, a benefit their shareholders are still enjoying.

Meanwhile, our prisoners were being beaten daily, starved and worked mercilessly by company employees. How was this allowed to happen, and why weren't the industrialists of Japan tried as war criminals after the war? It seemed to me that their command responsibility for what happened on company property was the same as that of military commanders who did stand trial. Over 7,000 Americans died on Japanese company property, and another 3,600 died at sea in their voyages to Japan, on merchant ships operated by some of these same companies. So my question was: how did the companies of Japan literally get away with the murder of over 10,000 Americans and thousands of other Allied POWs? Nine out of ten military prisoners who died in World War II perished in Japanese, not Nazi custody.

By gaining first access to over 300 newly-declassified Japanese and Swiss messages intercepted by our intelligence agencies during the war, by studying Japanese government regulations about the treatment and deployment of POWs, and by in-depth interviews with several hundred ex-POWs, I believe I have been able to answer these questions in Unjust Enrichment.

For example, I found that the companies wrote monthly reports indicating that they were paying our POWs, as their government had ordered them to do; that they were providing adequate housing, medical and sanitary facilities; and that food for the POWs was adequate. In fact, none of these things were happening. Americans died every day on Japanese company property, and the only thing all of them came home with was a lifetime of health problems and unrelenting nightmares about their brutal captivity.

This is a story that needed to be fully told, and it has taken fifty years for the necessary data to become available. The debt which the companies of Japan still owe to our ex-POWs is the great unresolved issue of the Pacific War. It¹s time for some soul-searching and honorable actions to emerge from the boardrooms of corporate Japan. Time is running out for these gallant veterans who endured so much in the service of their country, and who unwillingly contributed so much to the enrichment of Japan¹s corporations.

About the Author:

From Publishers Weekly In September 1999, some 500 American WWII veterans filed suit against five Japanese corporations (including Mitsubishi and Kawasaki), seeking reparation for having been used as slave laborers during the war. According to the plaintiffs, these corporations built their postwar success on a foundation of American forced labor. The companies say they have been wrongly targeted, because the modern conglomerates have no relation to the wartime entities accused of these practices, prohibited now as then under the rules of the Geneva Convention. Holmes (4,000 Bowls of Rice), a respected historian and researcher who is part of a presidential panel working to declassify the records of Nazi war crimes, weighs in heavily on the side of the former American POWs. Using recently declassified documents, Holmes bolsters the vets' claims. (One formerly top secret Japanese cable read, "Due to a serious shortage of labor power in Japan, the use of the white POW is earnestly desired.") But the most emotionally charged evidence comes from the former POWs themselves. In interview after interview, Holmes chronicles the abuse of American captives, whose lingering medical and emotional problems are compounded by the belief that their suffering has been minimized by a postwar culture more moved by the plight of other groups of war victims. (Feb. 19) Forecast: A front-page New York Times article on October 2, 2000, broke news of the case on a national level. This book provides a foundation for further media coverage, and should be widely cited. Meanwhile, buffs and vets will find out about the book via newsgroups and the like. Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Stackpole Books
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0811718441
• ISBN 13: 9780811718448
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224