Unjust Enrichment: How Japan's Companies Built Postwar Fortunes Using American POWs (Stackpole Classics) - Softcover

Holmes, Linda Goetz

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811737063 ISBN 13: 9780811737067

Publisher: Stackpole Books, 2017

Synopsis

The use of American POW's as slave labor by Japanese companies is the great unresolved issue of the Second World War in the Pacific. Unjust Enrichment provides a forum for American servicemen to tell their own stories, while Linda Holmes gives the reader the historic context to recognize the seriousness of the crimes.

Bio: Linda Goetz Holmes has been interviewing and writing about World War II prisoners in the Pacific for over 30 years. She is the first historian appointed to the U.S. Government Interagency Working Group, formed in 1999 under the aegis of the National Archives to locate and declassify material about World War II war crimes.

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:

Linda Goetz Holmes has been interviewing and writing about World War II prisoners in the Pacific for more than 30 years. She is the first Pacific War historian appointed to the U.S. Government Interagency Working Group, formed in 1999 under the aegis of the National Archives to locate and declassify material about World War II war crimes. Ms. Holmes has presented her findings before audiences at the National Security Agency Center for Cryptologic history, Nimitz Museum of the Pacific War (Admiral Nimitz Museum), and numerous civic groups, veteran’s organizations, and classrooms throughout the country.
To date, she has interviewed more than 400 exprisoners of war, their families, American and Japanese military personnel and historians, government and banking officials, and archivists from around the globe to authenticate what happened to our prisoners in Japanese hands, and why. Her 1994 book, 4000 Bowls of Rice: A Prisoner of War Comes Home, about Allied prisoners of the Japanese who built the Burma Railway, was selected for inclusion in the John E. Taylor Collection of military history and intelligence volumes at the National POW Museum at Andersonville, Georgia; and the Australian War Memorial.
Ms. Homes has used her professional career in broadcast and print reporting to bring renewed international attention to the treatment of Allied prisoners by the Japanese during World War II. She is on the Board of Directors of the Society of Silurians, the oldest press club in the United States, and the Overseas Press Club Foundation. She is an associate member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.
Ms. Holmes was born in White Plains New York, attended Scarsdale schools, and is a graduate of Wellesley College.

About this edition

• Publisher: Stackpole Books
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0811737063
• ISBN 13: 9780811737067
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224