Lawmaker demands Japan PM apologize over POW labor

[Coventina]

Source: Associated Press

TOKYO (AP) — Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso should apologize for his family's use of hundreds of Allied prisoners of war as forced labor in its coal mine during World War II, an opposition lawmaker said Friday.

Yukihisa Fujita, a member of the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan, said Aso should squarely face Japan's wartime past as the country's leader and the grandson of the mine operator. Japan in December acknowledged for the first time that POWs were put to work at the Aso family mine in Fukuoka, southern Japan.

"Mr. Aso should take this opportunity and send a sincere message to the survivors," said Fujita, whose earlier request for government verification of a wartime document brought the case to the surface. "If it were not Mr. Aso's family mine, the POW issue might have been buried in the dark forever."

Fujita, who interviewed three Australian survivors over the phone last month, said they sought official apology from Aso and the government. The Australians, aged around 90, said they were forced to work in harsh and dangerous conditions inside a narrow mining tunnel.



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