Japan Offers Apology Over British POWs

Japan offered visiting British Prime Minister Tony Blair an official apology Monday for the suffering of British prisoners during World War II in a gesture of reconciliation ahead of a visit to London by Emperor Akihito.

Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto also offered scholarships for grandchildren of British POWs to study in Japan for a year, as well as plans to jointly finance veterans’ visits to battlefields and cemeteries.

Blair said the Japanese actions put relations on a more stable footing for the future, but he avoided any suggestion that the matter is closed.

One key issue appeared unresolved: compensation from Japan for British war victims and their families, which the Japanese government has repeatedly refused to pay. It was unclear whether the leaders discussed the matter.

In London, some former prisoners of war said the apology did not go far enough to resolve their claims.

“We want proper compensation, not joy trips for 80-year-old men out to Japan,” said Arthur Titherington, chairman of the Japanese Labor Camp Survivors Assn.

Titherington is one of about 12,000 former inmates who are pressing claims for $21,000 each in a Tokyo court, accused Tokyo of deliberately dragging out the issue.

“The Japanese are aware that we’ve been talking about compensation now for so long . . . [that] if they carry on much longer, we’ll all be dead, and that will solve their problem completely,” he said.

“We were starved and beaten and tortured,” said Titherington, 76, a prisoner in Japanese-occupied Taiwan from 1942 to 1945. “They were waiting for us to die then and they are waiting for us to die now.”

But another veterans group, the Royal British Legion, welcomed the apology. “While we can understand the feelings of those people who are seeking compensation, we welcome the initiatives about reconciliation,” the legion said. “We believe in looking forward, not back.”

Japan has always refused to pay compensation because it says all claims were settled in 1951 under the San Francisco peace agreements, under which British POWs received about $125 each.