Japan Falls Short on War Apology

The foreign minister of Japan stopped short of issuing a formal apology Saturday to thousands of American prisoners of war for the suffering they endured during World War II at the hands of the Japanese.

The Japanese media had reported a day earlier that Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka planned to apologize when she appeared at a ceremony here marking the 50th anniversary of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, which officially ended the state of war between the United States and Japan.

Instead, Tanaka took what analysts and historians called an incremental step forward in the ongoing process of Japanese atonement for its actions before and during the deadliest war in history.

“We have never forgotten that Japan caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries during the last war,” Tanaka said in Japanese from the stage of the War Memorial Opera House, where the treaty was signed half a century ago.

“The war has left an incurable scar on many people, including former prisoners of war,” Tanaka said.

In the tortured history of Japanese apologies for wartime aggression, scholars and historians said, they do not believe that the government has ever singled out prisoners of war as a subject of regret.

But diction is everything, and Tanaka’s words fell short, said Uldis Kruze, associate professor of history at the University of San Francisco, who took part in the three-day celebration of the treaty.

“This could have been an opportunity for the government to go further,” Kruze said. “She chose not to. It would have been the right time to expand and be more inclusive. . . . [This was] an incremental step of inclusion.”

The Japanese took an estimated 36,000 U.S. soldiers prisoner, most of whom were forced into slave labor for a variety of corporations hurt by the wartime lack of manpower, said Elisabeth Rutledge, spokeswoman for the organization Justice for Veterans.

Of those prisoners, 21,000 came home and only 5,400 are still alive, Rutledge said. Many have joined lawsuits seeking compensation for the work they were forced to do for such companies as Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Kawasaki and Nippon Steel.

To Lester Tenney, 81, Tanaka’s words were worse than an insult. Wearing a hat emblazoned with the words “Survivor of Nippon and Corregidor,” and sporting his war medals, Tenney listened to Tanaka’s speech and called it “a travesty.”

“I thought it was ludicrous, absolutely asinine for her to even issue a statement,” Tenney said, his voice shaking with emotion. Tenney had come to San Francisco from his home in San Diego to remind America about the fate of the POWs and was anticipating the promised apology.

“What a travesty of justice that that would be considered an apology,” he added.

Tenney, a member of the 192nd Tank Battalion, survived the Bataan death march in the Philippines after being taken prisoner on April 9, 1942. He was later trundled onto what he describes as “a hell ship” to Omuta, Japan, where he shoveled coal for 2 1/2 years for a Japanese corporation. There was little food and no medical care.

Tenney is involved in litigation against the corporations for forced servitude. The former prisoners of war want an apology from the corporations along with restitution, payment for the work they did for no pay under terrible conditions.

“The one thing money does is it makes people realize you have value,” Tenney said. “Pay me something so I can look back and say I’m no longer a slave.”

Tanaka echoed what is considered to be the most significant apology made by the Japanese, the personal regrets voiced six years ago by then-Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama.

“Facing these facts of history in a spirit of humility, I reaffirm today our feelings of deep remorse and heartfelt apology expressed in Prime Minister Murayama’s statement of 1995,” she said.

The Japanese are deeply divided over the issue of atonement, with some factions pushing for fuller apologies and others arguing that the nation has expressed enough regrets.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Tanaka both signed a declaration at the opera house commemorating the San Francisco Peace Treaty. They appeared together earlier in the day at the Presidio, a former Army base where a key defense pact with Japan was signed on the same day.