Aussie POW seeks apology from Japanese PM
Updated
Nearly six-and-a-half decades after being liberated from a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, an 88-year-old Australian man has travelled to Japan to seek an apology from the country's Prime Minister.
Joe Coombs was forced to work in the coal mines of the Aso company - the family firm of Japan's current leader Taro Aso.
Presenter: Mark Willacy
Speaker: Joe Coombs, ex POW, James McAnulty, son of former POW; Yukihisa Fujita, Japanese Opposition MP
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JOE COOMBS: A train line down there is it? Was there a train line?
(People speaking in Japanese)
MARK WILLACY: Just metres from where his prison camp once stood, Joe Coombs looks down on a lush valley of terraced rice paddies.
For the former POW it's hard to believe that this serene setting was the site of the hellish mine he worked in more than six decades ago.
The Australian remembers digging coal for the Aso Company for 12 hours a day. He remembers the scraps of food and the watery bowls of soup, and of the beatings with rifle butts and bayonets.
JOE COOMBS: You'll never forget the bad times. The memory will always be there. With an apology the pain will go.
MARK WILLACY: For Joe Coombs only the Prime Minister of Japan can ease the pain.
It was Taro Aso's family who used 300 Allied prisoners of war and thousands of Koreans as slave labour in the Kyushu mines.
JAMES MCANULTY: I've lived with this story of my father for over 50 years and it has been a story of, a horrific story of humiliation and cruelty.
MARK WILLACY: James McAnulty's father was a stoker for the British navy when his cruiser was sunk in the Java Sea. Patrick McAnulty was picked up by a Japanese warship and brought here to labour in the Kyushu coal mines.
The Scotsman says his father died in 1971 - a broken man.
JAMES MCANULTY: A Japanese commentator asked me once, what do you want Japan to do for you? And I said, how can Japan give a son his childhood back? I think that is what I lost - my father.
MARK WILLACY: While Taro Aso has so far refused to meet with James McAnulty and Joe Coombs, the Prime Minister's family company did agree to see them. But after an hour inside Aso Corporation headquarters both men emerged more disappointed than before.
JAMES MCANULTY: They didn't want to apologise. They didn't want to admit that anything actually happened despite the documented proof that we placed in front of them.
JOE COOMBS: I gained something. I received a company badge.
MARK WILLACY: A tiny company badge, but no apology.
Japanese Opposition MP Yukihisa Fujita has been lobbying on behalf of the former prisoners of war and their families.
YUKIHISA FUJITA: It is very important for Mr Aso, who happens to be the Prime Minister, as a responsible person for Japan to do what is right for the nation and the whole world.
MARK WILLACY: The Prime Minister Taro Aso has said the he was just four or five years old when his family used the POWs to work in the mines, insisting he has no recollection of them.
That does not wash with Joe Coombs.
JOE COOMBS: There is no good pleading ignorance of the fact when he knows perfectly well that it did exist; the slave labour and the POWs were here and did exist and he needs to morally apologise on behalf of the people of Japan.
MARK WILLACY: That is unlikely to happen, but Joe Coombs will leave Japan this weekend having made his point and having kept his dignity.
