Japan should explain selective apology, sincerely reflect on wartime history

Relatives of deceased Chinese forced laborers, accompanied by lawyer Kang Jian (center, in blue coat), attend Beijing No 1 Intermediate People's Court on Feb 26, 2014, to sue two Japanese companies over forced labor during World War II. The lawsuit seeks printed apologies to be carried in Chinese and Japanese newspapers as well as compensation from the Japanese companies. WANG JING / CHINA DAILY

BEIJING - The Japanese government should have deep and profound reflections on the country's atrocities during World War II and explain why a Japanese company made an apology only to US prisoners of war (POWs).

On Sunday, Hikaru Kimura, a senior executive of Mitsubishi Materials apologized for wartime enslavement of some 900 US POWs at mines run by Mitsubishi Mining Co, the firm's predecessor, at a special ceremony in Los Angeles.

"Today we apologize remorsefully for the tragic events in our past," Kimura said. "We cannot help feeling a deep sense of ethical responsibility for this past tragedy."

However, Kimura's apology turned out to be incomplete and misleading in the eyes of the public of the Asian countries which had been invaded by Japan during WWII.

As a matter of fact, the number of victims from those countries, who were forced to do hard labor for Mitsubishi Mining and other Japanese firms seven decades ago, was far more than that of the US POWs.

Aside from the US POWs, the Japanese government also forced tens of thousand of Chinese and Koreans to fill the country's labor shortage during the war.

Zhang Shijie (center), 88, who was forced to work as a laborer in Japan in 1944, arrives at Beijing No 1 Intermediate People's Court on Feb 26, 2014. WANG JING / CHINA DAILY

According to a report released by the Japanese government after the war, a total of 3,765 Chinese worked as forced labors at 12 mines of Mitsubishi Mining in Japan, and about 720 of them did not get through the hardship and died.

Although 70 years have passed since the end of WWII, the Chinese laborers never received any apology from Mitsubishi Materials.

Since 1997, Chinese survivors of forced labors and their relatives have filed lawsuits against the Japanese company in Tokyo and other Japanese cities, but all the cases were all rejected by Japanese courts.