Recently I have been reading about the war in Pacific and the island battles, my dad was on a carrier there and hardly talked about it after the war. [Warning pet peeve ahead.] Having witnessed the change from American cars being the best in the world to Japanese corporations not only gaining the upper hands in sales, but becoming the standard for quality, I always shook my head. Datsun became Nissan. Japanese products gained a prestige that the economic ideologues praise as they put down our own companies, and the Unions that helped make America great. Maybe I am a biased old man but I am still American and if our economy, our kids, and even our support of those who need help is to continue we need to build and do here as we did in the past. What does one make of a global economy that cares only for profits - here many American corporations have behaved equally bad sometimes, outsourcing only for profit. Why for instance do we argue over immigrants and not outsourcing?
So it was with interest I saw this piece this morning. Reparations are an interesting and divisive issue.
'For 65 years, Japanese corporations have escaped responsibility for abusing American POWs during World War II.'
By Christian Caryl * June 28, 2010
"Lester Tenney entered World War II as a strapping 21-year-old, weight 180 pounds. By the time he emerged from Japanese captivity in 1945, he was a shattered, emaciated cripple. His left arm and shoulder were partly paralyzed due to an accident in a coal mine where he'd been sent as a slave laborer. His overseers there -- civilian employees of the Mitsui Corp., not members of the Imperial Army -- had knocked out his teeth in repeated beatings with hammers and pickaxes. At war's end, he weighed in at 98 pounds. It took him a year in U.S. Army hospitals to regain something like a semblance of his old well-being."
""Our Congress and our senators did a lousy job," says Tenney. (He then hastens to offer praise for the few who have stood up for the vets, naming Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.). When the veterans tried to sue the Japanese companies that once exploited their labor, the U.S. Supreme Court didn't even deign to consider their cases. (State and Justice Department officials actually filed briefs opposing the veterans' claims in the lower courts on the grounds that they disturbed the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty.)"
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/06/28/unfinished_business
.
So it was with interest I saw this piece this morning. Reparations are an interesting and divisive issue.
'For 65 years, Japanese corporations have escaped responsibility for abusing American POWs during World War II.'
By Christian Caryl * June 28, 2010
"Lester Tenney entered World War II as a strapping 21-year-old, weight 180 pounds. By the time he emerged from Japanese captivity in 1945, he was a shattered, emaciated cripple. His left arm and shoulder were partly paralyzed due to an accident in a coal mine where he'd been sent as a slave laborer. His overseers there -- civilian employees of the Mitsui Corp., not members of the Imperial Army -- had knocked out his teeth in repeated beatings with hammers and pickaxes. At war's end, he weighed in at 98 pounds. It took him a year in U.S. Army hospitals to regain something like a semblance of his old well-being."
""Our Congress and our senators did a lousy job," says Tenney. (He then hastens to offer praise for the few who have stood up for the vets, naming Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.). When the veterans tried to sue the Japanese companies that once exploited their labor, the U.S. Supreme Court didn't even deign to consider their cases. (State and Justice Department officials actually filed briefs opposing the veterans' claims in the lower courts on the grounds that they disturbed the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty.)"
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/06/28/unfinished_business
.
