PRESS CONFERENCE
Joe Coombs, Former POW Enslaved at Aso Mining Co. Ltd.;
James McAnulty, Son of Former POW Enslaved at Aso Mining Co. Ltd.;
Yukihisa Fujita, Executive Director, DPJ Subcommittee for POW Issues

The speech and Q&A will be in English.

In December 2008, Prime Minister Taro Aso admitted that during WWII his family’s company used a total of 300 British, Australian and Dutch Allied POWs in its Yoshikuma Coal Mine in Keisen-machi, Fukuoka Prefecture. Surviving Australian and British POWs and their families sent letters of inquiry concerning unpaid wages for their backbreaking work under dangerous conditions without sufficient food and clothing. Taro Aso, while serving as prime minister as well as foreign minister, never replied to those letters.

Democratic Party of Japan MP Yukihisa Fujita took the initiative to form the grassroots Executive Committee for Inviting POW Slave Laborers of Aso Mining and their Family Members to Japan, which has invited Joe Coombs, of Australia, and James McAnulty, of Scotland, with family members, to Japan. The group will visit the Aso Yoshikuma Mine and Lafarge Cement HQ in Fukuoka. They will also visit Kawasaki Heavy Industries in Kobe and the Kouyagi Island Shipyard in Nagasaki, since the prisoners were forced to work there before being moved to the Aso mine (also known as Fukuoka POW Camp 26).

Come to the FCCJ and hear Joe Coombs, a former POW, and James McAnulty, the son of a former POW, talk about their desire to receive a sincere apology for brutal mistreatment and starvation endured while undergoing forced labor for the benefit of private Japanese companies.

Joe Coombs, James McAnulty and Yukihisa Fujita