page_title: Aso Mining forced labor controversy
section_title: Admission and requests for apology
hierarchical_section_title: Aso Mining forced labor controversy / Admission and requests for apology
caption_attribution_description: Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso, photographed when he was Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs
context_page_description: The Aso Mining forced labour controversy concerns the use of Allied prisoners of war and Korean conscripts as labourers for the Aso Mining Company in Japan during World War II. Surviving labourers and other records confirmed that the prisoners and conscripts were forced to work in harsh, brutal conditions for little-to-no pay and that some died, at least in part, because of the ill-treatment at the mine.
  Although reported by Western media sources, former Prime Minister of Japan Taro Aso, whose immediate family owns the company, now called the Aso Group, repeatedly refused to confirm that his family's company had used forced labour until 2009 when it was acknowledged by the Japanese government. Since then, several surviving former Australian POWs have asked Aso and the company to apologise, but both have declined to do so.
context_section_description: Acting on a request from Fujita, the Foreign Ministry investigated and announced on 18 December 2008 that Aso Mining had, in fact, used 300 Allied POWs at its mine during World War II. The ministry confirmed that two Australians had died while working at the mine, but declined to release their names or causes of deaths for "privacy reasons." Said Fujita, "Prisoner policy is important in many ways for diplomacy, and it is a major problem that the issue has been neglected for so long."
  In February 2009, Fujita announced that he had interviewed three of the former Australian POWs forced to work at Aso Mining. All three confirmed that working conditions at the mine were terrible, that they were given little food, and were given "rags" to wear. The three veterans sent letters to Taro Aso demanding an apology for their treatment at Aso Mining and for refusing to acknowledge that forced POW labour was used by his family's company. The three also requested that the company pay them wages for the hours they worked. Fujita stated that Aso needed to apologise to the former labourers, as well as pay their wages if he cannot prove that money was paid, adding, "As a prime minister of a nation who represents the country, Aso needs to take responsibility for the past as well as the future." Later that month, Aso conceded that his family's mine had used POW labour.
  In June 2009, former POW Joseph Coombs and the son of another, James McAnulty, travelled to Japan to personally seek an apology from Aso. Said Coombs, "We'd like an apology for the brutal treatment and the conditions we had to work under. The memory will always be there, but an apology will help ease some of the pain that we experienced." Aso Group officials met with Coombs and McAnulty, but declined to acknowledge that they had been forced to work for the company and apologise or offer compensation, even after Coombs and McAnulty showed the officials company records from 1946 which stated that POW labour had been used in the mine. Taro Aso refused to meet the pair.
caption: Taro Aso
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "96", "Image YResolution": "96", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS Macintosh", "Image DateTime": "2007:09:12 17:15:56", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5007", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "204", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "274"}