This week Mitsubishi said that it was sorry for using 500 US prisoners-of-war as forced labor in its copper mines during the World War II. Mitsubishi is the first Japanese company to take this step. Many others could be doing the same thing, but may not wish to do so. In one way or another most large Japanese enterprises used captured Allied soldiers as slave labor. The Japanese treated the Allied prisoners-of-war with extremely brutality. This was born in part out of contempt for enemy soldiers who preferred to surrender rather than die on the battlefield. It also stemmed from the brutality with which Japanese soldiers were themselves treated by their officers and NCOs. That Mitsubishi chose to make this apology when most of the Americans it abused are long dead, may seem odd. And there are surely many other victims of forced labor to whom the company could equally be apologizing. It would be a fine thing to believe that Mitsubishi's motives have been entirely moral; executives had finally recognized that they had to fess up to crimes from their past. But Mitsubishi, like the rest of the Japanese establishment, has other considerations. It is not even a case of marketing. Japanese brands in America are no longer tarnished by events of some 70 years ago.
Nevertheless, the notion of a Japan that is once again strong militarily, is still discolored, not just by the savagery of Japan to its subject peoples and prisoners-of-war, but by the fact that it was the dominant military caste that led the country first to attack China and then the United States and the rest of the Allied powers. Yet Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is pressing for a larger military which will play a more active role in international affairs. The military has come a long way since its first international role in 1992, overseeing Cambodia's transition from the horrific rule of the Khmer Rouge. There are still many Japanese who are anxious at Abe's assertiveness. Even as he is driving the stagnant economy towards much needed inflationary growth, he is also pushing the military issue. He has made a point of visiting the Yasukuni shrine to Japan's war dead, who include war criminals. And he has set his head against expanding on the albeit limited apologies of previous Japanese administrations for the appalling behavior in conquered countries. These crimes included the 1937 Nanking massacre in which 300,000 Chinese soldiers and civilians were butchered in just three days of manic bloodletting and the enslavement of Korean women into prostitution for Japanese troops.
The expansion and rearmament of the modern Japanese military will at the very least generate much-needed fresh economic activity. It will also allow Japan to face up to the rising threat from China. Washington is quietly content with Tokyo's planned military growth, which will complement its own attempts to counter Beijing's revanchist policies.
And also content are those Japanese companies that will be supplying their country's expanded armed forces. One of those, of course, is none other than Mitsubishi. Thus the apology for its treatment of a mere 500 US prisoners of war assumes a different complexion. Could it be that this once-leading supplier of armaments to wartime Japan, not least the iconic Mitsubishi Zero fighter, is clearing the historic decks ready for a return to expanded military production?
