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 A company representative offered the apology on behalf of its
predecessor, Mitsubishi Mining Co, at a special ceremony at a Los
Angeles museum.
"Today we apologize remorsefully for the tragic events in our past,"
Mitsubishi Materials Senior Executive Officer Hikaru Kimura told an
audience at the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance in Los
Angeles.
In all, about 12,000 American prisoners of war were put into forced
labor by the Japanese government and private companies seeking to
fill a wartime labor shortage, of whom more than 1,100 died, said
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, an associate dean at the Simon Wiesenthal
Center.
Six prisoner-of-war camps in Japan were linked to the Mitsubishi
conglomerate during the war, and they held 2,041 prisoners, more
than 1,000 of whom were American, according to nonprofit research
center Asia Policy Point.
 Mitsubishi Materials Corp's predecessor ran four sites that at the
time of liberation in 1945 held about 876 American prisoners of war.
Twenty-seven Americans died in those camps, Asia Policy Point said.
While previous Japanese prime ministers have apologized for Japan's
aggression during World War Two, private corporations have been less
contrite.
On Sunday, Kimura was flanked by Yukio Okamoto, a forced laborer in
a copper mine and a special advisor to Japanese Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe, along with an image of American and Japanese flags.
In the audience were other forced labor survivors and family
members.
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"This is a glorious day," said 94-year-old veteran James Murphy, who
survived working at Mitsubishi Mining's Osarizawa Copper Mine and
the infamous Bataan Death March in the Philippines. "For 70 years we
wanted this."
The apology comes near the 70th anniversary of the end of the war.
It also comes amid a lawsuit in which the descendants of hundreds of
Chinese men forced to work in wartime Japan are seeking millions of
dollars in compensation from a subsidiary of Mitsubishi Corp
<8058.T> and a joint venture between Mitsubishi Corp and Mitsubishi
Materials Corp.
Kimura declined to discuss the lawsuit. He also declined to discuss
whether the apology would be echoed by other companies that
benefited from the labor of captured soldiers.
(Reporting by Mariko Lochridge in Los Angeles; Writing by Eric M.
Johnson; Editing by Eric Walsh)
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