Scot fights for apology from Japanese PM for PoW Father's Ordeal 70 Years Ago

[caption id="attachment_577" align="alignnone" width="460" caption="POW's After VJ Day. Patrick James McAnulty, never fully recovered from more than three years of captivity in Japan. McAnulty; standing in the back row fifth from the right."][/caption] James McAnulty, 62, from Wishaw in Lanarkshire, told The Daily Telegraph that his father, Patrick James McAnulty, never fully recovered from more than three years of captivity in Japan. He died in 1971. Late last month, Mr McAnulty wrote "a polite letter" to the Japanese premier Taro Aso and another to his brother, Yutaka Aso, president of what is now Lafarge Aso Cement Co., but has received no replies to date. "It's not easy when you're one man to run a campaign seeking an apology from the prime minister of a country, but as I wrote in my letters, I'm going to keep it up and write a letter to them every month," said Mr McAnulty. Until January, Mr Aso had steadfastly refused to confirm that his company had employed slave labourers during the Second World War. But then new evidence unearthed by opposition politicians in the archives of the health and welfare ministry proved that 101 British, 197 Australian and two Dutch prisoners were held at the mine, along with several thousand Korean and Chinese forced labourers. Historians say the mines were notorious for their brutal treatment of prisoners. Questioned in the Diet, Japan's parliament, Mr Aso said: "Research by the welfare ministry last year has newly revealed that Aso Mining made Allied POWs work". He had said previously: "I was only five years old when the war ended, so I honestly have no personal recollection of that time." It has been suggested by veterans that the Japanese authorities are buying time until all the survivors of the atrocities that it committed against civilians and POWs across Asia and the Pacific have died and their claims for redress fade away. Tokyo repeatedly refers to the £76 compensation it paid to every POW as compensation in 1951. But Mr McAnulty has no intention of letting the experiences of his father be forgotten. "A lot of these survivors are very old now and they are getting fewer and further between, but I'm going to continue the fight for this recognition and my children and grand-children will do it if I don't get a result in my lifetime," he said. Patrick McAnulty was a stoker aboard the cruiser Exeter when it was sunk in the Java Sea on March 1, 1942. After being picked up by a Japanese warship, he spent time in a camp on Celebes island before being shipped to Japan. After a spell in a shipyard in Nagasaki, he was transferred to Fukuoka Camp 26 in June 1945 and worked at the Yoshikuma Coal Mine. After being repatriated he returned to his trade as a shoemaker, but clearly felt the need to unburden himself and chose his son to share his experiences with. "He was never well after he got back and in my wedding photos he was the smallest and the thinnest person," said Mr McAnulty. "He tried so hard to make a life for himself, and his family, but what we know today as post-traumatic stress disorder must have been horrendous for him." The tales included his fellow inmates being beaten mercilessly by camp guards, officers using the prisoners for judo practice, barely enough food to survive on and a punishing work regime in the mines. Until his death, Mr McAnulty would either remain stonily silent or go and potter in his garden whenever Japan or the Japanese were mentioned. James McAnulty is seeking an apology and compensation of a symbolic £800 - the annual pay for a Scottish mine worker in 1942 - for his father's labour. "The company motto for the Aso mines is 'We deliver the best' - and my theme is that my father helped them deliver the best, never received any sort of pay for it and he deserves recognition," he said.