The family company of Japan's prime minister has refused to apologise to an Australian prisoner of war, who was forced to work in one of its coal mines.
Nearly 65 years after being liberated from a Japanese POW camp, 88-year-old Sydney man Joe Coombs has travelled to Japan to seek an apology from Taro Aso, whose family owned the mine on the southern island of Kyushu.
Mr Coombs's requests for a meeting with the prime minister have so far been rejected.
A lush valley of terraced rice paddies has replaced the site of the hellish mine Mr Coombs worked in during the war.
He remembers digging coal for the Aso company for 12 hours a day. He also recalls the scraps of food or watery bowls of soup and the beatings with rifle butts and bayonets.
"You'll never forget the bad times. The memory will always be there," he said.
"With an apology the pain will go."
Mr Aso's family used 300 allied POWs and thousands of Koreans as slave labour in the Kyushu mines.
James McAnulty's father was a stoker for the British navy when his cruiser was sunk in the Java Sea.
"I've lived with this story of my father for 50 years and it has been a story of, a horrific story of humiliation and cruelty," Mr McAnulty said.
Patrick McAnulty was picked up by a Japanese warship and taken to the Kyushu coal mines.
James McAnulty says his father died in 1971 a broken man.
"A Japanese commentator asked me once, 'what do you want Japan to do for you' and I said, 'how can Japan give a son his childhood back?' I think that is what I lost - my father," he said.
Company meeting
While Mr Aso has so far refused to meet with Mr McAnulty and Mr Coombs, the prime minister's family company agreed to see them.
But after an hour inside Aso Corporation headquarters both men emerged more disappointed than before.
"They didn't want to apologise," Mr McAnulty said.
"They didn't want to admit that anything actually happened, despite the documented proof that we placed in front of them."
"I gained something. I received a company badge," Mr Coombs said.
Japanese Opposition MP Yukihisa Fujita has been lobbying on behalf of the former POWs and their families.
"It is very important for Mr Aso, who happens to be the prime minister, as a responsible person for Japan to do what is right for the nation and the whole world," he said.
Mr Aso has said he was just four or five-years-old when his family used the POWs to work in the mines, insisting he has no recollection of them.
That does not wash with Mr Coombs.
"There is no good pleading ignorance of the fact when he knows perfectly well that it did exist," he said.
"The slave labour and the POWs were here and did exist and he needs to morally apologise on behalf of the people of Japan."
That is not likely to happen. But Joe Coombs will leave Japan this weekend having made his point and having kept his dignity.
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