Newspaper Article

Ex-POWs Seek Redress Years Later From Japanese Companies

Coyle, Pamela

2000

Overview

For years, Cassin would wake from that dream screaming and short of breath. To go back would have meant re-entering a hellhole of a Japanese coal mine where he and thousands of other American prisoners of war labored for almost three years during World War II. A half-century later, Cassin, a retired school social worker in New Orleans, and his compatriots are seeking justice. Under a California law originally crafted to benefit Holocaust victims, they are taking on some of the world's largest corporations: Nippon Steel, Mitsubishi Materials Corp., Ishihara Corp. and Mitsui & Co. Ltd. Cassin, now 79, was a young radio specialist in the Philippines when Allied forces surrendered Bataan to the Japanese in April 1942. He and 12,000 American colleagues were among more than 90,000 prisoners forced to march more than 60 miles through the peninsula in scorching heat with little food and even less water. A fellow soldier who begged for a sip from Cassin's canteen drained the whole thing. Cassin saw Japanese soldiers shoot, behead and bayonet prisoners. He saw soldiers bury prisoners alive. His friends dropped dead of malaria and dysentery.

• Publisher: Newhouse News Service
• Subject: Morse, Ronald