More than six decades after the end of World War II, the Japanese government has yet to release an estimated ¥200 billion worth of unpaid wages owed to Korean forced laborers who were brought to wartime Japan. Nor has the government disbursed an additional ¥200 billion worth of financial benefits owed to Korean and Taiwanese military servicemen. During the Allied Occupation of Japan, American authorities directed Japanese officials to compensate these Asian victims of the war effort, setting up a custody account for labor conscripts in 1946 and a foreign creditor's account for military conscripts in 1949. However, the outbreak of the Korean War destroyed any chance of monetary compensation, as the U.S. preoccupation over the new cold-war conflict effectively froze up bank accounts relating to Japan's former colonial subjects. Clarifying the historical record of American involvement in this unresolved issue of war compensation can contribute towards resurrecting efforts to reach regional reconciliation between Japan and its neighbors in Northeast Asia.

Matthew Augustine is the 2009-2010 Northeast Asia History Fellow at Shorenstein APARC, Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. from the History Department at Columbia University and his B.A. from the Politics Department at Princeton University. His research interests include military occupations, especially the U.S. occupations in Japan, Korea, and Okinawa after World War II; transnational migrations and border controls; Japan's colonial empire in the Asia-Pacific; and the history and politics of war reparations in Northeast Asia.

Two major unresolved issues from World War II in the Pacific are the use of the atomic bomb by the United States, which destroyed the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the use of foreign slave labor for war-related production by Japan. Koreans and Allied POWs were among those who were victims of both atrocities. While limited compensation for non-Japanese hibakusha have been won in Japanese courts in recent years, no compensation has been forthcoming for their labor under armed confinement. The American government was responsible for the use of these atomic bombs, but company contractors such as Du Pont profited from their development as well. Just as Japanese companies such as Mitsubishi that profited from foreign forced labor should contribute to a trust fund for compensation, so too should American companies that contributed to the Manhattan Project. Only when U.S. and Japanese companies and governments mutually accept responsibility through such compensation will there be an honest acknowledgement of the real costs of the use of the atomic bombs and slave labor.

David Palmer is Senior Lecturer in American Studies at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia. Since 2000, his primary focus has been on the history of Japanese workers, especially those in shipbuilding, who experienced World War II and the atomic bombs.
His most recent publications include "The Straits of Dead Souls: One Man's Investigation into the Disappearance of Mitsubishi Hiroshima's Korean Forced Labourers," Japanese Studies, Dec. 2006, and "Korean Hibakusha, Japan's Supreme Court and the International Community: Can the U.S. and Japan Confront Forced Labor and Atomic Bombing?," Japan Focus, Feb. 20, 2008.

Brian Myers will talk about his new book The Cleanest Race: How the North Korean See Themselves and Why it Matters (January 2010).

Myers was born in New Jersey and raised in Bermuda, South Africa, and Germany.  He has a Ph.D. in North Korean Studies from the University of Tubingen, Germany.  His books include Han Sorya and North Korean Literature (1994) and A Reader's Manifesto (2002).

In addition to writing literary criticism for The Atlantic, of which he is a contributing editor, Myers regularly contributes articles on North Korea to the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and academic journals. He is a contributor to a book First Drafts of Korea: The U.S. Media and Perceptions of the Last Cold War Frontier (2009) published by The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center of Stanford University.

This seminar is supported by the generous grant from Koret Foundation.

Much of the debate over Japan's historical disputes with neighboring countries treat unresolved issues from World War II as an intra-Asian problem. In recent years, however, there is a growing view that the United States can hardly afford to stand outside these disputes, particularly since it was intimately involved in their formation immediately after the war. The U.S. was the undisputed leader of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, which failed to address Japanese war crimes against Asian victims. The U.S. also brokered the San Francisco Peace Treaty, which laid the legal framework to deter Asian victims from filing suits against the Japanese government and corporations for wartime grievances. The United States should address its responsibility in contributing to Japan's "history problem," while playing a constructive role in facilitating historical reconciliation in Northeast Asia.

Professor Gi-Wook Shin is the director of Shorenstein APARC; the Tong Yang, Korea Foundation, and Korea Stanford Alumni Chair of Korean Studies; the founding director of the Korean Studies Program; senior fellow at FSI; and professor of sociology at Stanford University. As a historical-comparative and political sociologist, his research has concentrated on areas of social movements, nationalism, development, and international relations. Dr. Shin has served as editor of the Journal of Korean Studies, a premier journal in the field of Korean studies.