The Japanese Prime Minister has apologised to all those who were held as prisoners of war by Japan during World War II.

Writing in the popular British tabloid newspaper The Sun, Ryutaro Hashimoto urged British people to accept his initiative in a spirit of "reconciliation and peace and hopes for the future".

But as the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, returned home after a five-day trip to Tokyo, former Japanese prisoners of war revived their demands for cash compensation.

Bitter memories

Mr Hashimoto acknowledged the war held "many bitter memories for many people".

On Monday he had outlined several new initiatives designed to heal those wounds "and to express our determination to build reconciliation out of what happened".

Mr Hashimoto said he wanted to "express his feelings of deep remorse and heartfelt apology for the tremendous damage and suffering of that time."

The proposed initiatives include joint pilgrimages by British and Japanese veterans to old battlefields and cemeteries, scholarships for former PoWs' grandchildren and the doubling of a programme of visits by former PoWs and their grandchildren.

Will not bring back the dead

He said: "This will not bring back the dead. But I hope the British people will see it in the spirit in which it is intended."

In the newspaper article Mr Hashimoto said he was something of an Anglophile and said his favourite reading included Shakespeare, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories and the Horatio Hornblower books.

He said he hoped the increasingly friendly Anglo-Japanese relations would be further improved by the visit in May to Britain of Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko.

A Downing Street spokesman said: "The Prime Minister welcomes the fact that Prime Minister Hashimoto has chosen to address the British people directly in this way.

"He believes it builds on their meeting. They have a shared determination to highlight the excellent relations between the two countries."

Mr Hashimoto is not thought to have written previously for any newspapers and it is thought Mr Blair's office may have liaised with The Sun, which supported Labour in last year's election, to furnish them with the scoop.

But former prisoner of war and secretary of the Japanese Labour Camp Survivors Association, Arthur Titherington, said: "This is very far from what we wanted and my members will without doubt reject these offers.

"The Japanese government is basically waiting for us all to die out and they think they can get away without apologising or offering compensation."

He said: "We were starved and beaten and tortured for three-and-a-half years. They were waiting for us to die then and they are waiting for us to die now."

Martin Day, a lawyer for the Japanese Prisoners of War and Internees Association, which represents more than 12,000 men, said the apology and reconciliation initiatives were "an insult".

He pointed out Germany was paying billions of dollars in compensation to survivors of the Holocaust and said he would pressing on with legal action in a Japanese court next month.

The former PoWs will demand £13,000 each for the trauma suffered during their ordeal.

Back to top | BBC News Home | BBC Homepage	©