Unjust Enrichment

During World War II, 32,260 Americans were held as prisoners of war of the Japanese. Thousands were shipped to do forced labor in the factories, shipyards, and mines of Japan-at the specific request of major Japanese companies. For more than fifty years, this story has gone untold-until now. Combining investigative research, personal interviews with more than 400 ex-POWs, excerpts from POW diaries, and samples of the more than 300 recently declassified documents, Pacific War historian Linda Goetz Holmes reveals the brutal and exploitative practices of Japanese companies during World War II. Her research forms the basis of a landmark class-action lawsuit against five of the Japanese companies filed on behalf of 500 former POWs in U.S. District Court in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on September 13, 1999.