Hello.

I hope to find out information on his controversial topic. Particularly in Japan, many of the industry leaders that would event form/ own camera companies where chief producers for the Japanese war effort. Sometimes at the expense of Korean/ Chinese slaves. The Holocaust is famous for its pervasiveness in nearly all industries. Did this apply to optical industries?

Thank you

M Smith

-- M Smith (mpsmith@email.unc.edu), January 21, 2000

Answers

Smith

To my understanding, Japaneses correctly shifted their talent from military to consumer products only after the failure in world war II, before that, they were more interested in torturing, rape and killing. I don't hate Japanese, but if you have got all the relatives on your father's side killed by them, you will understand my feeling.

-- Eric (eung@hongkong.com), January 22, 2000.

I have read many books on the Second World War. Most have been about the European theater, but over the past year I got interested in the Pacific War and have read nine books on it. I can't recall which book I read it in, but one discussed industrial labor on the Japanese home front. Slave labor was used, but not nearly as extensively as it was in Nazi Germany. In Germany, slave labor was so pervasive that it had filtered down to individual homes and farms. This was due in a large part to the Nazi ideology that women should remain at home. Thus, the shortage of labor was filled by peoples from the conquered lands, including the optical industry.

In Japan, the situation was different, but only in degree. Women made up a large part of the Japanese industrial labor base, just as they did in the U.S. The Japanese, however, did impress workers for use outside of their homelands, most noteably Koreans. Koreans were used in the thousands by the military to construct fortifications, roads, buildings, you name it. And if they were unfortunate enough to get trapped on an island the U.S. was assaulting, they died by the hundreds along with the Japanese defenders.

Don't know if slave labor was used by the Japanese in industry. However, I have just started reading a book called "Downfall" by Richard Frank and there is discussions about Japanese industry in it, but I am not there yet.

Incidentally, and this may fall under the category of "more than you wanted to know", the Japanese optics industry in WWII was superb. But it wasn't building cameras; instead, it focused (no pun intended) on rangefinding and spotting scope devices for bombing and night fighting. The Japanese navy was highly trained in close-in night tactics using their advanced optics and the world's best torpedoes. They showed how well trained they were at Guadalcanal, where their spotters used superior optics to spot US ships at night before the US ships (using early radar) spotted them. It was only later, with better radar and better training in its use, that the US navy could stand in toe-to-toe with the Japanese navy in night combat.

It was only after the war that the Japanese optical industry turned to consumer goods.

-- Rick R (rwreev@concentric.net), January 22, 2000.

Reading books written by Causacian may not be good enough to understand what has happened to asian including China during World War II, I suggest you to go to visit World War Museums in various Asian countries to get better understanding. " Walking miles of road is better than reading thousands of book"

-- Eric Ung (eung@hongkong.com), January 22, 2000.

Reuter reported that WWII POW forced laborers lauchned a class action suit against Japanese companies see WW2 POW CLASS ACTION SUITE

-- Jack Langdon (jl7783@starnet.com), January 22, 2000.

My college German professor was slave labor for the Nazis during WWII. She's Czech and was a student at the time. Her "job" was to make munitions "used to shoot down Allied airplanes".

She never gave a lot of details, but somehow she was able to attend school, work for the Nazis and work at a paying job to earn money for her family (never try to tell this woman that you "didn't have time" to complete an assignment). I'm not sure how many hours of work was required, but from her stories it sounds like maybe 2-4 hours a day.

I wouldn't be suprised to find out that steel, brass and other raw materials from slave labor found there way into German optical porducts, but seeing how Zeiss lens coating was a German military secret, I doubt many foreigners were directly involved in the process.

Based on accounts of Nanking, I doubt the Japanese were interested in "skilled" labor. Digging ditches and building bunkers are one thing, but Japanese "pride" probably prevented them from seeking out skilled machinists.

Nikon is a part of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, but that is a relatively recent relationship (late 1970's I think). Nippon Kogaku did make rangefinders for the Imperial Navy. Binoculars were one of their first commercial products so it wouldn't suprise me if they had a contract for them as well.

-- Geoffrey S. Kane (grendel@nauticom.net), January 24, 2000.

Hello, Whether the German companies had used slaves can be found out very simple, just watch the payment and the discussions about it. (I'm interested as well)

Second, to the guy with the many books: Calling a world war a theater may be the wrong word! Read very carefully, what Eric Ung had written!

Third, there is no industry country around the world with "clean fingers".

-- Ralf Grambrock (101.51955@germanynet.de), January 26, 2000.

The second world war is over, slavery isn't. I forgave the German people, but I can't forgive the Multinationals nowadays using low-cost workers as slaves in the Fourth World countries.

-- Ivan Verschoote (ivan.verschoote@rug.ac.be), January 26, 2000.

As one poster has pointed out, the Japanese used slave labour (mostly Chinese and Koreans) mainly for manual work like construction and mining during W.W.II. As far as I know, the entire Japanese wartime industry had generally converted to production for the military, and the military government most probably won't trust having foreign slave labourers in the industry, especially in factories producing militarily sensitive products such as optical equipment. So my unresearched guess is that it would be unlikely for the Japanese to employ slave labour *directly* in photo equipment production.

On the other hand, there's concrete evidence that Nazi Germany did use slave labour in the production of optical equipment, including cameras. A recent issue of the British photo magazine, Amateur Photography, published a colour (yes, colour) print that shows slave labourers, dressed in the white-and-blue vertical stripped prisoner's uniform, working on the production of lenses in the Leica (if I remember correctly, that is) factory. I'll go look up that magazine and post the article accompanied that photo.

-- Hoyin Lee (leehoyin@hutchcity.com), January 26, 2000.

Ralf, in the US it is normal to split WWII into a "European Theater" and a "Pacific Theater" when discussing it. I'm not sure if it's an American "thing" or if the British share in our choice of words. I'm also unsure if this meaning for "theater" has historical or millitary roots.

I can assure you; however, that usage of "theater" is not meant to make light of the horrors of war.

-- Geoffrey S. Kane (grendel@nauticom.net), January 26, 2000.

Geoffery is correct about the use of the term "theatre" (Brit spelling) in historical writing; the term refers to a theatre of war where battles and related historical events take place.

-- Hoyin Lee (leehoyin@hutchcity.com), January 26, 2000.

The Amateur Photographer magazine article I referred to in my previous post was NOT about the use of German slave labour in Nazi Germany's optical industry--that's from another article I read somewhere. My apologies for that. However, the article is about both Nazi slave labour and photography, and here it is:

Source: Amateur Photographer, 3 July 1999, p. 8

Sub Title: SLAVE FACTORY PHOTOS DISCOVERED AFTER 50 YEARS . STAGED IMAGES MASK MASS DEATH HORROR

Main Title: Nazi 'death factory'photos revealed

Excerpt of Article: A set of colour photos of a Nazi slave labour rocket factory, which lay in an attic for more than 50 years, are now on show in the French bunker from where Hitler planned to launch strikes at London. The images of the Dora-Mittelbau V2 rocket factory were taken in 1944 by Goering's official photographer Walter Frentz as propaganda shots to convince the Nazi hierarchy to keep funding levels up. However, they stayed in the attic of Frentz's house until his osn found them in February 1998. The images show apparently model prisoners who look healthy, shaven and in spotless uniforms but actually they were posed. This was partly because Frentz's rare Agfa colour film was very slow speed and needed long, carefully posed exposures. Ironically, the images were suppressed by the Allies after they liberated the factory in 11 April 1945. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dora survivor ANdre Sellier--one of the exhibition organisers-- explains: 'We see a beautiful, large, well-kept factory. They chose the presentable deportees who arrived in 1944 in the second wave, after those who died of exhaustion during the construction of the camp. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Insert: The exhibition of photographs and drawings from the Dora camp is called Images of Dora, 1943-1945 and it's at La Coupole Centre d'Histoire de la Guerre et des Fusees Helfaut/Wizernes, St Omer, near Calais in France until 31 October this year [1999]. Alternatively you can visit the St Omer Museum of the War Internet site. Find it at: http://www.lacoupole.com/

-- Hoyin Lee (leehoyin@hutchcity.com), January 27, 2000.

an asian poster here intimated that, if you really want to learn about the japanese atrocities in china and asia, read history by asians not 'caucasians.' three facts fly in the face of this xenophobic statement: 1. the chief reason the world knows about the 'Nanjing Massacre' is because a nazi diplomat protested to his government and 2. an american-european minister took what are virtually the only photos and on-the-spots notes of the tragedy. 3. 90% of chinese 'history' during WWII are works approved by the propoganda division of the Chinese Communist Party. May as well read fairy tales.

-- jumpy klondike (johnnyklondike@ireland.com), September 11, 2001.