Japan's foreign minister, Taro Aso, will this week receive an appeal to his "honor and decency" in the repayment of a small family debt more than 60 years old.
The request comes in a personal letter from Australian nurse Marilyn Caruana on behalf of her father, John William Hall, now 87, and formerly employed by Aso's father, Takakichi, as forced labor while a prisoner of war at the family coal mine in Kyushu in 1945. The debt is Hall's unpaid wages.
He was one of 197 Australian prisoners (two of whom died) and 101 British held at Camp 26 in Fukuoka Prefecture, which supplied men to the Yoshikuma pit belonging to Aso Mining Co., now the Aso Group.