Tokyo has provided Canberra with data on about 4,497 Australian prisoners of war who were forced into slave labor by Japanese forces during World War II, the Foreign Ministry said.
The data, delivered Monday by the ministry to the Australian Embassy in Tokyo, include individual cards specifying names and detention camps for individual prisoners. The Japanese and Australian governments agreed on the delivery last year as recommended by a Japanese nongovernment organization working for bilateral friendship.
More than 20,000 Australian service members were POWs of the Japanese during the war, the ministry said.
Data about U.S., British and other prisoners of war were given to their respective countries in the 1950s.