A major Japanese corporation will offer a landmark apology this weekend for forcing US prisoners of war to work under brutal conditions at its plants during World War II, according to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which is hosting the event.

A senior executive of Mitsubishi Materials Corp will apologize to 94-year-old James Murphy, of Santa Maria, California, and relatives of other former POWs who toiled at plants its predecessor company operated in Japan during the war.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean at the center, an organization that primarily educates about the Holocaust, described it as an important apology, coming as it does ahead of the 70th anniversary in August of the end of the war.