Any verification for this absurdity? (Sanshiro Sugata Part Two)

I was searching through the net and I came across a review of the AK 100 set from Ain’t It Cool News (a site I normally avoid but my Kurosawa search led me there). Here is a quote from the review:

“Word has it that SANSHIRO SUGATA Part II used forced Prisoner of War labor.”

Huh?!

Granted my written resources are slightly limited, but I’ve never ever come across such a statement before. It seems that if anyone would have uncovered this bombshell it would have been Galbraith through his extensive research, yet he mentions nothing about this.

Is there any verifiable proof to this, or is it just one of those silly rumors that are created purely in fans’ imaginations? If it is the latter (which I’m pretty sure it is), I don’t know exactly why, but it kind of pisses me off. I hate the way it’s so easy to irrevocably defame people in today’s day and age of high speed international communication.

I do know that the two prominent “American” actors, Roy James and Osman Yusuf, were both of Turkish descent born and raised in Japan. But there’s no way I can really identify the random foreign people in the crowd at the American embassy. According to IMDB, E.H. Eric was also in the film, and I know that his father was Japanese, his mother Danish, and he was educated in Japan. So those three had nothing to do with the war at all.

Anyway, I’m probably wasting everyone’s time on something not worth talking about.

Sorry!

I don’t remember ever hearing of this before either, and neither could I find anything from the usual literature, so my guess is that your conclusion is correct and it is just an empty rumour that someone made up or misunderstood somehow. I can imagine how someone saw Caucasians in the film and assumed that no such people live in Japan, so therefore these people must be prisoners of war. Thanks for bringing this to our attention though!