A major Japanese corporation gave an unprecedented apology Sunday to a 94-year-old U.S. prisoner of war for using American POWs for forced labour during World War II, nearly 70 years after the war ended.

At the solemn ceremony hosted by the Museum of Tolerance at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, James Murphy, of Santa Maria, Calif., accepted the apology from executives of Mitsubishi Materials in front of a projected image of the U.S. and Japanese flags.

Murphy, who was forced to work in Mitsubishi copper mines under harsh conditions, called the apology sincere and remorseful.

"This is a glorious day," Murphy said. "For 70 years we wanted this."

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, an associate dean at the centre whose primary focus in the past has been Holocaust education, said he believes the move is unprecedented.

In this 1942 file photo provided by the U.S. Marine Corps, Japanese soldiers stand guard over American prisoners of war just before the start of the Bataan Death March following the Japanese occupation of the Philippines. (U.S. Marine Corps/Associated Press)

"As far as I know, this is a piece of history," Cooper said recently. "It's the first time a major Japanese company has ever made such a gesture. We hope this will spur other companies to join in and do the same."

Japan's government issued a formal apology to American POWs in 2009 and again in 2010. But the dwindling ranks of POWs used as slaves at mines and industrial plants have so far had little luck in getting apologies from the corporations who used them, sometimes under brutal conditions.

Some 12,000 American prisoners were shipped to Japan and forced to work at more than 50 sites to support imperial Japan's war effort, and about 10 per cent died, according to Kinue Tokudome, director of the U.S.-Japan Dialogue on POWs, who has spearheaded the lobbying effort for companies to apologize.