| Type | Public |
|---|---|
| Traded as | TYO: 7102 |
| Industry | Railways |
| Founded | Japan, September 1896 |
| Headquarters | Nagoya, Japan |
| Key people | Akira Nakagawa, President & CEO, Katsuyuki Ikushima, Chairman |
| Products | Rolling stock |
| Employees | 1,751 (September 2010) |
| Website | www.n-sharyo.co.jp |
Nippon Sharyo, Ltd. (日本車輌製造株式会社 Nippon Sharyō Seizō Kabushiki-gaisha), (TYO: 7102), formed in 1896, is a major rolling stock manufacturer based in Nagoya, Japan. In 1996, it abbreviated its name to "日本車両" Nippon Sharyō. Its shortest abbreviation is Nissha "日車". It was a listed company on Nikkei 225 until 2004. It is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and Nagoya Stock Exchange as ticker 7102. In 2008, JR Central became the majority shareholder (50.1%) of the financially struggling Nippon Sharyo making the firm a "consolidated subsidiary" of JR Central.[1]
Contents |
IFE EMUs Working on Caracas-Cua commuter line Sistema Ferroviario Ezequiel Zamora (Central)
Nippon Sharyo, in 1936, built steam locomotive number C56 31, which was used in 1943 to open the infamous Thai-Burma Railway, as stylized in the movie The Bridge Over the River Kwai, built by over 100,000 Allied POW and other slave laborers. This restored steam engine now sits in the foyer of the Yasukuni War Museum in Tokyo. Japanese veterans groups raised funds to return the locomotive from Burma to Japan in 1979.
During World War II, Nippon Sharyo, like many major Japanese companies, drew upon prisoner of war labor to maintain war production. The POW camp at Narumi provided Allied POW forced labor for Nippon Sharyo.[4]
According to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission:[5]
"The notorious Burma-Siam railway, built by Commonwealth, Dutch and American prisoners of war, was a Japanese project driven by the need for improved communications to support the large Japanese army in Burma. During its construction, approximately 13,000 prisoners of war died and were buried along the railway. An estimated 80,000 to 100,000 civilians also died in the course of the project, chiefly forced labour brought from Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, or conscripted in Siam (Thailand) and Burma (Myanmar). Two labour forces, one based in Siam and the other in Burma worked from opposite ends of the line towards the centre."