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Guamanians want Reparations from US government for Abuses by the Japs.

Thread ID: 19678 | Posts: 3 | Started: 2005-08-16

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Faust [OP]

2005-08-16 19:43 | User Profile

Guamanians want Reparations from US government for Abuses by the Japs.

[B]What the...![/B]

[QUOTE]Decades After Abuses by the Japanese, Guam Hopes the U.S. Will Make Amends

James Brooke, New York Times, Aug. 14

MERIZO, Guam, Aug. 11—In July 1944, American warships were bobbing on the Pacific horizon when a squad of Japanese soldiers swept through this old Spanish fishing port. Jogging down sandy alleys and bursting into stucco homes, they rounded up 30 villagers, all known for their ties to the United States.

“They didn’t want any leaders to be around when the military landed,” Ignacio Cruz said as he recalled the roundup he watched as a 17-year-old. “Then, they machine-gunned them, they grenaded them, and if they found them surviving, they bayoneted them.”

“Dad got killed, and a lot of young babies were brought up without fathers,” continued Mr. Cruz, who grew up, joined the Marines and became the village mayor, the post his father once held. “I managed to survive, and go to school, and build a house for my mother and continue my education.”

With the 60th anniversary of Japan’s World War II surrender on Monday, Mr. Cruz, who is now 78, and other elderly Guam residents hope American politicians will go beyond solemn speeches and act to compensate them for abuses they suffered under Japan’s 32-month occupation.

{snip}

Compensation for the Guamanians would be roughly comparable to the compensation paid to Japanese-Americans who were interned in the United States during the war.

Under that program, each claimant was paid $20,000. Over the program’s 10-year span, 82,250 Japanese-Americans were paid a total of $1.65 billion.

The Guam compensation program would cost about $135 million: $12,000 to each of the roughly 9,000 survivors of the occupation, and lump sums of $25,000 to children of about 1,000 Guam residents killed by Japanese occupation forces.

{snip}

In hearings here, Manuel Merfalen testified that he watched the Japanese police whip his older sister, who was married to a sailor in the United States Navy. When she fell unconscious, he said, police interrogators revived her by pouring gasoline on her wounds.

“One witness recalled that, as an 8-year-old boy, he watched as his father was repeatedly beaten and paraded naked through the village for his loyalty to America and as a warning to the others that they should be loyal to Japan,” the Guam commission report said.

With American connections potentially fatal, Antonio Lizama recalled in testimony that he rubbed mud on his baby sister, fearing that her fair skin would arouse suspicions of Japanese soldiers seeking to purge all traces of the American past.

Ten days before the American attack, Japanese troops herded most of the island’s civilian population into three concentration camps in the island’s interior, a move that spared many from the fighting.

After Japan’s surrender, the Navy Department, which had administered Guam before the war, started to judge damage claims filed under the Guam Meritorious Claims Act of 1945.

[url]http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2005/08/decades_after_a.php[/url]

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skemper

2005-08-16 19:48 | User Profile

Aren't they suing the wrong people? Why not sue the Japanese government?

SteamshipTime

2005-08-16 19:59 | User Profile

[QUOTE=skemper]Aren't they suing the wrong people? Why not sue the Japanese government?[/QUOTE] Because they know the nips will tell them to pound sand, but stupid Americans can be guilt-tripped into anything.

Give them their independence now, whether they want it or not. And Puerto Rico.