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2007-05-08 Home Front: Politix

Dems Offer Reparations to Guam For Japanese War Crimes

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Posted by Mike Kozlowski 2007-05-08 07:37|| || Front Page|| [11135 views ] Top

#1 Joe? Have a claim through your grandparents?

Posted by Jackal">Jackal 2007-05-08 08:55|| http://home.earthlink.net/~sleepyjackal/index.html]">[http://home.earthlink.net/~sleepyjackal/index.html] 2007-05-08 08:55|| Front Page Top

#2 Like slavery, the price was paid in the blood of our fathers, brothers, and sons, to end it.

Posted by Procopius2k 2007-05-08 08:55|| 2007-05-08 08:55|| Front Page Top

#3 Any word from Joe? He's over there isn't he?

I wonder if the Guam people even want this?

Posted by CrazyFool 2007-05-08 09:09|| 2007-05-08 09:09|| Front Page Top

#4 why isn't anyone wondering why we are gonna have too pay for what japanese soldiers did. hell let the japs pay them

Posted by sinse 2007-05-08 09:39|| 2007-05-08 09:39|| Front Page Top

#5 sinse: why isn't anyone wondering why we are gonna have too pay for what japanese soldiers did. hell let the japs pay them

I gotta figure that this is the Dems winding up for a slavery reparations bill. Mark my words - it's coming down the pike.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2007-05-08 09:51|| http://timurileng.blogspot.com]">[http://timurileng.blogspot.com] 2007-05-08 09:51|| Front Page Top

#6 I fear you are right ZF, and if it's after 2008 and there's a donk in the White House, look out.

Posted by Spot">Spot 2007-05-08 10:26|| 2007-05-08 10:26|| Front Page Top

#7 I am in favor of aiding those Guamanian families that underminded the Japanese during their occupation but how about the Japs forking over some yen for this noble project.

Posted by Cyber Sarge 2007-05-08 10:30|| 2007-05-08 10:30|| Front Page Top

#8 Huh?...

Posted by mojo">mojo 2007-05-08 10:45|| 2007-05-08 10:45|| Front Page Top

#9 Truman signed an agreement with Japan in '51. Basically says Japan is not responsible for "individual American war claims". Guam is American territory so we pay for whta they did.
Neat huh?

more on this

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/08/15/news/guam.php

Posted by Strom Thurmond 2007-05-08 11:20|| 2007-05-08 11:20|| Front Page Top

#10 They forgot to blame FDR for provoking the legitimate imperial Minute Men government of the peace-loving co-prosperity sphere into justifiable acts of self-defense (assuming Pearl Harbor was not an inside job or carried out by time-traveling Israelis).

Posted by Excalibur 2007-05-08 11:57|| 2007-05-08 11:57|| Front Page Top

#11 Ex, actually it was Bush's fault.

Posted by Rambler">Rambler 2007-05-08 13:59|| 2007-05-08 13:59|| Front Page Top

#12 Bunker Hill was five miles from the house I grew up in. I still have the nightmares. At least that's my story...
Have them send me my paperwork.

Posted by tu3031 2007-05-08 14:46|| 2007-05-08 14:46|| Front Page Top

#13 My Great-great-great-grandfather's house was burned by Union soldiers in April of 1865. He was a planter who had been given a medical discharge from the $th Alabama Infantry due to his age, he was 46. Do I get reparations for a U.S. warcrime?

Posted by Deacon Blues 2007-05-08 16:08|| 2007-05-08 16:08|| Front Page Top

#14 After Guam, the Philippines, which was an American possession at the time of the Japanese invasion and occupation. The crimes were very real. Something the Hiroshima apologists seem to ignore.

Posted by Procopius2k 2007-05-08 16:20|| 2007-05-08 16:20|| Front Page Top

#15 After reading my comment it sounds a bit flippant. I didn't intend to demean the suffering of all who were under the Japanese boot heel. Reparations, though, have a way of snowballing. This needs to be nipped in the bud.

Posted by Deacon Blues 2007-05-08 16:43|| 2007-05-08 16:43|| Front Page Top

#16 We've already paid reparations to Filipinos and citizens of Micronesia.

The agreement to exempt Japan from financial penalties seemed like a good idea at the time, given the Korean War and the necessity of keeping Japan economicly healthy. Many people looked back at the harm that reparations did to post WW I Germany.

It's tough to look back 60 years and not have hindsight.

Posted by Chuck Simmins">Chuck Simmins 2007-05-08 16:51|| http://northshorejournal.org]">[http://northshorejournal.org] 2007-05-08 16:51|| Front Page Top

#17 Free money for EVERYONE!! (Put it on the taxpayers tab)

Posted by Congress 2007-05-08 21:11|| 2007-05-08 21:11|| Front Page Top

#18 My paternal grandfather was a US Navy veteran and retiree, and post-retirement Naval Govt of Guam employee and farmer, whose USN experience and work skills caused him to be put into extensive forced labor wid other USN-USMC personnel-employees-retirees by the Japanese after the fall of Guam. He died in 1944 ["Year the Americans came/came back"] due to serious health complications induced by said extensive forced labor. Many other locals were also put to forced labor - while some Japanese soldiers were "fair", others were abusive and slapped people around if something went wrong. My own elderly mother claims that as a child = pre-teen during the war, she was slapped or punched around iff she + others failed to properly learn the Japanese language and related subjects, which all Chamorros-Guamanians were then ordered to learn ["re-education"]; or iff she was physically unable to report = march to Japanese-mandated work activities for any reason. She also claims one of her family's relations was publicly beheaded by the Japanese although she's not sure why. When it appeared in 1944 that Amer military forces were likely to attack Japanese-held Guam, many of the local men and boys whom had helped construct Japanese military defenses were marched off into the jungle and executed, i.e. beheaded or shot to death. E.g. YIGO MASSACRE > textbooks usually indicate up to 40 people were secretly executed after building Japanese defenses, but post-Battle/War US military records HINT/INFER a number in either 100-few 00? bodies were found by advancing US units. Some locals' ancestors whom "disappeared" during the war = US liberation of Guam have still never been found.

BONE OF DIPLO-LEGAL CONTENTION FOR THE PEOPLE OF GUAM vs JAPAN vs USA > Many Guam WW2 local survivors or thier heirs desire or want JAPAN to pay formal war reparations - however, POST-1945 US-SOVIET COLD WAR > Japan claims it was FOREVER precluded from paying war reparations due to post-WW2 agreements wid the USA, to include any litigations to collect same, or even from admitting any sort of war crimes-abuses by imperial Japanese forces. Basically, what it comes to is that for Guam WW2 survivors or their heirs to legally-formally collect any form of compensation for Japanese war atrocities or abuses on Guam, the only way to get it is for JAPAN TO SINGULARLY VOLUNTEER TO PAY, WHICH JAPAN = TOKYO HAS MADE CLEAR OVER THE MANY POST-WAR DECADES IT WILL NOT DO; OR TO COLLECT FROM WASHINGTON DC BY AND FOR AND IN PLACE OF JAPAN EVEN THOUGH IT WAS JAPANESE FORCES THAT COMMITTED THE ACTS, and since Japan likes to claim it is its post-war treaties wid the USA that precludes Japan from making any kind of $$$ reparations. FYI, JAPAN USES THE SAME RATIONALE-PREMISES, AMONGST OTHERS, AS TO THE "ASIAN COMFORT WOMEN" ISSUE, i.e. WHY JAPAN DOESN'T NEED TO APOLOGIZE NOR COMPENSATE.

Posted by JosephMendiola 2007-05-08 23:47|| 2007-05-08 23:47|| Front Page Top

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