Guam residents finally to get war reparations
HAGATNA, Guam — For Antonina Palomo Cross, Japan’s occupation of Guam started with terror at church. The then-7-year-old was attending Catholic services with her family when the 1941 invasion began, setting off bomb blasts, sirens and screams.
It ended with her family surrendering their home and eventually carrying the dead body of her malnourished baby sister on a forced march to a concentration camp.
Now 85, Cross is among more than 3,000 native islanders on Guam who are expecting to get long-awaited compensation from the U.S. government for their suffering at the hands of imperial Japan during World War II.
Payments of $10,000 to $25,000 — federal tax money normally reserved for Guam’s coffers — will be made to those who underwent forced labor or internment, suffered severe injury or rape, or lost loved ones during the U.S. territory’s nearly three-year occupation. A 1951 peace treaty forgave Japan of the responsibility to pay Guam reparations.
“I’m happy to get it,” Cross said after a recent meeting at central Guam’s newly opened war claims office, where she verified her payment was approved. The amount hasn’t been determined yet, but “every little bit helps,” she said.
Cross is retired from a local government job and relies on Social Security and her pension to get by. The great-grandmother said the war claims money will come in handy for manamko’ — “elders” in the language of Guam’s indigenous Chamorro people — like her.
The United States, which first captured Guam during the Spanish-American War, had a small contingent of troops on the island when Japan invaded on the same December day that it attacked Pearl Harbor. Many were taken prisoner or killed.
But most of those affected by the occupation were Chamorro people, who suffered internment, torture, rape and beheadings. More than 1,100 are estimated to have died during the occupation.
Receiving the compensation now is a bittersweet moment that caps decades of political efforts by Guam’s nonvoting U.S. House delegates to persuade Congress that the people of Guam deserve recognition for their suffering under Japanese occupation.
President Barack Obama signed the Guam war claims measure in 2016. It provides $10,000 to those who underwent forced marches or internment, or had to escape internment; $12,000 to those who experienced forced labor or personal injury; $15,000 to people who were severely injured or raped; and $25,000 to children, spouses and some parents of those killed during the occupation.
However, Guam Congressman Michael San Nicolas said the law that created the war claims program was missing language needed to allow the U.S. Treasury to release the funds. His bill to fix that error passed the Senate this month and is headed to the House.
Emotions were mixed at the war claims office as dozens lined up earlier this month, several with canes, walkers and wheelchairs.
Jesus Meno San Nicolas, 86, recalled his sister hiding in a tree to escape soldiers looking for women to rape.
He was forced to work six days a week in the rice fields as an 8-year-old, walking more than 2 miles each way every day. He also helped grow cabbage, radishes and other food for the Japanese.
His brothers had to work on the airfield. Once, a Japanese soldier told him to leave the house so he could rape a female relative. Meno San Nicolas still remembers her screaming.
He almost didn’t file a claim.
“It’s not worth it for the money, what they do to us in the family,” he said, his voice cracking with emotion.