War Reparations Interview
This issue is waning in political importance due to the fact that the war generation is dying out. The number of people who would be eligible for compensation decreases with each year. The impetus is slowly being quashed as time ravages our elders and making the issue appear to be tragically moot. As I have written about on this blog many times, my feelings on this topic are mixed, and have not become any easier to process since my two war survivors, my grandparents have passed away. The image above is from a press conference held earlier this year to announce the creation of a non-profit advocacy group for Chamorro war survivors, which may at some point sue the US federal government over the lack of war reparations.
Here is an interview I did with the Marianas Variety a few years ago about this topic.
***************
A
postwar friendship between Guam and Japan did not develop quickly. When
the friendship was forged, it came at the behest of a variety of
forces,
most notably a desire amongst Japanese to erase their atrocities of the
past, and Guam’s need to expand its economy past colonial constraints.
Although
the war in Guam officially ends on August 10, 1944, the war doesn’t
really end in either Guam or Japan. Japan itself would continue to be
occupied by the US military until 1952 and until 1948, Japanese
stragglers were still being hunted throughout Guam. From 1944 – 1948,
the Guam Combat Patrol, which was comprised of Chamorro police officers,
killed 117 Japanese stragglers and captured five.
Two members of the combat patrol were killed and two others were
wounded in their rounding up of Japanese holdouts. The Treaty of San
Francisco returned sovereignty to Japan in 1952, and as part of that
treaty, the US accepted responsibility for all
futures claims against Japan for their conduct during the war. This is a
point, that is often forgotten both by people locally and especially in
the United States.
Throughout
the 1950s and early 1960s communication between Japan and Guam was
limited for a variety of factors. Japan was undergoing a process of
“forgetting”
their previous imperial efforts, that had led to them conquering huge
swaths of Asia and the Pacific. As a result, the history of occupying
Guam and Japan’s former colonies in Micronesia were obscured in the
national memory. On Guam’s end, until 1962 the island
was under a security clearance requirement, which meant that those
entering and leaving the island had to have the permission of the US
Navy to travel. This meant that the island, despite being on the edge of
Asia, was largely cut off from its neighbors.
Once
the security clearance was lifted in 1962, the Government of Guam
attempted to start a tourism industry and despite war wounds and
animosity that
persisted amongst your average Chamorro, at the elite level, Japan was
the perfect market. The liberalization of the Japanese travel industry
in 1964 led to a drop in the price of flights out of Japan, making the
dream of men such as former Governor Manuel
Guerrero possible. The US had developed a very close economic and
strategic relationship with their old enemy, and this made it easier for
Japanese to potentially visit Guam. Also, Japan was a close nearby
tourist market, which was growing rapidly in economic
terms, and had a culture that was increasingly driven to sample
Americana. At the village level however, things remained much more
ambivalent. Many survivors of the war, were uncertain how to greet the
Japanese when they began to trickle in as tourists. Early
Japanese tourists traveling in the Southern villages in the 1960s and
1970s were often targets for vandalism, most commonly rocks thrown at
their buses or cars.
In
symbolic terms, a 1965 visit by Japanese searching for the bones of
their soldiers who had died in Guam in World War II, helped to make
peace between
Chamorros and Japanese. The late Father Oscar Calvo met with them and
eventually worked towards the erecting of the South Pacific Memorial
Park in Yigo, at the site of the last command post by the Japanese
during the occupation. By the 1970s, attitudes had
changed significantly. For instance, throughout the 1950s and even the
early 1960s, there was always whispers and suspicions of Japanese
stragglers still hiding out on Guam. In 1960 Bunzo Minagawa and Masahi
Ito were discovered within a few days of each other.
Their presence received some local and international attention. But
this paled in comparison to the reception that Shoichi Yokoi received
when he was discovered in 1972. He became an instant local celebrity and
icon and was also treated so when he returned
to Japan. The treatment of Yokoi shows the changing attitudes in Guam
and in Japan. For Guam, there was already a great desire amongst the
elite to develop Japan as Guam’s primary tourist market, and Yokoi being
discovered, his garnering temporary international
fame for the island was like a boon from heaven.
Yokoi’s
place in Guam History is primarily related to this oddity status and the
way that Guam was briefly put on the map when Yokoi when he was found
by two Chamorro
farmers. What is often forgotten however is the role that Yokoi played
in helping to develop Guam’s postwar tourism industry. Yokoi’s role was
not intentional and not necessarily even direct. But his being
discovered in Guam and his affinity to the island
that persisted long after he returned to Japan, helped to change the
image that the Japanese had of Guam.
When Yokoi
was captured he expected to be killed or imprisoned. Instead he was
treated as a celebrity, both locally and in Japan. Dozens of journalists
made a pilgrimage
to Guam to learn more about this living, surviving Japanese relic of
World War II. Guam was a casualty of squabbling empires during the war
and in the immediate postwar years it became a victim of Japanese
amnesia. The ghosts of Japanese empire remained in
Guam. Close to 20,000 soldiers died in Guam, heaping humiliation on the
shame of their defeat by the Americans. Guam had once signified
victory, but during the war and after it started to signify the
soul-draining horror of defeat. Guam become invisible due
to this willful amnesia.
In his
later years Yokoi most likely felt more at home in Guam than in Japan.
He loved the island in the same way one cannot let go of the sites of
their trauma because
of the way they have become too dear and too intimate in terms of how
have formed their identity. Yokoi returned to Guam on several occasions,
including his honeymoon. When he traveled to Guam reporters followed
him and toured the island with him. He allowed
the Japanese to see Guam in a new way. When he was first found in
January 1972, it was winter in Japan and so reporters arriving in Guam
wore winter clothes. While waiting for news, they toured around the
island, marveling at its natural beauty, creating a
new way for the Japanese to see Guam. Now as a tropical paradise with
where an exciting bit of human trivia had been hiding for 28 years, not a
site of their old atrocities.
The
relationship has continued to evolve from there. Guam marketed itself,
rather successful as a cheap American style, Polynesian tourist
destination and within a few
decades had more than a million Japanese visiting yearly. The
forgiveness between Japanese and Chamorros was facilitated by the
economic aspects. I wonder, if Japan had not been the most practical
postwar tourist market to develop, if Chamorros would have
gotten over their anger and fear towards its people so quickly. I have
heard some posit, that the Chamorro culture, whether in ancient
indigenous forms, or in its current Catholic forms led to Chamorros
forgiving the Japanese so quickly for their atrocities.
For most people on island today, Japanese tourists are as common as
coconuts or military planes flying overhead. They have become part of
our normal landscape and so we don’t really question why they are here
and what happened to normalize things between our
elders and them. But despite the veneer of friendship, there is still a
quiet, but persist desire amongst some segments of the Chamorro
community to have their suffering at the hands of the Japanese be
recognized and that they receive an apology. In the early
1990s, the activist group Nasion Chamoru held protests
in Tumon against Japanese tourists, where they held up signs writing in
Japanese, reminding them about their atrocities their ancestors
committed and how Chamorros have never been compensated
for that or received an apology. Japan has offered formal apologies for
a number of its atrocities during the war, such as a general offering
of “remorse” in 1995 to the people hurt during the war, admitting that
their treatment of South Koreans was “truly
regrettable” and that the Japanese government is deeply remorseful
about it in 1965, and a 2009 apology through an ambassador for those who
suffered during the Bataan Death March. In 2010, Guam received an
informal apology from Japanese consul Yoshiyuki Kimura
at an event titled “Real People, Real Stories” organized by Senator
Frank Blas Jr.
On the
matter of reparations, even if they are provided, they will always be
tainted by the amount of time that it took to secure them. Whether the
blame lies with leaders
in Guam or in Washington D.C., it does not change the fact that the
majority of those who suffered in the war, they and their families will
receive nothing. If it is every secured, it would be the hollowest of
victories, something for honoring graves, rather
than lives. In the war, we were victims caught between the clashes or
empires, fighting over our lands, but never truly caring about our
people. Should war reparations ever arrive, it would only reinforce that
idea, albeit in a contemporary context. One final
though: many Chamorro survivors of World War II downplayed the need for
monetary compensation (as it felt wrong to try to put a price tag on
their suffering), most hoped instead for a real and sincere apology,
something that could help them make sense of the
crazy path their lives had taken, where friends become enemies only to
become friends again. It is unfortunate, that so many of them were
deprived even simple kindness.
Comments