“Appropriate Compensation”
May 27, 2004
Worried over his lowest approval ratings ever, President Bush asked Republicans to "keep the faith". And...Worried about the international media orgy over the Abu Ghraib fiasco, Donald Rumsfeld offered his “deepest apology” to “those Iraqis who were mistreated by members of U.S. armed forces”. Rumsfeld also added that he (courtesy of the American taxpayer) wants to “provide appropriate compensation to those detainees who suffered grievous and brutal abuse and cruelty at the hands of a few members of the U.S. military.” This might sound reasonable except that....
Americans taken prisoner by the Japanese during World War II were brutalized and enslaved by their captors....in concert with “Corporate Japan”. Many of those who survived (and almost half of them did not) have been seeking, without success, “Appropriate Compensation” from the Japanese companies who so graciously profited from the slave labor of American POWs.
Orrin Hatch informed the Senate that, “many of these POWs were forced into slave labor for private Japanese steel mills and other private companies until the end of the war. During the war, over 27,465 Americans were captured and interned by the Japanese; tragically, only 16,000 made it home.” These ex-POWs face a triad of resistance from the Japanese government, Japanese corporations and...the U.S. State Department!
That’s right...the same U.S. government that is so eager to pee your money down an Iraqi drain of “Appropriate Compensation” actively plays an adversarial role in denying even “a day in court” for U.S. POWs who know the real meaning of the term “abused”. Where is the New York Times and its Upper West Side pathos when Americans are in need?
As reported in the New York Times, “Since last June, the military has paid more than $2.5 million in compensation claims in Iraq....” Since the end of World War II, the Japanese have paid zero to its American ex-slaves...not even an apology. However, the U.S. government, under the War Claims Act, has paid these tragic heroes an extraordinary $1.00 a day for missed meals and $1.50 per day for lost wages (for the period of their enslavement). The Americans in the Bataan Death March would have faired better as captured Taliban in GITMO!
In 1999, ex-POW Lester Tenney filed a lawsuit for reparations against the Japanese Mitsui conglomerate. As reported by Parade Magazine, Mitsui was the owner of a coal mine 35 miles from Nagasaki that was “so dangerous...Japanese miners refused to work in it.” In 1942, Tenney became a Mitsui-owned slave in this mine.
Again from Parade, “When he was taken prisoner, Tenney weighed 185 pounds. When he was liberated in 1945, he weighed 97 pounds.” Unlike the GITMO Taliban, Tenney did not receive “warm showers, toiletries, water, clean clothes, blankets, regular, culturally appropriate meals, prayer mats and the right to practice their religion”.
Opposite the compassionate willingness to pay “Appropriate Compensation” to the “abused” Iraqis at Abu Ghraib, the U.S. government came down hard on Tenney’s lawsuit, and other similar lawsuits, by siding with the Japanese.
From Parade, “...the U.S. government stepped in on behalf of the Japanese and...succeeded in getting them (the lawsuits) dismissed by Vaughn R. Walker, a federal judge in the Northern District of California...Judge Walker declared...that the fact that we had won the war was enough of a payoff. His exact words were: ‘The immeasurable bounty of life for themselves [the POWs] and their posterity in a free society services the debt.’”.
The federal judge in Tenney’s case ruled that the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951waived further claims of wartime atrocities against Japan and its nationals. This treaty stemmed from the post World War II need to secure Japan as an ally against the Soviets in the Cold War.
By 2001, Iris Chang reasoned that the continued denial of justice for the remaining 5000 American survivors of Japanese enslavement resulted from the Bush administration’s fear that “it might interfere with gathering international support for the war on terrorism.” First American ex-POWs are pawns in a game against the Soviets and now, they are sacrificed for Islamic extremists. Yet, the U.S. government is hell-bent to offer-up “Appropriate Compensation” to un-uniformed Iraqi prisoners.
Of course the U.S. government had no problem funding more than a billion dollars as restitution for Japanese-Americans interred on U.S. soil during World War II. While a congressman, Norman “Fly-the-Unsafe-Skies” Mineta was the driving force behind passage of H.R. 442, the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 which delivered an apology and a $20,000 reparations payment from the U.S. government for each of those who were interned against their will in the camps. A few years later, Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act Amendments of 1992 that expanded the scope of the 1998 act.
Performing its usual unpatriotic duty in 2003, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that treaties signed by the United States barred prisoners from seeking restitution. On the back of this, the U.S. Supreme Court set aside appeals from former American prisoners of war and others who were forced to work for private Japanese companies as slave laborers during World War II. No doubt that “Appropriate Compensation” will be paid to Iraqis without a judicial peep.
True to America’s pathetic modus operandi, Sen. Orrin Hatch, in 2003, co-sponsored legislation benefiting these survivors. The "Resolution of Claims of American POWs of the Japanese Act of 2003", would authorize the payment of compensation to former prisoners of war for forced labor for Japanese companies during World War II to the tune of $10,000 for each POW still living. The Clinton administration axed a previous proposal to pay these POWs $20,000 each.
Although well intentioned, and better than nothing, this approach is perverse. The U.S. taxpayer would fund reparations to U.S. taxpayers for Japanese atrocities. Isn’t that like funding “Appropriate Compensation” for Abu Ghraib prisoners from Iraqi oil revenue? Sell that to the peace loving clerics.
It just stinks that the warm and fuzzy suits in Washington can’t wait to sign checks for “abused” Iraqis while “Appropriate Compensation” for Americans, described by Senator Hatch as the “living testaments to the indomitable human spirit that is the fabric of... the United States of America”, is on a permanent hold until they die out. “Appropriate Compensation” might be a little less fuss over un-uniformed Iraqi prisoners and some justice for our American heroes.
As Senator Hatch has pointed out, “Everyone here living in freedom owes them a tremendous debt of gratitude.” We certainly owe them a tremendous debt of gratitude, but Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Kawasaki and Nippon Steel owe them millions...not to mention a formal apology from the Japanese government!
RightPage