[ OUR OPINION ]
Guam restitution long
time in comingWHEN the United States waived claims of reparations against the Japanese following World War II, it essentially assumed the burden of paying compensation to residents of U.S. territories. Guam residents who suffered brutality at the hands of their Japanese for 30 months are still waiting for compensation, comparable to that paid to residents of Micronesia and the Philippines. Congress should approve a federal commission's recommendation of payments totaling $125 million to the victims of atrocities and barbarism.
THE ISSUE
A U.S. commission recommends $125 million for Guam residents for their suffering during the World War II Japanese occupation.
The Guam War Claims Review Commission, appointed last September by Interior Secretary Gale Norton, conducted hearings and heard stories of "oppressive, cruel and barbaric" conduct by the Japanese during its occupation from the day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor until August 1944, when Guam was liberated by U.S. forces. The Japanese tortured Guam's indigenous Chamorros for concealing American soldiers in the territory.
"Public executions -- usually by beheading -- became frighteningly common," the five-member commission said this week in its report back to Norton.
Congress passed a law in November 1945 that was intended to compensate American nationals living on Guam during the Japanese occupation, but it provided an opportunity window of only a year to make such claims. The law's implementation also "was severely flawed due in large part to the chaotic environment on Guam after liberation and the dislocation of families," according to Madeleine Bordallo, Guam's delegate to the U.S. House.
Guamanians who applied for claims during that brief period received only a pittance of what they should have been paid. The family of one man who was beheaded is said to have received just $200 from the United States.
In its 1951 peace treaty with Japan, the United States effectively waived all claims of reparations against Japan by American citizens, which Guam residents had become a year earlier. Efforts have been made for years to follow through with proper amounts.
The commission recommends payments of $12,000 to Guam residents who suffered injury, internment, forced labor or forced march during the occupation, totaling $100 million. Recommended payments of $25,000 to families of Guamanians who died during the occupation would total $25 million.
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Stem cell research needed
despite odds of Alzheimer’s
curePUBLIC tributes to Ronald Reagan are as much acknowledgment of his ability to capture and communicate an American ideal as sympathy for a former president whose last years were ravaged by a horrible disease that stole his self-identity and mental faculties.
THE ISSUE
The use of embryonic cells to find a cure for Alzheimer's disease is believed to be unlikely.
Compassion for a man afflicted with Alzheimer's and public advocacy from his widow -- who suffered another kind of anguish as she watched her husband slowly fade away -- have blunted opposition to human embryonic stem cell research.
The reality that Alzheimer's is among the diseases least likely to be cured by stem cell treatments, however, is no reason for President Bush to continue to stifle research. The potential that stem cell transplants have for other grave diseases such as Parkinson's and diabetes, as well as spinal cord injuries, demands research be expanded.
Nancy Reagan's support prompted 58 U.S. senators -- including 14 Republicans, some of whom are opposed to abortion -- to send a letter to the White House, asking the current occupant to relax federal restrictions on research. The House sent Bush a similar message.
Bush's executive order in 2001 limited federal funding to 78 existing embryonic stem cell lines, but only 19 of those lines are available to researchers and have been contaminated, making them uncertain for human use.
Whether Bush will bend his policy is doubtful. He will not want to further ruffle his conservative base in an election year, but may derail the momentum for loosening the limits by pointing out how slim the chances are that stem cell treatments will benefit those with Reagan's affliction.
That argument would deny recognition that such research might unlock the key to heal other diseases just as debilitating and life-threatening as Alzheimer's, diseases that strike hundreds of millions of people. In addition, studies might lead to insights into how Alzheimer's develops and how to hold it in check.
Bush's ideological biases and political desires should not stand in the way of science. There are too many people besides the late president who would be abandoned to Reagan's long goodbye.
