Alaska’s Anchorage (AP) The last Alaska Native leader of a secluded island in the Bering Sea, nearer Russia than North America, was Helena Pagano’s great-grandfather. When Japanese troops stormed their town during World War II and drove the few dozen residents out, he perished from starvation as a prisoner of war, never to return.
Pagano has long held the opinion that Japan ought to make greater amends for the harm that its soldiers inflicted on her great-grandfather and the other Attu Island residents.
Her first trip to the island this summer, however, reignited her demand. She accompanied Japanese officials who dug out the bones of two people from the tundra as part of a renewed effort to retrieve the remains of World War II soldiers slain overseas.
According to Pagano, the Attuans lost both their lands and their relatives. The Japanese have never actually aided us in that area, and this narrative was never told.
The westernmost island in Alaska’s Aleutian chain is Attu Island. Along with Guam, the Philippines, and the neighboring island of Kiska, it was one of the few American possessions to fall during the conflict.
The radio operator was killed on June 7, 1942, when the Japanese landed on Attu. After three months in their homes, the inhabitants were transported to Japan.
In what became known as the war’s forgotten fight, American soldiers fought a brutal campaign to reclaim Attu Island in 1943 amid hurricane-force winds, rain, and heavy fog. American forces lost over 550 soldiers, while over 2,500 Japanese soldiers perished in battle or committed suicide.
Over the course of the following two or more years, 22 of the 41 people who were incarcerated on Hokkaido Island in Japan—including Pagano’s great-grandfather, Mike Hodikoff, the final chief—died from malnourishment, starvation, disease, or other illnesses. After being forced to forage through rotting trash for food, Hodikoff and his kid both passed away in 1945 from food sickness.
The U.S. military claimed that rebuilding the island would be too costly, thus surviving Attuans were prohibited from returning after the war. Atka Island, which is roughly 200 miles (322 kilometers) away, received the majority. Thelast surviving Attu residentsthat were held in captivity died last year.
In 1951, six years after the end of the war, Japan did offer the Attuans who survived about $4,000 a year more than the average U.S. annual salary at the time for three years, Pagano said. Nearly all accepted, but her grandmother refused, suggesting the treatment the POWs endured was too awful to be compensated with money.
The Japanese never compensated the families for the deaths of prisoners or for the loss of land and damage to Attuan culture and language, said Pagano, who runs Atux Forever, a nonprofit devoted to Attuan culture. The historical trauma still weighs on the 300 or so Attuan descendants remaining in the U.S., she said.
In addition to restitution, she would like to see the Japanese government work with the U.S. government to clean up Attu Island’s environment, including removing steel planking used for temporary air strips and anti-aircraft guns, and erecting a peace memorial that she claims was built without consulting Attuans or American veterans who fought in the conflict.
Officials at Japan s Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry and the Foreign Ministry said they have not received requests for additional restitution from Attuans.
There have been compensation demands for brutality against POWs, wartime Korean forced laborers and comfort women from across Asia who were forced into prostitution for Japanese soldiers. But the Japanese government has insisted that all compensation issues were settled under a 1951 treaty in San Francisco, whose signatory members had waived their rights, or other treaties, said Yoshitaka Sato, an official at the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry. Japan was an exception, having established funds for women in 1995 and 2015.
Pagano says the 1951 treaty would not bar additional restitution.
The island is part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. In August, Pagano made her first trip to Attu, on a ship operated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the refuge.
She said she didn t know ahead of time that the Japanese officials would be exhuming any remains, and she considered it disrespectful, saying the bones could have been those of Attu residents or U.S. soldiers.
Jeff Williams, deputy manager of the refuge, said the exhumation plans weren t approved until just before the trip.
The former Attu village site, where the bones were unearthed, is owned by the Aleut Corp. one of several regional, for-profit corporations set up to benefit Alaska Natives. In an email, spokesperson Kate Gilling said the Aleut Corp. recognizes the significant historical trauma endured by the Attuan people during and after World War II and that it was aware of Atux Forever s call for reparations.
We believe greater partnership between all entities in the Aleutian and Pribilof Island region will help advance solutions that are comprehensive and inclusive, she said.
As war veterans and their relatives age, the Japanese government has faced growing calls to speed the recovery of remains and has done so, including more use of DNA testing. Of about 2.4 million Japanese troops who died in the war outside Japan, the remains of a little more than half have been recovered.
Japan conducted its first reclamation of remains on Attu in 1953 and recovered those of about 320 Japanese soldiers, which were taken to Japan and stored at the Chidorigafuchi National Cemetery. The remains of the others on Attu are unaccounted for.
Sato, the Japanese government official, said the U.S. government controls what areas Japan can survey for remains and requires Japan to take necessary environmental protection measures.
Japanese efforts to recover remains on Attu had long been on hold, largely due to U.S. environmental concerns, Sato said. In 2009, the U.S government required environmental assessment that led to further delay of more than a decade.
Prior to the August visit to Attu, the U.S. proposed a survey without digging, but later allowed shoveling inside of a small piece of land, Sato said. Under the supervision of U.S. officials, the remains of two suspected Japanese soldiers were unearthed.
The remains were sent to Anchorage for temporary storage pending a preliminary evaluation by Japanese experts to be dispatched by the end of March. If their analysis determines the remains are very likely Japanese, samples will be sent to Japan for DNA testing, Sato said.
During the August visit, Pagano spent two days on the island, collecting water samples from a creek to check for lingering environmental contamination.
While others returned to the ship to sleep at night, she camped out likely the first Attuan to spend a night on the island since the residents were forcibly removed 82 years ago.
I did feel really calm and peaceful and complete as a human being, Pagano said.
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Yamaguchi reported from Tokyo.
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