Descendants of Alaska’s last Native leader demand reparations from Japan for 1942 invasion

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Helena Pagano’s great-grandfather was the last Alaska Native chief on a remote island in the Bering Sea closer to Russia than North America. During World War II, when the Japanese army invaded Japan, he took dozens of residents of the village away and never came back. He starved to death as a prisoner of war.

Pagano has long argued that Japan should pay more reparations for what its soldiers did to her great-grandfather and other residents of Attu Island.

But this summer, her first visit to the island sparked her need again. She joined Japanese officials who redoubled their efforts to find the remains of World War II soldiers killed abroad, and they dug up two bodies from the tundra.

Pagano said the Atuans “lost their homes, they lost their families. The story has never been told and the Japanese have never really helped us in this.”

Attu Island is the westernmost island in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. It was one of the few U.S. territories occupied during the war, including Guam, the Philippines and the nearby island of Kiska.

On June 7, 1942, Japanese troops landed on Attu Island and killed the radio operator. The residents were kept in their homes for three months and then taken to Japan.

In 1943, the U.S. military launched a bloody battle to retake Attu Island amid hurricanes, heavy rain, and dense fog. This battle was called the “forgotten battle” of the war. More than 2,500 Japanese soldiers died in combat or by suicide, and the U.S. military lost about 550 soldiers.

Of the 41 residents interned on the Japanese island of Hokkaido, 22 died of malnutrition, starvation, tuberculosis or other diseases over the next more than two years, including Pagano’s great-grandfather and last chief, Mike Mike Hodikoff. Khodikov and his son both died in 1945, succumbing to food poisoning as they eked out a living by digging through rotting garbage.

After the war, the surviving Atuans were not allowed to return to the island because the U.S. military said rebuilding would be too costly. Most were sent to the island of Atka, about 200 miles (322 kilometers) away. The last imprisoned residents of Attu died last year.

Pagano said that in 1951, six years after the war ended, Japan did provide the surviving Atuan with a three-year stipend of about $4,000 per year—higher than the average annual salary in the United States at the time. Almost everyone accepted, but her grandmother refused, believing that the treatment of prisoners of war was too horrific to be compensated with money.

Pagano, director of Atux Forever, a nonprofit dedicated to Atuan culture, said the Japanese never provided compensation to the families for the deaths of the prisoners, the loss of their land and the destruction of Atuan culture and language. She said historical trauma still haunts the approximately 300 Attuan descendants who remain in the United States.

In addition to compensation, she would like to see the Japanese government invest in an Attu cultural center somewhere on the Alaskan mainland and work with the U.S. government on environmental cleanup of Attu Island, including the removal of old anti-aircraft guns and steel plates where Japan is located, she said. A peace monument was erected without the involvement of Atuan or American veterans who fought in the war.

Officials at Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare and Ministry of Foreign Affairs said they had not received Atuan’s request for additional compensation.

Demands for reparations were filed against atrocities committed against prisoners of war, wartime North Korean forced laborers and “comfort women” from across Asia who were forced into prostitution for Japanese soldiers. But Yoshitaka Sato, an official at Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, said the Japanese government insists that all compensation issues are settled under the 1951 Treaty of San Francisco or other treaties, to which signatories have given up their rights. As an exception, Japan established funds for women in 1995 and 2015.

Pagano said the 1951 treaty would not prohibit additional compensation.

The island is part of the Alaska Marine National Wildlife Refuge. In August, Pagano made his first trip to Attu, aboard a boat operated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the refuge.

She said she had no prior knowledge that Japanese officials would exhume any remains, which she considered disrespectful, and said the bones could be those of Attu residents or U.S. soldiers.

Jeff Williams, deputy shelter manager, said the excavation plan was not approved until just before departure.

The former Attu Village site where the bones were unearthed is owned by the Aleut Corporation, one of several regional for-profit companies established to benefit Alaska Natives. Spokeswoman Kate Gilling said in an email that the Aleut Corporation “recognizes the significant historical trauma the Atuan people suffered during and after World War II” and is aware of Atux Forever’s call for reparations.

“We believe that greater collaboration between all entities in the Aleutian Islands and Pribilof Island regions will help advance comprehensive and inclusive solutions,” she said.

As veterans and their relatives age, Japan’s government has faced growing calls to speed up the recovery of remains and has already done so, including making greater use of DNA testing. The remains of just over half of the approximately 2.4 million Japanese servicemen killed in the war outside Japan have been recovered.

In 1953, Japan conducted its first landfill on Attu Island and found the remains of approximately 320 Japanese soldiers. These remains were transported back to Japan and stored in the Chidorigafuchi National Cemetery. The whereabouts of the other remains on Attu are unknown.

Sato, a Japanese government official, said the U.S. government controls the area where Japan can investigate the remains and requires Japan to take necessary environmental protection measures.

Sato said Japan’s efforts to recover Attu’s remains had long been on hold, largely due to U.S. environmental concerns. In 2009, the U.S. government requested an environmental assessment, causing further delays of more than a decade.

Sato said that before visiting Attu in August, the United States proposed a no-dig survey but later allowed shoveling in a small area of ​​land. Under the supervision of U.S. officials, the remains of two suspected Japanese soldiers were exhumed.

The body was sent to Anchorage for temporary storage, pending preliminary evaluation by Japanese experts, who will be dispatched before the end of March. If analysis determines that the remains are likely to be Japanese, the samples will be sent to Japan for DNA testing, Sato said.

During his August visit, Pagano spent two days on the island collecting water samples from the creek to check for lingering environmental contamination.

While others returned to the boat to sleep at night, she camped out – possibly the first Attuan to spend the night on the island since the residents were forcibly relocated 82 years ago.

“I do feel very calm, peaceful and whole as a human being,” Pagano said.

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Yamaguchi reported from Tokyo.