News-Info-Alerts

Re: POW Reparations

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: April 18, 2002

"INTERVIEW/ Thomas Foley:POW reparations a new hot-button issue in U.S.

The Asahi Shimbun

This is the second of five interviews with prominent Americans and Japanese on the state of the Japan-U.S. alliance following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. Thomas Foley was interviewed by Toshiaki Miura, an Asahi Shimbun correspondent based in the newspaper's American General Bureau in Washington, D.C.

There is a new movement among former U.S. prisoners of war to seek compensation for the ordeals they suffered at the hands of Japan. It has been becoming a new ``historical issue'' between Japan and the United States, especially at a time when U.S. off-year elections are slated for this fall, because veterans have a powerful influence on congressmen.

Q:You have been actively involved with Japan for about 30 years now. How about the interest among U.S. congressmen and senators in Japan? Do they still have the same amount of interest as your generation?

A:They're not traveling as much as I think that they should. I was always disappointed when I was ambassador that there weren't more members coming to Japan. There is this tendency to believe that Japan is declining and that China is rising. For a time there were a great number of members who were going to China. Some members were very concerned about the threat of China and they went to China not so much to express friendship and appreciation, as to examine the adversary close-up, so to speak.

There was a group elected in 1994 that was more specifically interested in domestic issues and less interested in international affairs. Not specifically less interested in Japan, but just less interested in almost any international issue. I think that has led us to perhaps have too much confidence on our own judgments and to take action with a minimum of consultations and discussions with our allies.

Q:A new issue that has emerged recently is the decision by former U.S. prisoners of war who were forced into labor during World War II to seek compensation for their suffering. More than half of those in Congress are co-signers of a bill seeking to revise the interpretation of the peace treaty which eliminated the requirement for reparations. What is your view?

A:It's politically very difficult in any country to not be sensitive to the problems of war veterans, like the Yasukuni Shrine issue in Japan. So when it comes down to the question of whether you're for the American prisoners of war or for Japanese corporations, it's not a big puzzle for most members of Congress to decide to come on the side of the war veterans.

Q:The governments of both Japan and the United States are of the position that the issue was resolved by the peace treaty. What is your view?

A:The principle I am concerned about is that the treaty had specifically eliminated any requirement for reparations for acts done during the war. It was ratified by 66 to 10 in the U.S. Senate with all the issues being before it. My concern is that if our pledged word in the treaty isn't as ``strong as steel,'' then I don't know what is going to be believed.

Q:Some Japanese are wondering why this issue persists if the American side also believes in the importance of the alliance? Why did more than half of congressmen co-sign a bill to revise the interpretation of the treaty that is the basis for the alliance?

A:I think that's an independent thing, regardless of the validity of the treaty. I think it's a separate issue. Whatever went on was all, as a matter of law, wiped out by the treaty. But you can't silence the concerns that still exist because there are people still alive.

Q:What should be done?

A:We ought to pursue it in the way the British did. They paid their own war veterans the equivalent of about $20,000 as a symbolic reparation. There were some ideas expressed in the Congress of paying reparations directly. I think the way to handle it is to have the people proposing the idea to make symbolic payments from the American Treasury to those who have suffered on the grounds of the treaty.

Q:How do you think the issue will play itself out?

A:I think the long-term relationship is on solid ground. But it may have some continued life because we're approaching congressional elections. Every member of the House is up for election and it's just open and shut that most people running for office are going to wrap themselves around the idea of protecting the memory of the war dead.

Q:What should be the Japanese government's response?

A:I think it's understandable for the Japanese to step aside from the debate and let it go on in the United States without much effort to speak to the issues on their own side. The issue got a little bit out of hand before there was much expression of concern or any efforts on the part of Japanese companies or the Japanese government to deal with it. When the issue originally surfaced, there were only a few people that had co-sponsored the legislation. I think at that time it might have been time for the Japanese government and Japanese companies to try to present quietly the reasons why the legislation shouldn't go forward. But they didn't do very much and consequently it multiplied in sponsorship. And then people ask, ``Why have you not signed onto the bill when 300 members of Congress have added their names?'' So it's hard to turn the tide after the thing just goes like that.

Thomas Foley, 73, served as speaker of the U.S. House before he was appointed ambassador to Japan by then President Bill Clinton. Foley was stationed in Tokyo from 1997 until 2001. He has close ties to many Diet members and played a central role in exchanges involving legislators from the two nations. He retired from politics after he was defeated in the 1994 midterm congressional election. The U.S. Defense Department on Tuesday awarded him its top honor for civilians, for leadership in security affairs during his term as ambassador to Japan.(IHT/Asahi: April 18,2002)"