Calls for Japan to Pay Reparations for 1942 Aleutian Islands Invasion

The Aleutian Islands Campaign of World War II is often overlooked when discussions of the conflict occur. The Japanese invasion and occupation, which ran from 1942-43, saw the region’s Indigenous population removed from their villages, with many taken as prisoners of war (POWs) and sent to Japan. Others were held in internment camps by the US government following Pearl Harbor. Eight decades later, a descendant of the last Native leader of Attu Island is demanding reparations from Japan, as payment for what her great-grandfather and others had to face following the military invasion. Type A Kō-hyōteki mini submarine, destroyed by the Allies during Operation Cottage, on Kiska, Aleutian Islands, 1943. (Photo Credit: Keystone / Hulton Archive / Getty Images) Speaking with the Associated Press, Helena Pagano shared that her great-grandfather, Mike Hodikoff, died of starvation during the Second World War while being held prisoner by the Japanese on Hokkaido Island. Of the 41 village residents who were held on Hokkaido, 22 perished from tuberculosis, starvation or malnutrition. Hodikoff and his son, in particular, got food poisoning from scrounging through garbage for something to eat and died from the illness. They and the others who were forced from their Attu settlement...