- Hundreds of former US prisoners of war have begun a battle
for compensation after uncovering documents that allegedly prove the wartime
administration deliberately used them as a tool to whip up domestic support
for war with Japan.
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- A former prisoner has uncovered papers in the US National
Archive that she claims prove the government restricted the travel of 7,000
American citizens from the Philippines, while at the same time encouraging
evacuation of Americans from other potential Japanese targets in China
and south-east Asia.
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- A federal lawsuit filed yesterday in Washington, DC,
alleges that the government at first wanted to keep Americans in the Philippines
to discourage Japanese aggression, but later used them as a political tool.
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- A group of 500 former prisoners claim the plan was devised
by the US wartime leader, Franklin D Roosevelt. with the approval of Winston
Churchill, Britain's Prime Minister, to cause outrage among American citizens
unwilling to back a war on Japan.
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- Americans were denied passport and travel documents to
let them flee. They were later captured by the Japanese and held in notorious
camps under appalling conditions.
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- Marcia Fee Achenbach, one of those captured, was four
when her camp was liberated by US soldiers in 1944. She discovered the
papers while doing research in the National Archive. Among the evidence
uncovered was a telegram that Francis Sayre, the high commissioner of the
Philippines, had sent to the US state department urging an evacuation plan.
The state department's confidential reply read: "Visualise the remaining
of Americans generally in the Philippines in an emergency, and plan accordingly."
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- Other evidence includes a letter from one of the commissioner's
secretaries indicating that officials were not to issue passports. The
secretary states that she wrote more than 5,000 letters rejecting passport
applications during the build up to Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.
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- In the notorious Philippine POW camps, starvation and
disease were rampant, and hundreds died as internees were reduced to eating
cats, dogs, rats and weeds to survive. Many of the camp's leaders were
executed by the Japanese as the US army advanced to recapture the islands.
Ms Achenbach said: "I remember having to run around to get away from
the shelling. I grew up thinking that we were in the wrong place at the
wrong time. I was angry and astounded to find out later I didn't have to
go through some of the things I went through."
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- Anthony D'Amato, the lawyer who filed the suit, believes
the orders came directly from Roosevelt. He also thinks the US leader discussed
his plans for the Philippines in telephone talks with Churchill.
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- Transcripts of those conversations were ordered to be
sealed indefinitely by President Harry Truman, but Mr D'Amato is asking
for them to be made public. "We believe this smoking gun is in those
transcripts," he said.
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- Frances Cogan, a professor at the University of Oregon,
said the government had other reasons for its actions. "It was thought
that if they moved the Americans out of the Philippines, it would look
like we were going to launch a war against Japan," said Prof Cogan,
author of Captured: The Internment of American civilians in the Philippines
1941-1945. "Another reason was to keep the Filipino people from feeling
they had been deserted and left to rot."
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- Regarding the actions of US officials, Prof Cogan said:
"Certainly they lied. Certainly they kept them from leaving and getting
transportation out. The effect was that people remained there, however
they did it and for whatever reasons."
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- Even if the allegations are proved, legal experts say
winning a suit against the government over a wartime event that that happened
60 years ago may not lead to the desired apology. One complication is that
the prisoners have already received some financial recompense. After their
release, former prisoners were paid one dollar for each day of internment
from the proceeds of a sale of Japanese assets frozen in other countries.
As part of that deal, the United States and other nations waived the rights
of their citizens to sue Japan.
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- http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=820792002
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