[Cheburashka]

Thanks for this enlightening post. What say you to the post below yours?
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The 1945 Act appears to be capped at $5,000. In other words, (hypothetically) you lose your mother, father, three brothers and sisters and you get: $5,000. In 1945 dollars. On Guam. Is that adequate compensation? I can't judge that.

But a look at the present act and it screams PORK!!!!

Maybe some more money is justified, but not the amounts they're talking about. And a 5 billion dollar fund is a sick joke.

[steveegg]

The 1945 Act appears to be capped at $5,000. In other words, (hypothetically) you lose your mother, father, three brothers and sisters and you get: $5,000. In 1945 dollars. On Guam. Is that adequate compensation? I can't judge that.

Actually, it wasn't a hard cap, and it didn't apply to death or injury claims. The $5,000 (which is somewhere north of $52,000 in 2007 dollars) limit applied only to what the Department of the Navy could approve on its own authority. Anything beyond $5,000, as well as all death and injury claims, could still be pursued, only the approval of the settlement of such claims needed to go through Congress.

[enough_idiocy]

The agreement that Clinton signed re: Nazi eras crimes wasn’t any better than that, and that was implemented in the 1990s. Clinton, without going to Congress, worked with Shroeder to create the German Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and the Future”, people get 5 and under from the cases I’ve read, and US courts don’t allow victims living here or their decedents to sue in federal courts opting instead to defer to that program.