By Mar-Vic Cagurangan
Variety News Staff

THE war reparations bill may have passed the first hurdle at the House of Representatives but the people of Guam can’t simply cross their fingers or sit in complacence as the legislation heads to the Senate, according to the cochairmen of the Guam War Claims Review Commission.
Sen. Tony Unpingco, R-Santa Rita, and former Sen. Benjamin Cruz urge Guam residents to use their family and social networks in the mainland to drum up support for H.R. 1595, or the Guam World War II Loyalty Recognition Act, which passed the House of Representatives last week on a 288-133 vote.
In separate interviews, Cruz and Unpingco said the war claims bill is not expected to have smooth sailing in the Senate as there are still some legal issues connected with the bill that have yet to be resolved.
“I want to be a little cautious right now. You don’t want to bring hopes up, but if we will work collectively, maybe we can get the chance to bring some type of closure to the war,” Unpingco said.
“Right now, what we need to do is appeal to U.S. senators, and also to Chamorro organizations in the U.S. to e-mail or write the senators and lobby for the bill,” he added.
Unpingco said the congressional bill, which caps the reparation amount at $126 million, may not be enough to compensate for the sufferings that the people of Guam had gone through, but “it’s better than nothing.”
Unpingco and Cruz were among the authors of the Guam war claims review report, which was partially the basis of H.R. 1595 filed by Congresswoman Madeleine Bordallo.
Cruz said Bordallo’s bill contained provisions that were not part of the commission’s recommendations.
Some of the bill’s provisions, Cruz said, might be hard to justify at the Senate due to absence of legal precedents. He mentioned, for example, the provision for the $7,000 compensation for survivors of those who either died or were injured during the Japanese occupation.
“I think there may be some legal processes that the senators will have to address. There’s no legal precedent providing for compensation for those who passed away before passage of the act,” Cruz said.
“I’m not sure if they would be wiling to make that precedent. If they do, that might trigger demands from other claimants to open their own cases,” he added.
Cruz, nevertheless, expressed confidence that the bill would be out by next year, if the U.S. Senate chooses to strike out the contentious provisions and work out the rest of the legislation.
Two weeks ago, the Guam Legislature adopted a resolution supporting and endorsing Bordallo’s H.R. 1595.