Descendants of the last traditional leader on the Alaskan island are demanding Japanese retribution for the 1942 invasion

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) – Helena Pagano's great-grandfather was the last Alaska Native chief on a remote island in the Bering Sea, closer to Russia than North America. He starved to death as a prisoner of war after the Japanese army invaded during World War II, dispossessing several villagers from his village, and never returned.

Pagano has long believed that Japan should pay more reparations for what its soldiers did to his grandfather and other residents of Attu Island.

But his quest was renewed this summer with his first visit to the island. He accompanied Japanese officials who, as part of a two-fold effort to recover the remains of World War II soldiers killed abroad, unearthed the remains of two tundra people.

The Attuans “lost their country, they lost their family members,” Pagano said.

Attu Island is the westernmost of Alaska's Aleutian chain. It was one of several US territories, including Guam, the Philippines and the nearby island of Kiska, to be captured during the war.

The Japanese landed at Attu on June 7, 1942, killing the radio operator. The residents were kept in their homes for three months, then taken to Japan.

US forces waged a bloody campaign amid high winds, rain and dense fog in 1943 to capture Attu Island in what is known as the “forgotten war.” More than 2,500 Japanese soldiers died in battle or by suicide, and the American military lost about 550 soldiers.

Of the 41 citizens imprisoned on the Japanese island of Hokkaido, 22 died of malnutrition, starvation, tuberculosis or other diseases over the next two-plus years, including Pagano's great-grandfather, Mike Hodikoff, the last king. Hodikoff and his son both died in 1945, suffering from food poisoning after being reduced to scavenging for a living.

After the war, Attuan survivors were not allowed to return to the island because the US military said it would be too expensive to rebuild. Many were sent to Atka Island, some 322 kilometers away. The last residents of Attu who were locked up died last year.

In 1951, six years after the war ended, Japan gave surviving Attuans about $4,000 a year — more than the annual US salary at the time — for three years, Pagano said. Almost all were accepted, but his grandmother refused, suggesting the treatment the POWs endured was too bad to be financially compensated.

The Japanese have never compensated the families for the deaths of prisoners or for the loss of land and damage to the Attuan culture and language, said Pagano, who runs Atux Forever, a non-profit organization dedicated to Atuan culture. The trauma of history still weighs on the 300 or so generations of Attuan left in the US, she said.

In addition to restitution, he would like to see the Japanese government invest in a cultural center for the Attuans somewhere in Alaska and work with the US government to clean up the environment on Attu Island, including removing old anti-aircraft guns and steel planks. which was used in temporary air decks, and the peace memorial said Japan was built there without the inclusion of Attuans or US veterans who served in the war.

Officials at Japan's Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said they had not received requests for additional refunds from the Attuans.

There were demands for reparations for the atrocities against POWs, Korean forced laborers during the war and “comfort women” from all over Asia who were forced to sell to the Japanese military. But the Japanese government has insisted that all compensation issues be settled under the 1951 San Francisco agreement, whose signatories have waived their rights, or other agreements, said Yoshitaka Sato, an official at the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. Japan had introduced women's currency in 1995 and 2015 separately.

Pagano says the 1951 agreement will not prevent additional refunds.

The island is part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. In August, Pagano made his first trip to Attu, on a boat operated by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the refuge.

He said he did not know in advance that Japanese officials would exhume the remains, and took it as an insult, saying the bones could be those of Attu residents or US soldiers.

Jeff Williams, the shelter's deputy manager, said exhumation plans were not approved until before the trip.

The former Attu village site, where the remains were excavated, is owned by the Aleut Corp. – one of the few regional, for-profit corporations established to serve Alaska Natives. In an email, spokeswoman Kate Gilling said Aleut Corp. “recognizes the significant historical trauma endured by the Attuan people during and after World War II” and that they were aware of Atux Forever's call for reparations.

“We believe that greater cooperation between all organizations in the Aleutian region and Pribilof Island will help develop comprehensive and inclusive solutions,” he said.

As war veterans and their relatives age, the Japanese government has faced growing calls to expedite the recovery of remains and has done so, including the increased use of DNA testing. Of the approximately 2.4 million Japanese soldiers who died in the war outside of Japan, a little more than half of their remains have been found.

Japan conducted its first exhumation of remains in Attu in 1953 and found those of about 320 Japanese soldiers, who were taken to Japan and kept in the Chidorigafuchi National Cemetery. The remains of others in Attu are unknown.

Sato, a Japanese government official, said the US government controls which areas Japan can explore for fossils and requires Japan to take necessary measures to protect the environment.

Japanese efforts to find fossils from Attu have long been on hold, largely because of environmental concerns in the US, Sato said. In 2009, the US government required an environmental assessment which led to further delays of more than a decade.

Before the August visit to Attu, the US proposed a survey without digging, but later allowed digging inside a small area, Sato said. Under the direction of US officials, the remains of two suspected Japanese soldiers were exhumed.

The remains were sent to Anchorage for temporary storage pending an initial examination by Japanese experts due at the end of March. If their analysis determines that the remains may be in Japan, the samples will be sent to Japan for DNA testing, Sato said.

During the August visit, Pagano spent two days on the island, collecting water samples from the stream to check for ongoing pollution.

While the others returned to the ship for the night, he set up camp – possibly the first Attuan to spend the night on the island since the inhabitants were forcibly removed 82 years ago.

“I felt calm and peaceful and whole as a person,” Pagano said.

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Yamaguchi reported from Tokyo.