[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 90 (Tuesday, June 26, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H3612-H3616]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
PAYING HOMAGE TO A SPECIAL GROUP OF VETERANS, SURVIVORS OF BATAAN AND
CORREGIDOR
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Shuster). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 3, 2001, the gentleman from California (Mr.
Rohrabacher) is recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to pay homage to a
special group of veterans. As all vets, all World War II survivors,
they sacrificed for their country. But this is a very special group of
veterans, a very special group of veterans from the Second World War.
They are special in that their fight for justice continues to this day.
They fought for us, but their struggle goes on and goes on. Instead of
fighting the militarists of Japan, they today are forced to fight the
lawyers of Japanese global business giants like Mitsubishi, Mitsui, and
Nippon Steel. Instead of battling in the jungles, they are battling in
the courtroom.
And the greatest irony is that instead of having the American
government on their side, these heroic veterans find themselves arguing
in legal battles against representatives of their own government. This
is the story of the American survivors of Bataan and Corregidor, some
of the most heroic of America's defenders in the Second World War. When
they were captured, they were forced to serve as slave labor for
private war profiteering Japanese companies. They were deprived of
food, medicine, often even clean water. They were used as work animals
and treated as animals. The Japanese companies that worked these
Americans, they worked them often to death, violated the most basic
standards of morality, decency and justice.
But most important, these Japanese corporations violated
international law. They were accomplices to war crimes. Some of them
even committed those war crimes. Instead of righting wrongs and
admitting mistakes and putting the past behind them, like many German
companies have done, these Japanese corporations have stonewalled
efforts to bring justice to those they wronged. And why should they not
stonewall these American heroes? The United States State Department has
taken their side against that of Americans who fought and gave their
lives and put their lives on the line for the United States of America
in the Second World War. The State Department has taken the side of our
former enemy rather than the side of our defenders.
Dr. Lester Tenney, a survivor of the death march in Bataan and of a
slave labor camp says, and I quote, ``I feel as if I am once again
being sacrificed by our government, abandoned not for the war effort as
in the past but for the benefit of Japanese big business.''
I believe Dr. Tenney has a point that deserves to be heard. In the
hours following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese attacked U.S.
installations in the Philippines. The United States forces retreated to
the Bataan Peninsula and made their historic stand. Holding off the
Japanese for months, they gave America time to regroup and to rally and
to come back. Our government at one point had to make the heart-tearing
decision to sacrifice the brave heroes of the Philippines because they
knew they could not come to save them without causing the death of
many, many, many more Americans in the long run and perhaps a failure
of that operation itself. So the decision was made, yes, to abandon
those American heroes, tens of thousands of them there in the
Philippines. MacArthur was pulled out, he was ordered by the President
to pull out, and our troops were left there. They were left there, as
the song of the day went, with the battling bastards of Bataan, no
mama, no papa, no Uncle Sam.
{time} 2215
After the fall of Bataan, American and Filipino troops were forced to
walk more than 60 miles in the infamous Bataan Death March. These were
men that were weakened already, without food, without water, and they
were denied any type of help along the way. Some Filipino people risked
their lives; not only risked their lives, but gave their lives in order
to throw little bits of water or food to these men as they marched for
those 3 days of the Bataan Death March.
They were beaten, and they were starved as they marched. Those who
fell were bayonetted. Some of those who were not walking fast enough
were beheaded by Japanese officers who were practicing with their
samurai swords from horseback.
The Japanese culture at that time reflected the view that any warrior
who surrendered had no honor; thus, was not fit to be treated like a
human being. Thus, they were not committing these crimes against human
beings. The Japanese soldiers at that time, as was mandated and
dictated by their culture, felt they were dealing with subhumans and
animals.
This is not a crime of the current Japanese generation. The Japanese
for the past 50 years have had a strong democracy, at least for these
last three or four decades have had a strong democracy, and the
Japanese people are America's best friends. They have a civilized
country, and none of them need ever to feel like any of the talk that
is going to go on about these men receiving just compensation for what
was done to them at Bataan and Corregidor and then later on in the
Japanese Islands of Manchuria, the Japanese people themselves are not
the target. We are not trying to make these people feel guilty. This
was, after all, the culture of their day, and that culture has changed.
America had a racist culture for many years. We had slaves in the
last century, and the fact is that Americans corrected that. We paid an
awful price. In the Civil War, we paid a price of hundreds of
thousands, of millions of our own people who died trying to correct
this evil in our society.
The Japanese people of today who admit that their country in the past
has done wrong need not hang their head in shame, but it will be a
shame, and it will be a black spot on the Japanese people if these
crimes are covered up and if wrongdoing is not admitted. That is the
only accountability the Japanese people of today have.
Those people and those corporations that worked these men as slaves,
they have a legal responsibility. It is through these men who were
wronged and worked as slaves by these Japanese corporations that still
exist, by giving justice to these men we can close this book, and we
can bring this chapter to a close and close this book and move on. The
Japanese people need not feel guilty after that compensation and that
apology is made.
In the 3 days of the Death March, 650 to 700 Americans died. They
died the worst possible death. Then after enduring this hell, many of
the thousands of Americans that had survived that Death March, along
with other American prisoners who had been taken prisoner in other
areas of the Pacific theater, they were taken, thousands of them, in
so-called hell ships to Japan and to Japanese-occupied territories.
Packed into cargo holds, these POWs struggled for air, for simple air,
in temperatures that reached 125 degrees. It is estimated that over
4,000 American soldiers died aboard these hell ships.
Again, the Japanese treated them like animals because at that time
the Japanese were taught if anyone surrenders, they are no better than
an animal because they have no honor.
Our POWs struggled to survive the harshest conditions imaginable.
Toiling beyond human endurance in mines, in factories, in shipyards and
steel mills, often under extremely dangerous
[[Page H3613]]
working conditions, they were worked like animals. Company employees
beat them and harangued them. Of course, the Japanese work force was
all off in the army. They used these slave laborers to make sure Japan
could conduct its war effort. In doing so, they treated these men, our
men, our heroes, like animals, and they starved these men. They denied
them medical care. These brave heroes, Americans, suffered from
dysentery, scurvy, malaria, diptheria, pneumonia and many, many other
diseases, yet they were not treated, and they were permitted to die.
With few rations, and many rations that were simply unfit for human
consumption, they worked and they were beaten. POWs were reduced to
skin and bones.
Today, many of those who survived this ordeal still suffer from
health problems directly related and tied to that time when they were
worked as slave laborers by the Japanese militarists. When one hears
the survivors tell their stories, they will never forget how much we
owe these heroic individuals.
Frank Bigelow, 78 years old, from Brooksville, Florida, was taken
prisoner at Corregidor. Mr. Bigelow was shipped to Japan, where he
performed forced labor in a coal mine owned and operated by Mitsui.
``We were told to work or die,'' Mr. Bigelow recalls. Injured in a
mining accident, Mr. Bigelow had to have his infected broken leg
amputated by a fellow POW. That leg was amputated without anesthetic.
At war's end, though standing 6'4'', Mr. Bigelow weighed 95 pounds.
Lester Tenney, 80 years old, of La Jolla, California, became a
prisoner of war with the fall of Bataan on April 9, 1942. He was a
prisoner of the Japanese, and he survived the Bataan Death March but
was then transported to Japan aboard a hell ship. In Japan, he was sold
by the Japanese Government to Mitsui and forced to labor 12 hours a
day, 28 days a month, in a Mitsui coal mine. ``The reward I received
for this hard labor was beatings by the civilian workers at that
mine,'' he said. They worked him, and they beat him, and they treated
him like an animal.
These are just a couple of the stories. The horrors they suffered at
the hands of profit-making Japanese corporations can fill the pages of
a book and, in fact, have filled the pages of many books.
Their case is clear. The facts cannot be denied. Their claims should
not be dismissed or explained away, and their cause should be the cause
of all American patriots, and especially should be the cause of the
American Government, which they defended with their lives.
What makes all of this more difficult to understand is why the State
Department refuses to assist these heroic veterans. It is hard to
fathom why the State Department was willing to help facilitate the
claims of victims of Nazi Germany but not these victims of militarist
Japan.
Certainly the Germans committed atrocities during the war. Nazi
Germany was a place of horrors, and the German people have admitted it
and tried to make good and tried to bring justice to these claims, and
we have backed them up. We have backed them up because it is the right
thing to do. We have backed up those people making the claims, and we
have encouraged the Germans to move forward in this way.
There is no reason on God's Earth, there is no reason in the cause of
patriotism and honor, that our government should not be assisting those
Americans that were used as slave laborers by the Japanese
corporations. These American heroes who survived the Bataan Death
March, these heroes were worked nearly to death by these Japanese
corporations. There is no reason that we should not be with them 100
percent.
Instead, they fight a lonely battle. The lawyers for the State
Department are allying themselves with these war profiteers in Tokyo
against the Americans they victimized. The best legalese they can
muster is being used to undercut the claims of our American heroes.
They are erroneously claiming that the peace treaty with Japan bars
these veteran heroes from making these claims against these Japanese
corporations that used them as slave labor.
It is wrong, and it is utter nonsense, for a number of reasons.
First, as the State Department has elsewhere conceded, the waiver
claims of U.S. private citizens against the private companies of
another country is not merely unprecedented in the history of the
United States, it is not recognized under international law and raises
serious constitutional issues under the fifth amendment.
What that means is that it is unprecedented that the United States is
claiming that our own citizens cannot sue another company in another
country, especially when there are human rights violations involved and
international violations of law. This is unprecedented that we are
saying that our people cannot even make a suit.
So it might violate the very Constitution, the constitutional rights
of these heroic Americans who defended our country, who gave the
greatest sacrifice, nearly gave their own lives, but saw many of their
friends and loved ones give their lives. It could well be, and I
believe that it is true, that this is a violation of their
constitutional rights to seek legal redress for acts and crimes against
them by these very same Japanese corporations.
Let us again remember, these Japanese corporations are the very same
corporations that existed in World War II. They are corporate entities.
As long as they themselves exist, we are not asking for some type of
legal right to sue the Japanese Government, but those corporations have
legal responsibilities as corporations. They have the responsibilities,
just as individuals do, to pay for their crimes.
Second, if we take a close look at the history of the 1951 treaty, it
reveals that negotiators considered treaty language which would have
permitted POW lawsuits against Japanese companies that had exploited
them. That reference, I might add, was deleted from the final draft at
the demand of other allied powers who had made that agreement with the
U.S. delegation. So that was part of the original language that they
were going to get the right to sue.
In the end, the bottom line is this: Our POWs do not have a right to
sue the Japanese Government. That is true. And the Japanese people do
not have a right to sue the American Government, but certainly these
corporations are responsible. Just as the individual Japanese who
committed war crimes, heinous war crimes, were responsible, and those
war crimes, many of them were executed, these Japanese corporations
have an obligation to those people who they wronged to compensate them,
yet our government is taking the other side.
I think it is fascinating to note that many more German war criminals
were executed and brought to justice than were their Japanese
counterparts.
{time} 2030
Yet, the Japanese were clearly involved with criminal activity, with
war crimes, on a massive scale, and especially against the Chinese
people and against the Americans and Brits who fought against the
Japanese and were captured early in the war. Why is this? Obviously we
felt that Japan might be in danger of instability after the war and
during the Cold War might go communist. That is clearly the reason this
happened.
The Cold War is over. It is time now for justice, at the very least
justice for our own people. It is time that the Japanese corporations
who committed these crimes at the very least offer an apology and
compensation to those Americans who survived the Bataan Death March and
were worked as slaves and saw their fellow countrymen gunned down and
die of starvation. The very least these heroes deserve is some type of
justice for their claims before they die of old age. We deserve to
stand with them, and their government should stand with them. It is a
shame for our government to be on the side of the enemy which these
heroes fought.
The treaty we are talking about also includes a clause which
automatically and unconditionally extends to the Allied powers many
more favorable terms granted to Japan than any other claim settlements.
Japan has entered into the war claims settlements with the Soviet
Union, for example, and Burma, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden and the
Netherlands and others.
Thus, what we have here by this treaty we are talking about are other
Allied powers, other countries in the world, have a right to sue, and
there have been settlements, claim settlements, with the Soviet Union,
people from Russia, Burma, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, the Netherlands
and others. Yet these same rights to allow the
[[Page H3614]]
people from other countries to pursue their claims against the Japanese
corporations are not being extended to the United States and our
nationals.
What is that all about? Why is that? There should be no waiver
provision that waives the rights of American citizens to use their
constitutional rights in court to seek justice when they were treated
in this way, when criminal acts were taken against them.
We side with other countries' rights, but not with the rights of the
heroes of Bataan and the heroes who held the ground, who stood tall and
gave us the chance to regroup and to organize and to come back and
defeat the enemy that threatened the world.
The United States State Department has no answer to these legal
questions. On the public record to date they simply ignore them or
obfuscate the facts.
Two weeks ago, on Fox News Sunday, Colin Powell, our Secretary of
State, promised to review the State Department's erroneous and
unyielding stand against our heroes, our World War II heroes' right to
sue their Japanese tormentors, their Japanese corporate tormentors. He
provided hope to the survivors that justice will be served.
But I have yet to hear anything else from our Secretary of State. I
would hope that Secretary of State Colin Powell, a man of deep feeling,
a man of great honor who served in our military, but also served his
country so well in so many capacities, I hope that the bureaucrats in
the State Department do not get to him and have him analyze this
situation with a bureaucratic approach that would just put off and put
off and put off any type of action until all of these heroes die of old
age and are taken by God.
This would be the gravest injustice of all. And those bureaucrats at
the State Department, who never want to rock the boat, oh, we cannot
rock the boat with Japan, well, the Cold War is over and we can rock
the boat anywhere in the world. When Americans who have committed this
type of heroism, Americans who are that solid and those people who gave
so much for us, when they are being wronged, we can rock the boat
anywhere in the world to see that they obtain justice.
I hope that Colin Powell, Secretary of State Powell, sees through
this bureaucratic maze that has been constructed and been used to
thwart justice for these survivors of the Bataan Death March. I hope he
sees through that, and I hope he listens to his heart and his
patriotism.
We have another opportunity. I hope Colin Powell acts, but we also
have another opportunity. In a few days a new Japanese prime minister
will be coming to the United States. Again, let me say that in no way
do I hold the Japanese people of today guilty for the war crimes of
their ancestors. However, those corporations that existed in that day,
60 years ago, those corporations that committed those crimes are legal
entities that bear the legal burden of what their corporations did 60
years ago.
But when we talk to the new Japanese prime minister and we welcome
him, we should be welcoming him as a friend, and we should be talking
to the Japanese people as our friends. What I say tonight is not meant
in any way to be a slap at the Japanese people.
For the last few decades, by the way, the only Japanese American in
this body, I guess maybe there are two Japanese Americans in this body,
but one of the two Japanese Americans in this body is the coauthor of
this legislation that I have brought forth to try to bring justice to
these American POWs. He is not about to insult the Japanese people,
just as I mean no insult, and none of us involved in this do.
The Japanese people are good friends of ours. I have many good
friends in Japan. I lived in Japan as a young boy. The Japanese people
now are an honorable people. Some of them are trying to cover up the
mistakes, but the most honorable way to go forward is admit mistakes
have been made, bring justice about, make an apology, if necessary, and
then just move on. That is the way to handle it.
But, instead, our government has been playing a game, playing a game
with these very same Japanese corporations that committed these crimes.
When the Japanese prime minister comes this week, many people are
hoping that this issue does not come up. The diplomats are hoping that
it is not to be an issue addressed at the summit. They believe that
this issue should be swept under the rug, and we should keep just
stirring the pot and trying to keep this situation confused until it
goes away. And ``goes away,'' do you know what ``goes away'' means? It
means those heroic men who gave their lives and sacrificed so much,
those heroic men of the Bataan Death March, who served as POWs, our
most heroic soldiers of World War II, that they are dead. That is when
this ``goes away.'' That is what our State Department is waiting for.
Well, the rest of us perhaps have a greater and a higher standard
than that, and a higher appreciation of what that generation, that
World War II generation, did for us, and we are not about to stir the
pot. We are working now to have justice for these men, and it should be
an issue at the summit with a new Japanese prime minister.
And it will go away. It will go away when our heroes from the Bataan
Death March and the Japanese slave labor camps and the mines and the
Japanese war machines and the corporations that worked our people to
death, when they compensate our heroes and apologize, it is over, and
it will be done, and the book will be closed. But it will not be until
then.
Of the more than 36,000 American soldiers who were captured by the
Japanese, only 21,000 made it home. The death rate for American POWs
was 30 times greater in Japanese prison camps than in German prison
camps. Let me repeat that: The death rates for American POWs were 30
times greater in Japanese prison camps than in German prison camps.
Even though Japanese companies profited from slave labor, these
companies have never offered an apology or repayment. Perhaps they were
being counseled. Maybe they were being counseled by our State
Department. Maybe they were being counseled by lobbyists in this city.
Maybe they were being counseled by people whose advice they sought and
paid for.
Just like with some of the things going on with China today, what we
have unfortunately seen is that some Americans, many Americans, can be
bought off. Can be bought off? Can you imagine this? Can you imagine
someone taking a fee from a Japanese corporation and telling them how
not to apologize and not to give compensation to a survivor of the
Bataan Death March, to the greatest of America's heroes? Oh, yes, there
are people like that in Washington, D.C. Yes, there are.
Today there are fewer than 5,400 surviving former Japanese POWs.
These survivors are pushing for justice; not just for themselves, but
also for their widows and the families of those POWs who died
prematurely due to the horrible conditions that they lived under while
they were enslaved by these Japanese corporations.
The POWs finally have a chance, however, to win justice, but they
should not and they cannot be abandoned once again by their government.
These men were abandoned in 1942 by a decision by our government that
our government had to make, and there were many tears, I am sure by
those commanders who had to make that decision and say that these tens
of thousands of Americans will be permitted to be taken, captured by
the Japanese, and they were abandoned.
We will not abandon them again. If we do, if we permit this to
happen, shame on us. As I say, the gentleman from California (Mr.
Honda), a Japanese American, I might say that he himself was interned
during World War II as a Japanese American, he is coauthor of this
bill. It is called the Justice for United States POWs Act of 2001. The
bill number is H.R. 1198. I will repeat that. The bill is ``The Justice
for United States POWs act of 2001,'' and the number is H.R. 1198.
My name is Dana Rohrabacher. I am a Republican from California. I am
the author of that bill. The coauthor of that bill is a Democrat from
California, the gentleman from California (Mr. Honda). The gentleman
from California (Mr. Honda) and I have put a great deal of time and
effort into this legislation, and I commend my over 100 colleagues who
have signed on as cosponsors and supporters of this legislation. I
would urge my fellow colleagues to do the same.
Mr. Speaker, I agree with those who say that Japan is a great
strategic ally
[[Page H3615]]
of the United States; but a true friendship requires friends to speak
out when there has been an insult or an injustice. And friends must
join together to address that injustice. A true friendship can only
exist when apologies have been made and wrongs have been righted, when
the wrongs have been corrected and recognized.
We are asking the Japanese people to be our friends, and they are our
friends. Nothing damages our relationship with Japan more than the
cold-hearted and unjustified refusal of these multinational
corporations, acting with the support of the Japanese government, to
make sure that our American hero veterans do not receive the
compensation and the apologies that they deserve.
{time} 2245
These POWs have asked for back pay, back pay, for a time when they
were used as slave labor, and they are asking for an apology. What
American could be opposed to that? I would ask, what Japanese person
could oppose that? This would be a sign of good faith, and I would hope
that this administration would counsel to the new Japanese Prime
Minister, I hope Secretary of State Powell and President Bush counsel
the Japanese Prime Minister to take a look at this bill and to reach
out to the American people and to close this sad chapter. This issue
must be addressed, and our State Department should hang its head in
shame if it continues to try to undermine the efforts of these American
POWs.
Mr. Speaker, I have been asked often why I am personally involved in
this issue? Why I, along with the gentleman from California (Mr.
Honda), worked and wrote the U.S. POW Act of 2001, H.R. 1198, and it
really is a very personal issue with me, a very personal issue. Mr.
Speaker, at this time in my life, I am a very happy person. I am
serious about the work I do here, but I am a very, very happy person.
Three and a half years ago I was married after about 15 years of being
a single man, and I found the woman that I love, and it was a wonderful
thing. And when we were married 3\1/2\ years ago, my wife's father had
passed away, he died of cancer about 6 years ago; and of course,
someone had to give her away at the wedding, and her own father had
died of cancer. Giving her away at the wedding, my wife, Rhonda's,
Uncle Lou, Great Uncle Lou gave her away. That is the first time I ever
had a chance to get to meet Uncle Lou.
Uncle Lou is not this man's real name, but everyone calls him Uncle
Lou. His friends call him Lou. Uncle Lou's real name is Arthur
Campbell, Army Air Corps, 1941. Uncle Lou was unfortunate enough to
have been stationed in the Philippines shortly before the war broke out
and was captured by the Japanese and survived the Bataan Death March,
the horrific death march. He was then taken on a hell ship to Mukden,
which is a prison labor camp in Manchuria. Every day he would see his
fellow prisoners murdered, beaten and tortured; scientific
experimentation was conducted on these men and other prisoners. This
was what Uncle Lou survived.
Uncle Lou was a strapping young man who, by the time he was freed at
the end of the war, was under 100 pounds. As I say, we call him Uncle
Lou because Uncle Lou was called by his Japanese guards as, this man
must be Lucifer, because he is so defiant. He was lucky to have
survived at all with a defiant attitude, and all of the rest of the
prisoners kept calling him Lou at that point, and he adopted the name.
Uncle Lou told me about what happened to him, and I met with some of
the fellow prisoners that served with him in the prison camp at Mukden.
The stories will just tear your heart out.
We cannot permit Uncle Lou and the Uncle Lous of this world to go
without justice. Uncle Lou will not live forever. Uncle Lou is in his
80s right now, and he has had a pacemaker put in; and the fact is that
when he breathes his last breath and he takes a look around him, I want
him to know that his country has done justice by him. I think every
American should make that a goal, that the Uncle Lous of this world,
that we do right by them, whether they are the survivors of the Bataan
Death March or the other people who fought for this country during the
Second World War.
As Tom Brokaw says, this truly was the greatest generation; and we
insult them, we do them a grave injustice, we trash their sacrifice by
having our own government involved with legal wrangling to try to
prevent their claims against these Japanese corporations that use them
as slave labor. This is sinful. We cannot permit it to go on. We must
do this before these people leave the scene. We must honor them.
My father was also a veteran, a combat veteran of World War II. My
father was a Marine pilot. He passed away 3 years ago. I looked into
his trunk after he died and out came the Japanese battle flags and the
memorabilia from World War II, and it seems that my father too fought
in the Philippines. He was one of the pilots, Marine pilots that flew
up and down the Philippines during the effort to recapture the
Philippines from the Japanese in 1944.
He passed away 3 years ago. I remember him telling me quite often
about his experiences, and let me just say I am very proud of my father
and I am proud of the things he did. But he harbored no grudges against
the Japanese. He fought with the Japanese, he had Japanese battle flags
in his trunk; but he had many Japanese friends, and I have many
Japanese friends as well. Please, no one should take this as an attack
on the Japanese people, and I repeat that again. The Japanese people
have tried to leave that part of their culture behind that had them
treat men and women as they did. They know that heinous crimes were
committed against the Chinese people, and they know that men who gave
up and surrendered and were treated like animals, they know that; and
they have left that behind.
They are trying to build a civilized society, a society of
technology, a society of tolerance in Japan. They are trying to do
that. We should help them do that by getting this behind us. We have
our own haunts, our own ghosts in our past; and we too have tried to
leave them behind us. We too have tried to say that we are going to not
treat people in an unjust way, as we have in our society in the past.
So let us not look at this as a condemnation of the Japanese. I am
sure the Japanese people, the younger ones in particular, understand
that there is no malice in our hearts. We wish nothing but success for
the Japanese. Our economies are tied together. America cannot have a
strong economy unless the Japanese economy begins to pick up and has a
strong economy. We are tied together with the Japanese, and they were
our enemies. Perhaps that is one of the greatest aspects of America, is
our ability to forgive. But we have got to be asked for forgiveness.
The people who have been wronged, the Japanese corporations that did
this to our people, have to give some compensation to those men they
wronged. This is not an unreasonable request.
Finally, let me say this about the Philippines. The Philippines and
the Filipino people are perhaps the best friends of the United States
in the Pacific, maybe the best friends of the United States in the
whole world. They like us, and we should like them. They are in a bad
situation right now too. They are in a very bad situation.
Just as the Japanese militarists sought to dominate Asia and the
Pacific during the 1920s and 1930s, there is another power on the
march, another militaristic power that threatens the stability of the
world and is an enemy to all free governments. Its militarism and
expansion are alarming. Just like the Japanese Government, this
government has wiped out its democratic opposition. They are expanding,
just like this government of the 1920s and 1930s, this current
government that threatens the Philippines and threatens all democratic
countries in that region, are trying to expand into island bases in
which they will be used as power bases to assert their authority and
power in given areas of the Pacific. We can see that now in the
Spratley Islands, and we can see it in the Paracale Islands, we can see
it throughout the South China Sea.
This power that seeks to dominate the world today, or dominate Asia
today is as racist as the Japanese were racist back in the 1920s and
1930s. They felt they were racially superior. The Japanese people do
not believe that anymore; they want to be part of the family of
nations. They have discarded that, but they had to lose the war to
discard that. We liberated the Japanese
[[Page H3616]]
people, just like we liberated the Philippines from Japanese
militarism. We liberated the Japanese people the same, but today this
other militaristic power is on the march. They too are racist, they are
expansionary, they are militaristic, and they too understand that only
the United States of America stands in their way, and that the
Philippines is a friend of the United States of America.
I am talking about, of course, the Communist Chinese. I am talking
about the People's Republic of China, which is now engaged today in
military naval exercises off the coast of the Philippines. This is an
alarming piece of news.
The security of the Pacific was won and the peace of the Pacific was
won and the freedom of the Pacific was won by the blood and the
sacrifice of American military personnel during the Second World War.
People like Lou, my father and Uncle Lou. We cannot permit the Chinese
Communists to expand their domain and to take over where the Japanese
militarists left off.
During the 1930s, the Japanese sank a U.S. patrol boat, the Panay,
U.S.S. Panay, killing several of the people on board. A Chinese
jetfighter knocks one of our planes out of the air several months ago
while it was on a routine mission in international waters, knocking it
out of the air, and they took 24 American military personnel and held
them as hostages for 11 days. Things are getting worse with China and
in the Pacific. We must do justice to those people who fought in the
Pacific by ensuring that the Pacific remains free, remains prosperous
and at peace; and today, there are ominous clouds on the horizon. Yet
as things get worse, as they were getting worse in Japan, corporate
America still demands on doing business as usual with the Communist
Chinese.
It is very similar, as we have heard so often quoted, where it is
deja vu all over again; and I am afraid that this is a very frightening
deja vu. The Japanese in the 1930s were insisting that America continue
to sell them scrap metal and oil and aerospace, or I should say
aeroplane, because there was not any ``space'' with it in that day,
aeronautic technology. Many of the Japanese aircraft that fought
against us in World War II actually were designed and were at least
partially designed by American manufacturers. The scrap metal and the
oil that was used to fuel their war mission can be traced back to the
United States. Corporate America was willing to close its eyes to the
threat that faced us in the Pacific back in the 1920s and 1930s, just
as corporate America is trying to close our eyes today to the threat of
Communist China.
Mr. Speaker, we do not, we do not do justice to those who defended us
in the Second World War by going for short-term profit in the mainland
of China, letting these big corporations make billions of dollars off
their slave labor, while those Chinese Communists are using their
profit from that company to build up their military, which some day
will perhaps kill Americans. We have already had, we have already had a
transfer of rocket technology to the Communist Chinese that makes our
country so much more vulnerable to a possible nuclear attack.
It is frightening to think that American corporations, and the Cox
Commission outlined how Lorell Corporation was selling technology that
improved the accuracy and the capabilities of Chinese rockets.
{time} 2300
There are American aerospace firms improving the capabilities and
accuracy of Chinese rockets so that they could evaporate tens of
millions of Americans if we get into a conflict with them.
I do not want to have any conflict with the Chinese people. I do not
want to have any conflict with China at all. War is horrible. I know.
My father had told me and Uncle Lou's tales are very vivid.
These people who we are trying to find justice for tonight, they
certainly know how horrible war is. We do not want to have that. But
the quickest way to have conflict is to seem to grovel before dictators
and militarists, and that is what the Japanese knew of the United
States before World War II and the Chinese Communists think the same
thing of us today.
They think that we have no honor, because our own corporate leaders
sell out the national security interests of our country for short-term
profit. No wonder they are treating us as a degenerate culture.
We must stand firm. We must stand firm for the security of our
country, and we must stand firm to keep our country a leader, a leader
for world peace, yes, but also a leader for democracy throughout the
world.
We must be the friend of the Japanese people, because they want
democracy and we liberated them from their militarists, but we also
must be the friend of the Chinese people. The Chinese people live in
oppression, we must free them from the militarists that oppress them
and are threatening the peace of the world.
If we do so, countries like the Philippines who are struggling now,
they have no weapons that can deter the Chinese naval exercises that
are violating their territorial waters right off their shore.
The Chinese grab of the Spratley Islands and the vast mineral
resources, under those islands that should belong to the Philippines,
but instead the Chinese are permitted to, through aggression and
militarism, to steal that from the Philippine person, but they do not
have the means to defend themself.
We should make sure, and I am very proud that I included in the State
Department authorization this year a provision that permits us to
provide obsolete weapons and the other type of gear that we would be
mothballing from the American military that we can provide it to the
Philippines, just as if we are providing it to any NATO ally.
So we increased the Philippines to their status in terms of receiving
weapons from the United States up to a NATO ally status.
We must be strong and stand with the people who love freedom, whether
it be the people of the Philippines or the people of Japan or the
people of China against their own oppressors. We must insist on truth.
There is an old saying, know the truth and it will make you free. It
comes from the good book.
We must insist on the truth. Yes, if we have to make compromises, if
we have to go at problems obliquely rather than straight on, that is
what it has to be, but it should not be based on the fact that we are
lying to ourselves and lying to the American people.
We need a regeneration, a rebirth of courageous leadership in this
country of integrity. We had 8 years under the last administration
where no one in this world, even our own people, could respect our own
leaders. Many of our own leaders were just not respectable. Now we have
a chance.
This new administration has a chance. I would ask people to call
their congressmen and talk about this piece of legislation, helping the
American POWs from World War II.
I would ask them also to contact the White House and see that the
White House brings this issue up of American POWs from the Bataan Death
March and to try to see what we can do to get President George W. Bush
just to mention this to the Japanese prime minister when he arrives
here within a few days.
These are the things that we can do and we can do this because by
doing so, we honor those 3,000 or 4,000 surviving Death March survivors
who are still here waiting for their day, waiting for their day in
court and waiting for justice.
Tonight, I would hope all of those who are with these American POWs,
I hope that they activate themselves, and I hope that our democratic
process is working. I know that we are making them proud. My own
father's watching down tonight and all of those who gave their lives in
World War II and other all other American wars, they will be proud.
Let us make them proud of us as Americans and by doing so and having
the courage to do what is right, especially for the survivors of the
Bataan Death March, America's ultimate heroes.
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