Mr. HINSHAW. If you will ask where we may obtain the information, the committee will seek it.

Mr. O'HARA. Mr. McCauley should be able to give us that information.

Mrs. WARD. Mr. McCauley could give that information, and the Bureau of Yards and Docks of the United States Navy.

Mr. MILLER. As to what companies had the policies?

Mrs. WARD. That is right.

Mr. MILLER. Mr. Chairman, I would like to have a copy of the policies made available to the committee.

Mr. HINSHAW. I think it is a very good point, and the committee clerk or the staff will see to it that we have that information.

Mr. MILLER. I was not quite clear as to what payments were made to, we will say, a widow with one child, of a man who was killed after January 1, 1942.

Mrs. WARD. A widow with one child, a widow receives $56.66; the child receives $13.24, for the first child.

Mr. MILLER. It is $56 for life?

Mrs. WARD. No. Any insurance payments are only up to the amount of $7,500, then they are stopped.

For instance, in the cases we have, say a wife with six of several children, as we have several, the Government only recognizes the four children. They are drawing a total of $108.33. So that within 10 years that fund is going to be paid in full, and I do not know what is going to happen after that time.

Mr. MILLER. I have heard of governments paying a bonus for a large family, but I have never heard of them penalizing small families before.

Mrs. WARD. You cannot have over four.

Mr. HINSHAW. Do I understand correctly, Mrs. Ward, that a suit has been entered against the contractors for certain payments?

Mrs. WARD. A suit has been entered against the contractors for the fulfillment of the contract. The contract stated from the time the man left the mainland until he returned to the port of embarkation his contract was in full effect. It had no war clause for anything of that kind.

It stated he would receive subsistence, medical care, and hospitalization, and after 3 months, however, of being on the island, it increased up to 9 months.

We are not suing for salary, but for bonus and subsistance.

In the case of our Guam men they are being charged by the State. Department for food, clothing, and medical care received in prison

camps.

Mr. MILLER. That is the point I was trying to raise. I understood these civilians' and workmen's policies were issued on the basis of covering the man until he came back to the United States. There were no war clauses in them.

Mrs. WARD. There were not, in any of our contractor's contracts. But the fact that the contract was canceled on December 31, 1941, they also canceled the insurance policy at that time.

Mr. HINSHAW. Who canceled the contracts?

Mrs. WARD. The United States Government, stating that the man was unable to fulfill his contract, as he was a guest of the Japanese.

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Mr. O'HARA. Did you say guest?

Mrs. WARD. That was my figure of speech.

Mr. HINSHAW. Of course the United States Navy, through its Bureau of Yards and Docks, will be liable for any expenses of the contractor, I believe, and hence the Navy is interested in the subject of any payments that would be made pursuant to any such contracts. I believe the statement from the Navy Department on this would be of value to this committee.

We thank you very much for appearing before us.

Mrs. WARD. I think there is one other thing you would like to know about. You have asked about many of our witnesses, if they have been approached by anyone in paying a sum for collecting if this bill is passed.

Mr. HINSHAW. We have asked other witnesses. Do you have a statement to make on that?

Mrs. WARD. Yes. Mr. Nugent came to my hotel when I was here last year in regard to legislation, at the Fairfax Hotel, and contacted

me.

He first went to Boise, Idaho. Last year I was not the national president, I was the national adviser.

He went to Boise, Idaho, and contacted Mr. Milliken, our treasurer, and our national president. They told him that I would be in Washington and he said that he could contact me there.

He told me about this, that we were going to sue Japan, and so on, and that each person would pay a fee of $1.20 and 1.5 percent of any amount received. I told him that we were not interested because we did the work for our organization, and we did not charge anything, and that is why I stay in Washington a great portion of the time, to take care of our members.

We notified our members by a bulletin. Several of them had received letters from this organization and had written asking us what to do about it. In at least three of our bulletins issued last year we told them under no circumstances to agree to pay any sum or any part of anything received in reparations from Japan, that the organization would take care of their claims without any cost, as we have done with legislation.

Mr. HINSHAW. If there are any such that you wish to submit to the committee, we would be pleased to have them.

Mrs. WARD. I will ask our members in our next bulletin to submit them to this committee.

Mr. O'HARA, In that connection I might say that I have received letters, copies, forwarded by my constituents, that I would like to submit for the record, by certain soliciting committees, and upon this and similar legislation.

Mr. HINSHAW. I think it would be proper to do so. I think, however, that we will wait until the chairman returns.

Mrs. WARD. Thank you, gentlemen. I sincerely hope this Congress will be able to pass this bill for these people.

Mr. HINSHAW. Our next witness is Col. George Ijams.

Colonel, we are sorry to have delayed hearing you this afternoon. We know you are located here in Washington and you do not have to go out of town at 5 o'clock.

STATEMENT OF GEORGE E. IJAMS, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL REHABILITATION SERVICE, VETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS, WASHINGTON, D. C.

Mr. IJAMS. That is right.

Mr. HINSHAW. We also know that you will be available at any time for discussion on this subject, and suggest that you submit your statement and highlight anything that you care to add at this moment. Mr. IJAMS. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee: I have no prepared statement to make.

Mr. HINSHAW. It may be said for the record that Mr. Ijams is director of the National Rehabilitation Service, Veterans of Foreign Wars, located in Washington, D. C.

You were formerly connected with the Veterans' Administration. Mr. IJAMS. For 27 years.

Mr. HINSHAW. In what position?

Mr. IJAMS. Assistant Administrator.

Mr. O'HARA. I think some of us have known you, Colonel, for almost 27 years.

Mr. IJAMS. I am sure you have.

Mr. Chairman, you have been very patient today, and I do not intend to take much of your time. I would merely like to augment something that Congressman Van Zandt said this morning. He mentioned the fact that we met in Manila in May 1945. It seems rather odd that when I walked into this room today I found that the reporter here, Mr. George Monick, who was at that time in the United States Army, was a reporter on our trip to Manila in May 1945, and a very efficient one, so I congratulate the committee on securing his services. I came here to Washington immediately after my return from France in June 1919 as Assistant Director to the old Bureau of War Risk Insurance, then as Assistant Director and Director of the United States Veterans' Bureau, and later as Assistant Administrator of the Veterans' Administration. In all of those years I have had charge of practically every activity. In fact, in 1930 and 1931, I was the last Director of the United States Veterans' Bureau. Consequently, I have had an opportunity to observe veterans' legislation.

I know what legislation costs the taxpayer; you cannot touch anything having to do with veterans' benefits without it costing the taxpayer a tremendous amount of money.

During all of those years I inspected the veterans' hospitals throughout the country. I saw the backwash of the last war, the physical wrecks that came out of it, and I observed the backwash of World War II.

And so, when I reached Manila, in May 1945, as a member of the Tydings commission, with orders from the President of the United States to go particularly into the veteran problem out there, I had an opportunity to visit the Army and Navy hospitals, not only in the Philippines, but in all the islands in-between the mainland and the Philippines.

In all of those hospitals I saw men being transported back to the States who had just been released from Japanese prison camps.

General MacArthur invited me to his quarters for lunch one day, and knowing that I was an old friend of Congressman Van Zandt, who was

then serving as a captain in the Navy, he informed me that the Congressman was down in Leyte with his LST ships and said that he would fly him up to Manila to meet me.

He flew him in the next day, and the Congressman went to a.couple of these hospitals with me. I was rather hardened to seeing things that are pretty difficult to take, to seeing men who had once been soldiers and sailors in the condition that some of them are today, but when I came out of that hospital I turned to the Congressman and I said, "If you live through the balance of this war, you will probably go back into Congress. If you do I would like to collaborate with you in the writing of a bill to do something for a great many men whom we have seen today, who have suffered the tortures of the damned, because their own Government did not support them out here and give them the reinforcements and the ammunition and everything they needed to lick the Japs."

We came back and we collaborated in the writing of this bill, H. R. 1000.

This bill is designed to take care of those men who suffered disabilities as a result of inhuman treatment while prisoners of war. afraid that some members of the committee may have gathered from some of the testimony today that the bill which Congressman Van Zandt introduced into Congress was supposed to take care of everyone who was ever a prisoner of war. That is definitely not the case. The men covered are those who were maltreated and the beneficiaries of those deceased are persons who suffered death as the result of inhuman treatment, contrary to the laws of civilized welfare. It also takes care of the immediate dependents of those men who lost their lives while prisoners of war and as a result of inhuman treatment.

I made a couple of notes today in listening to some of the witnesses. One gentleman stated he though there should be two commissions, one to handle claims arising out of the Pacific war and one for claims arising out of the European war. I merely call attention of the committee to the fact that the Veterans' Administration is not organized that way.

The Veterans' Administration accepts and adjudicates claims in the same rating boards, no matter where they arise. I think very definitely there is no use of having two organizations to handle claims. I think it would be very much better to have one commission to adjudicate all claims arising and thus insure uniformity of action and avoid duplication of administrative expense.

The gentleman from Missouri, I think it was, this morning mentioned the fact that there were no monetary limitations in this bill. Frankly, at the time the bill was being written I had in mind that for a death case the Government should pay $10,000, because we have always considered that a proper amount in a death case, in the United States Government life insurance, or the national service life insurance, which are in the amounts of $10,000 maximum. But at that time an unarmed American plane was shot down over Yugoslavia. Five boys were killed. We demanded and received reparations in the amount of $150,000. That money was divided among those five families. And so it seemed to me that the Government had considered $30,000 as the amount payable in cases of that character and I thought that perhaps it would be better to leave the amounts to the members of the Commission, rather than to write it into the law. However, if

you gentlemen, in your discretion, want to write it in, it would be perfectly all right with us.

Another matter has been mentioned here about the representation by attorneys, and so forth. I call your attention to section 14, the last section in the act, which authorizes the Commission to recognize a nationally recognized veterans organization in the presentation of claims, provided those organizations agree to handle the claims filed before the Commission without any charge whatsoever.

All of the nationally recognized veterans organizations do that now, and I am sure they will all be glad to continue to represent claimants under this act without cost. So there is no reason, if this bill prevails, why anyone should pay fees for those services.

There are many features of the bill that I could discuss, Mr. Chairman, but the hour grows late, and I do not want to keep you gentlemen here. I am very appreciative of the opportunity to very briefly discuss the bill, and if anyone has any questions that I might answer, I would be glad to answer them.

Mr. HINSHAW. We thank you, Colonel. As a matter of fact, having sat here through all day today, and recognizing the fact that the committee has sat through other days of hearings on similar bills, I believe you can fully comprehend the complications at least that are involved in this legislation.

Mr. IJAMS. Yes.

Mr. HINSHAW. It is complicated in a great many ways. The committee has a tremendous problem before it. Its staff has been working on this problem for some time and finds it even more complicated than we find in committee hearings.

I

Mr. IJAMS. As the chairman knows, the veterans' laws are also complicated. They have been amended about 40,000 times since the War between the States, but we have an organization here in Washington with trained personnel who are familiar with all of those laws. believe trained personnel could be employed to properly and promptly adjudicate any claims that come before this Commission. Mr. HINSHAW. Mr. Beckworth?

Mr. BECK WORTH. I recall you mentioned that one of the members said that it is impossible to estimate the suffering that a person has undergone, in dollars, which is very true. But a sum of money such as $10,000 would not hurt that kind of a fellow a bit, would it? It would certainly have the kind of effect that all of us know he needs at this time, and I think that, in itself, is one of the poorest excuses that the Congress can use, and I certainly do not charge anybody with using it, to not take immediate action of a helpful nature with reference to all of these people who suffered these inhuman acts of the countries that waged war against us.

Mr. IJAMS. I am glad that the witnesses who preceded me were those who had suffered indignities and disabilities at the hands of the Japanese, because you gentlemen know now and can well realize what I observed in those prison camps-of men lying there in the beds who were nothing but animated skeletons and with very little animation at that.

I was thinking particularly not so much of the men themselves but of these young widows and these little children of theirs.

Consider the aviators who were shot down in Japan and had their heads cut off to prove in their distorted minds their superiority.