ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Helena Pagano’s great-grandfather was the last Alaska Native chief of a remote island in the Bering Sea, closer to Russia than North America. He died starving as a prisoner of war after Japanese troops invaded during World War II, wresting the few dozen residents from their village, never to return.
Pagano has long believed Japan should pay more restitution for what its soldiers did to her great-grandfather and the other residents of Attu Island.