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The United States Congress has passed a bill that includes proposed payments for Guamanians who were killed, raped, beaten or forced to work during Japanese occupation in the Second World War.
The move is one step in Guam's decades-long battle to seek wartime reparations for the 30-month occupation that killed an estimated 10 percent of the island's population.
The Pacific Daily News reports Guam's delegate to the US Congress, Madeleine Bordallo, as saying she will work hard to convince the Senate to pass the bill next year.
Guam was seized from the US by Japanese forces in 1941, and the island's population was subjected to culture alignment, forced labour, beheadings, rape and torture until it was recaptured in 1944.
The bill would authorise payments to survivors of the occupation, as well as to the descendants of those who died as a result of it.
It is not yet known how much it would cost.
