WASHINGTON - The photograph of the execution - the one where two doomed men kneel by graves they dug themselves in a desolate field on Guam moments before their captors behead them - was one of the first things visitors used to see when they entered the reception area of Robert A. Underwood's Capitol Hill office.

Now the yellowed print lies in the basement of a House building, boxed up with Underwood's other possessions, as Guam's lone nonvoting delegate prepares to vacate his congressional seat. And, perhaps, a measure of the anguish represented in this photograph soon could be stowed away, too, as Washington finally takes notice of the injuries suffered by Guam in World War II and moves to salve the wound.

In the coming days, President Bush is expected to sign a war claims bill that has languished on Capitol Hill for decades - a measure passed in the final hours of the last Congress that would create a commission to study the payment of claims to American nationals living on Guam. The aim: to pay damages to thousands who suffered during the 2 1/2 years of Japanese occupation of the tiny Pacific island.

"For the people of the World War II generation who are reaching the conclusion of their lives, it's about bringing closure," says Underwood, who lost two siblings to malnutrition during the war. "It's about the recognition they never received."

Chamorro struggles

Underwood, a Democrat who failed in a bid this year to become Guam's governor, is giving up his House seat, but not before helping secure passage of a measure that Guam has been fighting for since 1972 - the first year the island was allowed nonvoting representation in Congress. The bill is an effort to recognize the struggles of the Chamorro people, the native islanders of Guam.

Brigidia "Bea" Lizama, 72, who married a Navy officer and moved to Oxon Hill in the 1950s, easily conjures the horror from 9,000 miles away, in her quiet Prince George's County home. She remembers seeing the Japanese torture her cousins for information about their father, who had refused to surrender and was hiding in the jungle.

"The girls knew where he was, but they wouldn't tell, so the Japanese tied them outside and put a water hose in their mouth, and you could see the water coming from their eyes and their ears," she recalls. "That's how they punish those two girls."

Later, when Lizama's aunt became pregnant, Lizama said Japanese soldiers, furious that the woman would not reveal her husband's whereabouts, beheaded her with a bayonet. Sometime after that, Lizama's uncle was caught and also killed.

To Lizama, the payment of war claims is owed her.

"I'm still surviving, so I deserve that money because my mom and dad and my aunt and uncle, they're not here to get that," says Lizama, whose mother was forced to help build an airstrip on Guam for the Japanese and whose father had to scrounge for food to feed the family. "I hope to see a reward like this sometime in my lifetime."

The commission's charge is to determine the eligibility for possible payments, and the size of those benefits, for the 10,000 Chamorro survivors and relatives of the deceased. Advocates of war reparations want $20,000 for a death claim, $7,000 for an injury and $5,000 for forced march or forced labor. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated the total cost of the claims at between $50 million and $100 million.

The creation of a commission is only a small first step: Congress has not promised a dime. Because a 1951 treaty prohibits American citizens from petitioning Japan for war reparations, the U.S. government, not Japan, would have to pay the reparations - which some suspect might never materialize.

"Where's the Guam lobby?" asks Michael Scharf, a professor who specializes in war crimes at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. "I guess human rights groups will have to take up the cause, but I haven't seen anybody doing it yet."

Even if payments are never made, some see any nod to the pain of the Chamorro people as progress - a long-awaited expression of U.S. concern.

"You have to stop and think that really this is an apology coming from Americans, saying, 'We did not recognize you, and we forgave the Japanese without getting your input,'" says Karen Emsley Guerrero, 39, whose mother survived an attempted execution and later fought for the war claims bill. "For my mother, it was never about the money - all she ever wanted was the respect that was due her."

Guam, which became a U.S. territory in 1898 as a result of the Spanish-American War, has a peculiar relationship with the United States. Its citizens are American but cannot vote in presidential elections. Its delegate serves in the House but cannot vote on final passage of a bill. The island is associated with the United States on military and diplomatic matters, but some constitutional rights do not extend to Guam residents.

'Been too long now'

In the Washington suburbs, where a small community of survivors from Guam resettled after the war, some believe that the U.S. government has never fully acknowledged the suffering the island endured before U.S. Marines liberated Guam in 1944. But they are also skeptical that the creation of a commission will result in rewards.

"It's been too long now, Congress is never going to hand out all that money - there's too many worse things happening now around the world," says Isadora Taitano, 81, a survivor who moved to Camp Springs three decades ago. Yes, she recalls, her brother was shot dead at age 18 for refusing to take down an American flag in front of the Guam governor's mansion at the start of the Japanese occupation, but that is a chapter she does not revisit. "I let it go," she says.

Around Washington, the 140-member Guam Society is a close-knit group, even electing its own Cherry Blossom princess for D.C.'s annual parade. But only a handful of these Americans are survivors of World War II.

Among the survivors, the anger simmers close to the surface.

"I am a victim of many of the atrocities - I have the living proof on me," says Jose Taitano, who is not a close relative of Isadora Taitano's but who, like her, is a native of Guam who survived the war and then moved to Prince George's County.

Taitano was working at the U.S. naval station on Guam when the Japanese invaded the island in December 1941, right after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He remembers angering his captors because he could not supply the intelligence information they were seeking. At one point, he recalls, one of his interrogators stuck a pencil in his ear, puncturing his eardrum.

Taitano, who lives in Oxon Hill, remembered his infant daughter going without food while his wife was sent on a forced march, carrying the child across the island while he was required to build caves for Japanese forces.

Guam survivors see a precedent for their cause: In 1988, President Ronald Reagan offered a formal apology and a $20,000 congressionally mandated payment to each Japanese-American held in a U.S. internment camp during World War II. The federal government, the reasoning goes, ought to do at least as much for the Americans who suffered at the hands of the Japanese.

In 1995, shortly before her death, Beatrice Flores Emsley made her argument before a congressional panel. As she spoke, her audience stared at the long scar down the side of her neck where a Japanese sword struck her as she prayed before her executioner. She described how she had fainted after the blow, then awoke two days later after being buried alive. Maggots crawled in her neck wound, but she survived.

Now, her youngest daughter, Karen Emsley Guerrero, finds victory in Washington's focus on her island, even if that focus turns out to be fleeting.

"In World War II, there were diehard Americans on Guam - they refused to be Japanese, and they died for it," she says. "Finally, they are getting respect."