Excerpts:
"First, the Republic of the Philippines, as an Allied Power, was a signatory to the 1951 Treaty itself and thus at least purported to waive the claims of its nationals. 136 U.N.T.S. at 137, ratified 260 U.N.T.S. 450. Then in 1952 Japan reached an agreement with the Republic of China (Taiwan), 138 U.N.T.S. 37, which did not expressly mention the settlement of individual claims but did state in Article XI that "[u]nless otherwise provided for in the present Treaty ... any problem arising between [the parties] as a result of the existence of a state of war shall be settled in accordance with the relevant provisions of the [1951] Treaty." In 1965 Japan and the Republic of Korea (South Korea) entered into an agreement providing that "the problem concerning property, rights, and interests of the two Contracting Parties and their nationals ... and concerning claims between the Contracting Parties and their nationals ... is settled completely and finally." 583 U.N.T.S. 258, 260 (Art. II, § 1). Finally, in 1972 Japan and the People's Republic of China issued a Joint Communiqué in which China "renounce[d] its demand for war reparation from Japan," and in 1978 Japan and China affirmed in a formal treaty of peace that "the principles set out in [the Joint Communiqué] should be strictly observed." 1225 U.N.T.S. 269.
As evidenced by the 1951 Treaty itself, when negotiating peace treaties,
governments have dealt with ... private claims as their own, treating them as national assets, and as counters, `chips', in international bargaining. Settlement agreements have lumped, or linked, claims deriving from private debts with others that were intergovernmental in origin, and concessions in regard to one 51*51 category of claims might be set off against concessions in the other, or against larger political considerations unrelated to debts.
Louis Henkin, Foreign Affairs and the Constitution 300 (2d edition 1996); see Dames and Moore v. Regan, 453 U.S. 654, 688, 101 S.Ct. 2972, 69 L.Ed.2d 918 (1981) (upholding President's authority to settle claims of citizens as "a necessary incident to the resolution of a major foreign policy dispute between our country and another [at least] where ... Congress acquiesced in the President's action"); Am. Ins. Ass'n v. Garamendi, 539 U.S. 396, 424, 123 S.Ct. 2374, 156 L.Ed.2d 376 (2003) (acknowledging "President's authority to provide for settling claims in winding up international hostilities")."
