Taxes pay for roads because even if you don't personally drive on them, the Fire Department that puts out the fire in your house does.

My house isn't on fire...so really, I'm paying for the possible benefit, not for the actual benefit of fire depts, police, ambulances, etc. Fair enough. BUT if the possibility I might benefit means I must pay taxes, then what about the possibility that paying reparations will result in more police, fire, and ambulance drivers who are among the people who received reparations? Indeed, it's possible that THEY will benefit and I will benefit as well from their aid, even more than from some road that I'll never drive upon.

So surely your concern is something about justice other than the possibility of receiving benefits...

Americans interred during WWII were compensated by legislation....the government stood no chance of winning the class-action lawsuit that would ensue...

The Supreme Court upheld internment of the Japanese in the Korematsu decision (which wasn't overturned until 2018!). If a class action claim could have prevailed before then, surely Japanese and Californian lawyers would have brought it decades ago...(but after Korematsu, the law was quite clear - no such claims could proceed in any court).

For Native Americans, it's too hard to generalize. Reparations were occassionally paid; most often they weren't, and often, one form of 'reparation' was actually not what it appeared to be.

A better starting point for how reparations work in the real world is the biggest civil rights settlement in American history - a case called Pigford https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigford_v._Glickman -

"what do you feel my dollar amount would be...and to whom do you believe I personally would owe that?"

I don't know, and did not make a claim that you should pay reparations. Rather, I made an argument about the difference between legal and political outcomes.

The military is a classic case, because it forces evaluating what governance actually means to us. Say that your country chooses to go to war, chooses to implement a draft, and chooses to compel you to fight and risk your life. Can it do so? If one says yes, of course it can, then one accepts that one's country can take their life and liberty from them. It is fascinating that many people willingly accept that, BUT they think their money is more protected than their life and liberty may be.