Japan kept waiting on WW2 soldiers in Philippines
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-05-27 22:35

GENERAL SANTOS, Philippines - Japanese diplomats and a throng of reporters were kept waiting on Friday to find out whether two elderly men in the southern Philippines were Japanese soldiers left over from World War II.

Japanese media reported the men were in the mountainous Columbio area of Mindanao island and had contacted a Japanese person searching for the remains of World War II soldiers.

The area is a hotbed of kidnapping gangs and Muslim rebels.

Two Japanese embassy officials were waiting at a hotel in the nearby city of General Santos to verify whether the men were the first cases in 30 years of war-time stragglers being found, government spokesman Hiroyuki Hosoda told reporters in Tokyo.

"Arrangements are being made to meet with the two of them, but the time of this meeting still hasn't been decided," he said.

"If we can meet with them, we'd like to verify their identity as soon as possible."

But embassy officials said that a Japanese mediator who contacted them on Thursday had failed to make contact as promised. They said they would wait one more day.

"We are now doubting the reports," said Shuhei Ogawa, the Japanese embassy's press attache.

The Japanese health ministry, in charge of investigating the cases, said it had received reports about four possible former soldiers in the Philippines but was taking only two seriously.

"Since we haven't actually spoken to them, we can't verify who they are," said one ministry official, who asked not to be named. "We can't confirm the possibility but we can't categorically deny it either."

FIERCE LOYALTY

The Philippines, invaded by Japan in 1941, was the scene of heavy fighting at the end of the war as Japanese soldiers fiercely loyal to the emperor fought U.S. troops across the sprawling country, which has thousands of remote islands.

Japanese media played the story of the possible former soldiers prominently at home, showing footage of Japanese troops during the war but not touching on a brutal occupation that is believed to have left as many as one million Filipinos dead.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told reporters that if the two were found to be Japanese soldiers, the government would make every effort to repatriate them, if that was their wish.

"If they are alive, we'd like to fulfil their wishes," Koizumi said. "If this is true, it's quite a surprise. They've really done well to stay alive this long."

Media named the two men as Yoshio Yamakawa, 87, from the western city of Osaka, and Tsuzuki Nakauchi, 85.

"If they come, we will ask them if they can speak Japanese and if they want to return to Japan," said Shinichi Ogawa, the Japanese consul for Davao, the main city on Mindanao island.

The two men might have been put off by the growing presence of news media in the area, said Hosoda, the Japanese government spokesman.

The Sankei Shimbun newspaper, quoting an unidentified source, said there were around 40 former Japanese soldiers still living on Mindanao, all of them hoping to return home.

The last known Japanese straggler from the war was found in 1975 in Indonesia.

In 1974, former Japanese army intelligence officer Hiroo Onoda was found living in the jungle on the Philippine island of Lubang. He was unaware of Japan's defeat in 1945.

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