Lost WWII soldiers a hoax?

2005-05-29 16:17

Kenji Hall

General Santos - Diplomats from Tokyo said on Sunday they were not giving up on efforts to verify if two Japanese soldiers have been surviving in the Philippine jungles since World War II amid increasing speculation that the astonishing tale could be a hoax.

"I don't believe it," said Homobono Adaza, former Misamis Oriental province governor. "And I asked several others from General Santos, they were just laughing. This is a bum steer."

Others weren't so sure and continued to hold out hopes that the men will show up.

The story about the alleged stragglers, reportedly separated from their unit six decades ago, has generated huge interest in Japan.

About 100 Japanese journalists descended on the southern port city of General Santos, where the diplomats were staying, creating a security headache in a violent region where Muslim and communist guerrillas and kidnap gangs flourish.

The diplomats were joined on Sunday by an official from the Japanese health ministry, which is in charge of keeping records of soldiers who survived the war and recovering the remains of those who didn't, a Japanese official said. Reporters waited at an airport but failed to spot the official, who may have reached General Santos by land from a nearby province.

"We are still doing our best to see them and we have not," Japanese embassy spokesperson Shuhei Ogawa said of the men who have been sought since Friday. "At this moment, it's not the time to give up."

The men - who would now be in their 80s - were said to have been separated from the 30th Division of the imperial Japanese army and stayed in the remote mountains on Mindanao island for fear of being court-marshalled at home.

The story broke as Japanese veterans marked the 60th anniversary of the war's end.

The Japanese government urged caution, saying the report came from somebody who had not seen the men personally. Complicating the issue, the area where they supposedly were found is notorious for ransom kidnappings and attacks by Muslim separatists, who have waged war for three decades. Communist rebels also are active there.

Muslim guerrillas said they would consider helping search for the alleged stragglers if the Japanese government officially seek their help. A rebel spokesperson, Eid Kabalu, said he has heard reports of civilian sightings of two suspected Japanese soldiers living in two Mindanao provinces but added the reports were unverified.

Japan's Asahi newspaper reported on Sunday that a Japanese mediator in General Santos may have paid armed groups roughly $250 000 to secure safe passage from the jungle for the two alleged former soldiers.

Philippine police intensified patrols on Sunday, and soldiers were deployed to guard at least six hotels where Japanese diplomats and journalists were staying.

Tokyo first learned of the former soldiers in January, from a Japanese trader on Mindanao who has been trying since Friday to arrange a meeting so officials could confirm their identities, Ogawa said.

Ogawa stressed that the trader had not seen the men and was relying on a Filipino contact, who himself got word of the mystery soldiers from yet another Filipino.

Japan's Kyodo News agency said the two missing soldiers might be Yoshio Yamakawa, 87, and Tsuzuki Nakauchi, 85.

The Philippines, then a US colony, was a major battleground in the Pacific. The Japanese occupation is remembered as brutal for its massacres of civilians and deaths of hundreds of thousands of US and Filipino soldiers.

The Japanese invaded on December 20, 1941. Years after the war ended, there were signs warning about Japanese soldiers still in the hills.

A few surrendered as late as 1948. In March 1974, intelligence officer Lt Hiroo Onoda came out of hiding on northern Lubang island, but he refused to give up until the Japanese government flew in his former commander to formally inform him the war was over.

The last of the three known former Japanese soldiers to surrender, in December 1974, was Taiwanese national Teruo Nakamura, who fought for the Japanese army on Indonesia's Morotai island. He returned to Taiwan at age 57.

In 1972, Shoichi Yokoi, who hid for 27 years in the jungles of the Pacific island of Guam without knowing the war had ended, also returned to Japan. He died at age 82 in 1997.

Rumours of other soldiers hiding out have surfaced but were never substantiated.

- AP