Jump to content

2 Japanses soldiers from WWII found on island.

Hardbopjazz
 Share

Recommended Posts

Hardbopjazz Collaborator

Hardbopjazz

Posted
Posted (edited)

At some point I would have said "fuck it, I'm going home."

By TERESA CEROJANO, Associated Press Writer

56 minutes ago

GENERAL SANTOS, Philippines - Sixty years after the guns of World War II went silent, reports that two Japanese Imperial Army soldiers had been found in the mountains of the southern Philippines sent Japan's diplomats on a frantic mission Friday to try to contact them.

ADVERTISEMENT

The two men, in their 80s, reportedly have lived on the restive southern island of Mindanao since they were separated from their division, staying on for fear they would face court-martial if they returned to Japan.

A day of waiting at a hotel in General Santos, a city 600 miles south of Manila, turned to disappointment for Japanese diplomats.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's spokesman, Yu Kameoka, told The Associated Press in Tokyo the men were apparently reluctant to meet with the officials because of the large crowds, including journalists, waiting to see them.

Diplomats were trying to schedule a meeting Saturday through a Japanese mediator, who had contacted the country's embassy in Manila about the men.

Embassy spokesman Shuhei Ogawa said they were giving the story "another day." He said it was too early to tell if the report was true that the men were the latest of a handful of old soldiers who held out on various islands for decades after the war ended in August 1945.

The story created huge interest in Japan, particularly among veterans marking the 60th anniversary of the war's end.

One veteran, Goichi Ichikawa, said he had heard of at least three Japanese men living in the mountains of Mindanao from someone who went there late last year and alerted Japan's government in February.

"It's amazing they were able to survive for 60 years," Ichikawa told reporters in the Japanese city of Osaka. "Of course I was stunned."

Japanese broadcaster NHK said embassy officials were reluctant to go meet the two men outside town because of the danger of Islamic rebels and criminal gangs. The area where the pair were supposedly found is notorious for ransom kidnappings and attacks by Muslim separatists, who have waged war for three decades. Communist rebels also are active.

"We are doing our best to contact the mediator," Japanese Consul Seiichi Ogawa said. "We will just continue to wait."

It wasn't clear how the two mystery men had lived on Mindanao all these years, but there was speculation they might have married Filipina wives and even adopted Filipino names.

Japan's Kyodo News agency said the two might be Yoshio Yamakawa, who would be 87, and Tsuzuki Nakauchi, 85, from the 30th Division of the Imperial Japanese Army.

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

According to Japanese government records, the men were part of a unit of 16,000 soldiers on Mindanao, of which only about 3,000 were thought to have survived the war.

Japan's government first learned of the possibility that four former soldiers might still be living in the Philippines late last year, from an official collecting information about the remains of former troops.

Last September, a Japanese national in the lumber business in Mindanao ran into the four men in the mountains, Japan's Sankei Shimbun newspaper reported. It was learned later that they wanted to go back to Japan but were afraid they would be court-martialed for withdrawing from action, Sankei said.

Years after the war ended, there were signs in the Philippines warning about Japanese soldiers still in the hills.

A few surrendered as late as 1948, then in March 1974, intelligence officer Lt. Hiroo Onoda came out of hiding on northern Lubang island. 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 a 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 had 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.

The Japanese invaded the Philippines on Dec. 20, 1941, and the last major American force surrendered the following May. U.S. troops returned in October 1944 and were still fighting small Japanese forces at the end of the war, although they had reconquered most of the Philippines. The country became independent in 1946.

___

Associated Press writer Kenji Hall in Tokyo contributed to this report

Edited by Hardbopjazz
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Claude Newbie

Claude

Posted
Posted

At some point I would have said "fuck it, I'm going home."

I can't believe these men really thought the war was still on. Maybe they used that as an excuse after they were discovered.

In Europe, there were also cases of german soldiers who started a second life after the war/soviet prison and prefered their wife and family to think they did not survive.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
kinuta Newbie

kinuta

Posted
Posted

I was out for a long walk and started to make a mental list of all things these guys have never seen and are probably unaware of. Starting with tv, antibiotics, mass use of plastic, lps, record players,jets, large airports.missiles, napalm, atomic weapons, computers,nuclear weapons, biological weapons, chemical weapons,pocket tissues. blue jeans,transistor radios, printed circuits, satellites. sputnik, Vanguard. Apollo Moon landings, Mars landing, after a while I started getting a headache and I hadn't even scatched the surface or got anywhere even approaching the digital era.

Please feel free to add things to the endless list.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Chuck Nessa Mentor

Chuck Nessa

Posted
Posted

I just wonder how you submerge these guys back in civilization? Do you do it slowly, by showing them little advancements one by one, or you just say here it is? Look at all you’ve missed out on since 1945.  Either way, it's sad.

Give 'em ipods, cellphones and tell them Bill Gates rules the world.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
 Share
Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...