Japanese 'wartime soldiers' found in Philippines

Ten weeks short of the 60th anniversary of Tokyo's second world war surrender, diplomats were today investigating claims that two octagenarian Japanese soldiers had emerged from the mountains of the southern Philippines. According to Japanese media reports, the men were separated from their division six decades ago. Although they wanted to return home, they feared they would face a court martial for withdrawing from action.

But attempts to prove the identities of the two one way or the other suffered a setback when they failed to attend a meeting with Japanese embassy officials on the island of Mindanao.

Japanese newspapers named the men as Yoshio Yamakawa, 87, from Osaka, and 85-year-old Tsuzuki Nakauchi. Shuhei Ogawa, a press attache to the Japanese embassy in the Philippines, told Reuters he was now "doubting" the reports, but a government spokesman in Tokyo said the growing presence of the news media in the area might have put the two men off.

Through a mediator, Japanese diplomats had arranged to meet the two men in a hotel in the city of General Santos today in order to find out whether they were Japanese nationals and wanted to return to the country.

Mr Ogawa said the mediator had not been in touch with embassy officials since yesterday.

The reports were reminiscent of the case of the intelligence officer Hiroo Onoda, who believed the second world war was still being fought when he was found in the Philippine jungle in 1974.

Onoda refused to surrender until the Japanese government flew in his former commander to formally inform him that the war was over.

Claims that more second world war soldiers were still in the Philippines - which were invaded by Japan in 1941 and the scene of heavy fighting with US forces at the end of the war - surfaced after a Japanese national searching for the remains of soldiers said he had been contacted by the two men.

Quoting unnamed sources, Japan's Sankei Shimbun newspaper said there were around 40 soldiers living on Mindanao, all of whom hoped to return home.

Goichi Ichikawa, the chairman of a veterans group in Japan, said he had learned of at least three Japanese men living in the mountains of Mindanao from someone who went there late last year. "It's amazing they were able to survive for 60 years," he told reporters. "I was stunned."

The Japanese prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, said he hoped the mystery would be cleared up soon. "We are checking it now," he told reporters. "It is a surprise if it's true, but we have to check first."

An undated photograph of Japanese soldier Tsuzuki Nakauchi, believed to be one of two former Japanese servicemen who have been hiding in the mountains of the Philippine island of Mindanao since World War II. Photograph: Kyodo News/AP

Well, actually they haven't been found yet but, here's a bit about Shoichi Yokoi who was found on Guam in 1972.

On January 24, 1972, two hunters captured a Japanese soldier who had been hiding in the jungles of Guam since the American forces took the island in 1944. His name was Shoichi Yokoi, and in the summer of 1944, he had retreated into the jungle rather than surrender, and had been there ever since.

He resided in a cave he had dug from a bamboo thicket, and lived on a diet of nuts, mangos, papaya, breadfruit, snails, and rats.

Having been a tailors apprentice before the war, he was able to fashion clothing and footwear from tree bark, and coconut husks using needles he made from nails, and buttons he made from wood.

He made a calendar from a tree trunk that he notched it at every full moon, and though he had read from a leaflet that the war had ended, he was determined to avoid capture until the Imperial Japanese Army returned.

Once captured, he was taken to Guam Memorial Hospital were doctors who had examined him were surprised to find him in good health. Evidently, his first question was, "Tell me quick, is Roosevelt dead"?

When news of his capture reached Japan, he became an instant hero. People gave him gifts that totaled $80.000, and job offers and marriage proposals poured in. But there were some dissenting voices as well.

Some felt that since so many Japanese men hadn’t come home from the war, why was so much attention being given to this one man? Others found his devotion to the Emperor antiquated and embarrassing. Some wondered that if he were such a good soldier, why hadn’t he committed Hara-Kiri when Guam fell.

He was surprised and a little saddened at how his country had changed. He was quoted as saying, "The glories of nature that I used to know have all disappeared. Instead up in the sky we have this thing called smog. On Earth, cars are killing more people than the war".

Most disturbing to him were modern Japanese women. "They are monsters whose virtue is all but gone from them, and who screech like apes". Before the war they were, "virtuous, and obedient to the commands of menfolk, lovely to look at, gentle and retiring.

Eventually, his countrymen began to forget about him, and he bought a house with the money his countrymen had donated. He settled down with Mihoko Hatashin whom he married. He described her as a nice old-fashioned Japanese girl.

For more on Japanese Holdouts, go to:

http://www.wanpela.com/holdouts/

Here is Yokoi's obit, he died in 1997.
http://vikingphoenix.com/public/rongstad/bio-obit/yokoi.htm

Tuesday September 23, 1997 5:11 PM EDT
Japanese WWII Soldier Who Hid for Decades Dies
By Jon Herskovitz
TOKYO (Reuter) - A Japanese soldier who stayed in the jungles of Guam for 26 years after the end of World War II in adherence to the Imperial Army's code of never surrender has died of a heart attack, hospital officials said Tuesday.

Shoichi Yokoi, 82, became a national hero on his return to Japan in 1972 for his dramatic tale of survival.

His first words upon arriving in Tokyo -- "It is with much embarrassment that I return" -- were broadcast nationally and instantly became a popular saying.

He died Monday at a hospital in the central city of Nagoya, in his native Aichi prefecture.

Yokoi's exploits in the jungle fascinated the nation. The Japanese, in the throes of the post-war industrial boom, were intrigued by his bare diet of nuts, berries, frogs, snails and rats, and how he wove materials from tree bark.

His return triggered a search for other Japanese soldiers left from the war, and turned up another straggler in 1974, this time in the Philippines.

Unlike Yokoi, whose rifle had rusted and become useless, former Lt. Hiroo Onoda had kept a working firearm and killed several villagers before he was discovered in the Philippine jungle.

Yokoi, a former sergeant, was drafted into the army in 1941 and sent to northeastern China, and later to Guam. Japan occupied Guam during the war and most of its 22,000 troops were killed when U.S. troops recaptured the island in 1944.

Two local hunters discovered him in January 1972 in a remote Guam jungle wearing a pair of burlap pants and a shirt which he said he had made from the bark of a tree.

He was repatriated to Japan a month later where he started life over in a country and a world he hardly knew.

Japan had then become a nation without an army, just beginning to emerge as an industrialized power. Upon his return, Yokoi, who had been reported as killed in action, was dumbfounded by the changes that had occurred since he left on a military transport more than a quarter century ago.

At the first news conference since his homecoming, Yokoi, surrounded by reporters and photographers after nearly three decades in complete jungle isolation, appeared bewildered and was unable to answer questions posed to him.

He contracted an arranged marriage in November 1972, and traded his solitary cave in Guam for a home in Aichi Prefecture with his new wife Mihoko.

He became a regular commentator on television programs, where he discussed survival skills. He wrote a best-selling book on his experience in Guam and in 1974 ran unsuccessfully for a seat in Japan's upper house of parliament.

On Tuesday, friends and neighbors visited Yokoi's home in Nagoya to pay tribute to Japan's man who "never surrendered," Kyodo news agency reported.

Yokoi's wife Mihoko, 69, told reporters she felt she had lost "a treasure from my heart," Kyodo reported.

We have had 25 years of happy life, and I told my husband 'Thank you'," Kyodo quoted her as saying.

In 1991, Yokoi had an audience with Emperor Akihito during a reception at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. Yokoi, who had said upon his return that he regretted having failed to serve the Imperial Japanese Army well, was overcome with emotion when he met the emperor, media reports said.

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