The absence of Japanese guards in the photo is suspect.
If they were prisoners, their would be guards and no civilians would have been allowed so near them. The Japanese would have had no problem throwing both of them in a 3 x 3 foot cage and keeping them there until they figured what their next actions would be.
Photo taken prior to the Japs taking them into custody?
Not really. There’s no place they can run off to and we weren’t at war with them for another 4 1/2 years so the Japanese probably don’t have a lot of reason to go whole hog on crap treatment. They could see it as serendipitous though that the US assumption would be they disappeared and between that and bureaucratic sloth they probably got shuffled around until they contracted some illness or some prole figured putting a bullet in them made their inconvenience go away.