GENERAL SANTOS, Philippines — Two men believed to be former soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army have been found on Mindanao Island in the southern Philippines, the Japanese Embassy in Manila has reported.
The embassy sent three officials to the southern Mindanao city of General Santos on Friday to meet the two men to determine whether they were Japanese stragglers.
It was not immediately known if the two men were aware that the war was over.
The men reportedly want to return to Japan, an embassy spokesman said.
The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said the two men are believed to be Yoshio Yamakawa, 87, from Osaka, and Tsuzuki Nakauchi, 85, from Meijimura, now Ochicho. Both belonged to the 30th Regiment of the 30th Division of the Imperial Japanese Army.
The division was dispatched to Mindanao Island in 1944 during World War II. Yamakawa was a lieutenant and Nakauchi was a corporal, the ministry said.
Presuming that the two men are confirmed to be former Japanese soldiers, it will be the first time anyone in Japan has heard of them in nearly 60 years. They also would be the first Japanese stragglers to be found in the Philippines since 2nd Lt. Hiroo Onoda was found in the jungle of Lubang Island in 1974. The 83-year-old former Imperial Japanese Army intelligence officer now lives in Brazil. In 1972, another Japanese World War II straggler, Shoichi Yokoi, was found on Guam. He returned to Japan and died in 1997.
Mindanao Island is racked by an insurgency led by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
Ministry officials and members of a Japanese organization for the war dead said a man from Nagasaki Prefecture involved in logging in Mindanao met the two men in August.
The Nagasaki man contacted a war veterans association in Japan, and the information about the two men was conveyed to the ministry in October.
Yoshihiko Terashima of Kawaguchi, who is a member of the organization, visited Mindanao and tried to contact the two men. According to the 86-year-old veteran, the two were uneasy about returning to Japan because they were afraid of being court-martialed and executed.
Terashima succeeded in contacting the two men early this month, which led to the Japanese Embassy in Manila sending officials to Mindanao to meet the men.
The information about the two men was conveyed to Goichi Ichikawa, 89, of Higashi-Osaka — who was in the same division as Yamakawa and Nakauchi — in December from a Japanese man who was on the island collecting the remains of Japanese soldiers.
Ichikawa said Yamakawa and Nakauchi were living together with Reiichi Sakurai from Kakogawa after the war ended. Ichikawa said Sakurai, 93, is also believed to be alive.
The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said a veterans association informed the War Victims' Relief Bureau in October that four former Japanese soldiers were alive on Mindanao Island.
The ministry immediately asked the Foreign Ministry to gather information pertaining to the case on Mindanao Island while checking their names against the roll of Imperial Japanese Army members in its archives.
The ministry believes the two men the Japanese Embassy sent officials to contact are Yamakawa and Nakauchi.
Of the remaining two men, one is believed to be Sakurai, a field hospital surgeon, but there is no clue as to the identity of the fourth.
On the health ministry's army roster, Yamakawa, Nakauchi and Sakurai were registered as dead.
After hearing that three stragglers may have survived for nearly 60 years in Mindanao, former comrades of the men filed a petition with the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry, calling for their rescue.
The ministry said it would dispatch an official to Mindanao today to join the embassy staff.