Mediator has not met with 2 possible ex-soldiers on Mindanao
GENERAL SANTOS, May 28, Kyodo - (EDS: RECASTING WITH COMMENTS BY MEDIATOR, ADDING INFO)
A mediator arranging a meeting between Japanese officials and two men believed to be former Japanese soldiers from World War II on Mindanao Island in the southern Philippines said Saturday he has not met with the two and has not obtained any evidence confirming their identities.
However, the mediator, a 58-year-old Japanese man, told Kyodo News in an interview that he will ''rescue the former soldiers within several days.''
The man whose name has been withheld is said to have obtained information on the two from his Filipino staff during efforts to collect the remains of Japanese soldiers in the Philippines.
He made the comments as Japanese diplomats continued efforts Saturday to seek an arrangement through the mediator for a meeting with the two men, but have been unable to agree on the time and place of the meeting.
The diplomats, who arrived in General Santos on the island Friday, have been in contact via telephone intermittently with the mediator, Japanese officials said.
Japan's Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry only identified the two by their surnames of Yamakawa and Nakauchi. Government sources, however, said the two are likely to be Yoshio Yamakawa, 87, and Tsuzuki Nakauchi, 85, who served in the 30th Division of the Imperial Japanese Army.
Activities of militants in the nearby mountains where the two are believed to be living are reportedly hampering efforts to arrange the meeting.
A number of armed groups, including antigovernment militants, crime groups and Jemaah Islamiyah, which is widely regarded as the Southeast Asian wing of the al-Qaida terror network, are said to be active on Mindanao.
The mediator also appears to be concerned about going ahead with the meeting because of the surge in media interest, telling Kyodo News in the interview that ''the media are making too much fuss'' over the matter.
On Saturday, nearly 100 reporters and camera crew members mostly from Japanese media flocked to a hotel where the Japanese diplomats are staying to check whether progress was being made in arranging the meeting.
Local authorities have expressed concern that journalists who go into the mountains to seek information about the two possible former Japanese soldiers might be captured by armed groups.
The mediator said in the interview that he obtained information on the two men from his Filipino staff who claimed to have met old-aged former Japanese soldiers on a mountain about 150 kilometers from General Santos.
The mediator also said he has not met with the two men and has not obtained any evidence such as pictures or handwritten memos confirming their identities.
Earlier report quoting Japanese government sources showed the two men have documents proving they were former soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army and have written their names in Chinese characters used in Japanese writing.
Local police said they have not received any requests from the Japanese government for information on the two men or for operations to search for them.
Meanwhile, a health ministry official headed from Narita airport outside Tokyo to Manila on Saturday to try to meet the two men and work on confirming their identities.
The ministry's Social Welfare and War Victims' Relief Bureau is in charge of assisting the repatriation of Japanese stranded overseas due to war-related situations.
But if the two were determined to have stayed in the Philippines of their own will, the matter would be handed over to the Foreign Ministry as a case of helping Japanese nationals overseas, the government officials have said.
The mediator, who engages in business in the southern Philippine area and was on the island to collect the remains of Japanese soldiers, contacted the Japanese Embassy in Manila on Thursday to convey the information he had on the two, according to the officials.
As time passed without any clear indication on the prospects of being able to meet the two men in General Santos, about 1,000 km south of Manila, some Japanese officials started to express skepticism.
Seiichi Ogawa, a Japanese consul in Davao -- a nearby city -- said Friday, ''I have a slight doubt as to whether indeed they are former Japanese soldiers.''
Of the two men in question this time, Yamakawa had a registered address in Osaka Prefecture, while Nakauchi was a registered resident in Kochi Prefecture. Both have been officially registered by the Japanese government as war dead.
In past incidents of former Japanese soldiers being discovered overseas decades after the end of the war, former Imperial Japanese Army intelligence officer Hiroo Onoda, now 83, was found hiding in the jungle on the Philippines' Lubang Island in 1974, some 30 years after being posted there.
He returned to Japan in March 1974 and emigrated to Brazil the next year.
In 1972, another former Japanese soldier, Shoichi Yokoi, was found on Guam. He returned to Japan in that year and died in 1997.
Neither Onoda nor Yokoi had known of Japan's defeat in the war.
Man this is quite an interesting story. Especially when I try to imagine what it would be like to be seperated from the world for so long.
