Japanese envoys call off hunt for Imperial Army soldiers

GENERAL SANTOS CITY — Japanese envoys seeking out two Japanese World War II soldiers allegedly hiding in the jungle on the outskirts of this city are ready to pull out after a failed search, officials said yesterday.

The plan to withdraw was announced amid contradictory reports and growing doubts about the truth of a story about two Japanese "stragglers," supposedly now in their 80s, wanted to emerge from hiding, 60 years after the war in the Pacific ended.

"The Japanese embassy in the Philippines has decided that the embassy staff (who have) been sent to General Santos City will be recalled to Manila for the time being," Japanese consul-general Ekio Egawa said.

Egawa did not say when the Japanese delegation would be pulling out.

He said the decision to withdraw was made after a shadowy Japanese mediator, allegedly in touch with the two soldiers, told the diplomats that any interviews with the two stragglers should be done "at a later date at a more quiet place."

Egawa also cited security concerns raised by the scores of Japanese and local journalists who have descended on this city to cover the event. It was feared that guerrillas and kidnapping gangs operating in the hills outside the city could target the foreigners.

He refused to disclose further details on the mysterious mediator except to say the embassy would maintain contact with him from Manila.

Egawa also declined to comment on the credibility of the story or of the middleman, remarking only that "we will be waiting for further contacts from the mediator."

In Japan, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said that "if we see no progress, we are considering sending our diplomats back to Manila."

The self-described Japanese middleman met with the diplomats in Mindanao on Sunday but was not accompanied by the two soldiers. Instead, he offered to arrange another meeting.

Japanese broadcaster NHK said the middleman’s statements were often contradictory and ambiguous.

"We cannot look for them in large mountain areas that are controlled by guerrillas. We just have to wait for a new contact" from the middleman, Hosoda said.

The diplomats, along with about 100 Japanese journalists, descended on General Santos in the strife-torn island of Mindanao after the Japanese embassy received information last Thursday that two old men living on the island were believed to be ex-World War II soldiers.

Japan’s Mainichi Shimbun newspaper said Sunday that unidentified Filipino rebels were demanding a $232,000 ransom for delivering the former Japanese Imperial Army soldiers. But Hosoda said yesterday he was not aware of this report.

Japan had been stunned in 1974 when former Imperial Japanese Army intelligence officer Hiroo Onoda was found to be living in the jungle on the central Philippine island of Lubang. Onoda, the best-known "straggler" from World War II, did not know of Japan’s surrender 29 years earlier.

Central Mindanao deputy police intelligence chief Superintendent Robert Kiunisula speculated that the Japanese had decided to pull out because they discovered the story was not true.

Kiunisula echoed earlier suspicions that the rumors of Japanese World War II stragglers near this city were "part of the agenda of certain people to get money."

He suspected that kidnappers wanted to use the staged event to lure Japanese into the mountains where they could then be abducted for ransom.

The National Bureau of Investigation office in Central Mindanao is checking the veracity of the reports, which allegedly spread from one of the NBI office employees.

The stragglers were identified as Yoshio Yamakawa, 87, of the western Japanese city of Osaka, and Tsuzuki Nakauchi, 85.

However, the commanding officer of the 27th Infantry Battalion based in Tupi, South Cotabato identified only as Lt. Col. Pumihic said he has "no background information about this except what I read in the newspapers." — John Paul Jubelag, AP, AFP