A Japanese embassy official yesterday downplayed reports that two elderly Japanese soldiers may be hiding in mountains near the port city of General Santos, unaware that World War II ended 60 years ago.
"You must understand that we get these reports all the time," the Japanese embassy's press attache, Shuhei Ogawa, said at an impromptu press conference.
Hundreds of journalists have descended on this city 1,300km south of Manila on Mindanao island since the reports emerged on Friday. Japan's Kyodo news agency, citing government sources, earlier named the men and said they were in their 80s. But the two old soldiers have not been seen.
A Japanese government welfare official, Suminori Arima, left Tokyo for the Philippines yesterday to join diplomats making efforts to contact the two World War II stragglers.
"If the story turns out to be true, it would be tremendous," Arima, head of the research office at the welfare and labor ministry, said before boarding a flight to Manila.
"I want to meet them in person no matter how and ask about their health and other matters," he said.
Arima was expected to reach Mindanao today, where Japanese diplomats were trying to get in touch with the two men through a middleman, identified only as "Asano."
Japanese diplomats posted a note outside their hotel in General Santos informing journalists that local authorities have warned them not to leave the city because the surrounding countryside is not safe.
The note, in Japanese, warned Japanese correspondents not to accept offers from people claiming to know the location of the "stragglers" and offering to guide them into the mountains.
Police and military reiterated a warning that communist and Muslim rebel groups were active in the mountains around General Santos. The Muslim groups are known to have conducted kidnappings for ransom.
The mystery of how two Japanese World War II soldiers could remain in hiding during the decades of armed insurgency in Mindanao remained unanswered as Ogawa said they still had no details on the location of the two.
`Many rumors'
"There are many rumors of old soldiers hiding in the mountains or on islands but there is never any solid evidence," Ogawa said.
"We are told these men want to come to the city," he said.
The embassy has seen no documents or photographs to support reports that the two men are in hiding but has been working through the intermediary, Ogawa said.
"He has many Filipino contacts and it is through these contacts that he became aware of the two soldiers," Ogawa said, adding that he did not think the intermediary had actually seen the soldiers.
"We are here to confirm the report," he said.
On Friday a senior Filipino police intelligence officer in the area had already expressed skepticism over the story of the war veterans.
"There is a possibility that this could just be a hoax. Somebody may just want to gain something," the officer said.
Japan was stunned in 1974 when former imperial Japanese army intelligence officer Hiroo Onoda was found living in the jungle on the Philippine island of Lubang. He did not know of Japan's surrender 29 years earlier.
After being repatriated, Onoda emigrated to Brazil.
Another former Japanese soldier, Shoichi Yokoi, was found on Guam in 1972. He returned home and died in 1997.
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