From BBC News:
Japanese officials are investigating claims that two men living in jungle in the Philippines are Japanese soldiers left behind after World War II.
The pair, in their 80s, were reportedly found on southern Mindanao island.
[…] The claim drew comparisons with the 1974 case of Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda, who was found in the Philippines jungle unaware the war had ended.
[…] The two men on Mindanao contacted a Japanese national who was collecting the remains of war dead on Mindanao, according to government sources.
They had equipment which suggested they were former soldiers.
“It is an incredible story if it is true,” Japan’s consul general in Manila, Akio Egawa, told the AFP news agency.
[…] According to Japanese media reports, the pair had been living with Muslim rebel groups and at least one of them has married a local woman and had a family.
The BBC’s Tokyo correspondent says the likelihood is that they are well aware the war is over but have chosen to stay in the Philippines for their own reasons.
[…] Mindanao has seen more than two decades of Muslim rebellion and many areas are out of central government control.
Japan invaded the Philippines in 1941, shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and set up a brutal puppet government.
In the closing months of the war, there was heavy fighting with US troops in the mountainous, heavily forested islands.
The Sankei Shimbun daily said the men would most likely be members of the Panther division, 80% of whom were killed or went missing during the final months of the war.
It speculated there could be as many as 40 Japanese soldiers living in similar conditions in the Philippines.
When Lt Onoda was found on the Philippines island of Lubang in 1974, he initially refused to surrender.
…which bolsters my theory that not all Japanese are crazy about sushi, afterall.
…speculated there could be as many as 40 Japanese soldiers living in similar conditions in the Philippines.
In that jungle? 60 freakin’ years? Not bloody likely.
Second longest duration ever between the end of the war and the confirmation of soldiers found still fighting it.
The record is 157 years—or the number of years since the signing of The Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo that Pat Buchanan has been fighting the Mexican-American War.
Thanks. I’ll be here all week.
Actually, isn’t Buchanan still pulling for the Philistines?
Somebody clear a trail in the jungle with a Kubota bulldozer, bring him out in a Toyota landrover, fly him back to Japan in a Mitsubishi airplane, and let the emperor explain to him with a Sony cellphone that America won the war.
Turing = heard, as in At least, that’s what I’ve always heard…
This is bullshit. I saw this very thing on Gilligan’s Island.
I wonder if they know about the new Japanese constitution?
In another sixty years they’ll find Al Gore living in that same jungle.
Was he Oriental?
J-Cutie: I hate War!
THIS STORY IS A HOAX YOU BITCHES!!!1