In the last days of May, news reached Japan that two former soldiers in the Imperial Army had been found in the Philippines. Apparently the two men, who had been hiding during the entire postwar period in an area around the town of General Santos close to the southern tip of the island of Mindanao, now wanted to come home.
In the week that followed, approximately 100 Japanese reporters traveled to the Philippines to get the story of these two stubborn wartime stragglers. For a while it seemed as if the entire nation was waiting, with bated breath, to welcome their repatriation. After all, isn't Japan where they belong?
It all brought back memories of two other very similar cases.