AN UNTOLD TRIUMPH SELECTED FOR NATIONAL PRIMETIME BROADCAST ON PBS
HONOLULU/WASHINGTON D.C. - The filmmakers of the award-winning
documentary, AN UNTOLD TRIUMPH, which tells the story of the U.S.
Army's 1st and 2nd Filipino Infantry Regiments, have just received
word that PBS has accepted the film for its national primetime
schedule.
PBS has scheduled the documentary to air on Memorial Day, May 30,
2005 at 10:00 PM following a repeat broadcast of the American
Experience program "Bataan Rescue." AN UNTOLD TRIUMPH includes a
retelling of the Bataan Death March from the Filipino soldier's
perspective.
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and, in a somewhat related vein:
Japanese Trying to Contact WWII Soldiers
By OLIVER TEVES, Associated Press Writer 44 minutes ago
Japanese diplomats pressed ahead Saturday with efforts to contact two
World War II soldiers reportedly living in the southern Philippines
since they were separated from their division six decades ago.
The men -- who would be in their 80s -- were said to have been
separated from the 30th Division of the Imperial Japanese Army and then
stayed in the remote mountains on Mindanao island for fear of being
court-martialed in Japan.
The astonishing claim that World War II holdouts may still be alive has
attracted huge interest in Japan, where veterans are marking the 60th
anniversary of the war's end.
But the Japanese government urged caution, saying the report came from
somebody who had not seen the men himself. Efforts to contact the pair
also were complicated by the fact that the area in which they
supposedly were found is notorious for ransom kidnappings and attacks
by Muslim separatists, who have waged war for three decades. Communist
rebels also are active there.
Tokyo first learned of the former soldiers in January, from a Japanese
trader on Mindanao who has been trying since Friday to arrange a
meeting so officials could try to confirm the men's' identities,
Japanese Embassy spokesman Shuhei Ogawa said.
But Ogawa stressed that the trader had not seen the men and was relying
on a Filipino contact, who himself got word of the mystery soldiers from
yet another Filipino.
"You should know this type of information comes in all the time," he
said. "We really have no idea if these two people exist."
He said the diplomats who traveled to General Santos city, 600 miles
south of Manila, were still "trying to work out (the details of) a meeting."
On Sunday, they will be joined by an official from the Japanese Health
Ministry, which is in charge of keeping records of former soldiers who
survived as well as recovering the remains of those killed during the war.
According to Japan's Kyodo News agency, the two missing soldiers might
be Yoshio Yamakawa, 87, and Tsuzuki Nakauchi, 85.
The Philippines, then a U.S. colony, was a major battleground in the
Pacific. The Japanese occupation is remembered as brutal for its
massacres of civilians and deaths of hundreds of thousands of U.S. and
Filipino soldiers. After the United States retook the islands from the
Japanese, the country became independent in 1946.
According to Japanese government records, the men could have been part
of a unit of 16,000 soldiers on Mindanao, of which only about 3,000
were believed to have survived the war.
Japan's financial daily Nihon Keizai reported problems negotiating
their free passage through jungles controlled by armed groups. Prime
Minister Junichiro Koizumi's spokesman, Yu Kameoka, also said that
large crowds, including about 100 Japanese journalists, apparently gave
the men pause.
The Japanese invaded the Philippines on Dec. 20, 1941. Years after the
war ended, there were signs in the Philippines warning about Japanese
soldiers still in the hills.
A few surrendered as late as 1948. In March 1974, intelligence officer
Lt. Hiroo Onoda came out of hiding on northern Lubang island, but he
refused to give up until the Japanese government flew in his former
commander to formally inform him the war was over.
The last of the three known former Japanese soldiers to surrender, in
December 1974, was Taiwanese national Teruo Nakamura, who fought for
the Japanese army on Indonesia's Morotai island. He returned to Taiwan
at age 57.
In 1972, Shoichi Yokoi, who had hid for 27 years in the jungles of the
Pacific island of Guam without knowing the war had ended, also returned
to Japan. He died at age 82 in 1997.
Rumors of other soldiers hiding out have surfaced but were never
substantiated.
The Yomiuri newspaper, Japan's largest, reported Saturday that the two
missing soldiers currently sought were first seen in August by a
Japanese lumber businessman, who relayed "the near-unbelievable tale of
their survival" to a veterans' association, which then sent members to
the island to contact them.
The two former soldiers reportedly said they feared being
court-martialed and executed if they returned to Japan, Yomiuri said,
adding the association tried to allay their concerns by sending them
old magazines that reported Onoda's case.
Meanwhile, the convergence of Japanese reporters on the bustling port
city of General Santos raised security concerns in the volatile area,
and the embassy warned them not to venture out in search of the men or
follow anyone offering to guide them. Philippine police issued a
similar warning.
Associated Press reporter Kenji Hall in Tokyo contributed to this report.
