TMCnet News
Japanese soldier from World War II to return home from Ukraine+(Japan Economic Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)NARITA, Japan, April 19_(Kyodo) _ (EDS: SOLDIER SET TO ARRIVE AT AROUND 10 A.M.) A former Imperial Japanese Army soldier who was recently confirmed to be alive in Ukraine after going missing in Russia's Far East after World War II will return to Japan on Wednesday for the first time in 63 years. Ishinosuke Uwano, 83, and his son, Anatoly, 37, will arrive in Tokyo's Narita airport aboard an Aeroflot plane from Ukraine to stay in Japan through April 28. Uwano will meet with his relatives in the town of Hirono, Iwate Prefecture, on Thursday, his first reunion since he was drafted in 1943. Uwano was in Sakhalin, Russia, at the end of the war and was last seen there around 1958 by an acquaintance. In 2000, the Morioka Family Court in Iwate Prefecture declared him dead, according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. Last October, however, the Japanese government obtained information that he may be alive in Ukraine and staff at the Japanese Embassy in Kiev met him, ministry officials said. His family in the town of Ono, which changed its name to Hirono in January, confirmed his identity with photos, they said. He has been living in Ukraine since around 1965, according to the officials. He married a local woman and has a son and two daughters and currently lives in Zhytomyr, west of Kiev. |