TMCnet News
Stray boy found to be Thai, flies back to Thailand with father+(Japan Economic Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)UTSUNOMIYA, Japan, April 20_(Kyodo) _ A boy who had been under protection as a stray child in eastern Japan flew home Thursday to Thailand with his father after being identified as the son of a Thai man who had been questioned for allegedly overstaying his visa in Japan, officials of a Japanese child counseling center said. The 5-year-old boy was reunited with his father for the first time in a year at the Justice Ministry's Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau on Wednesday. The child counseling center took care of the boy in April last year in the city of Oyama, Tochigi Prefecture, about 80 kilometers north of Tokyo, after being informed by a Japanese man that he had kept the boy in his care, the officials said. The boy, who spoke Thai and limited Japanese at that time, was called "Pon-chan" after he replied only "Pon" when asked about his name. The boy lived at a home for children until July last year before a Japanese foster family took him in. In January this year, the Tochigi-Minami child counseling center, located in the city of Tochigi about 10 km from Oyama, received a report from the Tokyo immigration office that a Thai man had told investigators he had left his son behind in Oyama. The boy was later confirmed as the son of the Thai man, and his mother had already flown back to Thailand. The boy was found to have been born in Oyama, the officials said. |