Welcome to House of History. Today I want to talk about one of the longest missing,
presumed dead, Japanese soldiers that turned up alive. Now the aftermath of the Second
World War was incredibly chaotic and missing Japanese soldiers that turned up years later
weren’t that rare initially. One of the most curious cases must have been that of
Hiroo Onoda, one of the last Japanese soldiers to surrender after the Second World War. He
held out for close to another 30 years after the war ended and astonished the world by
emerging in 1974, still wearing the uniform he wore during the war. If you haven’t heard
of him, don’t worry: I’ll link my video about him in the description.
But today I want to talk about another bizarre case, one that arguably is more bizarre than
Onoda’s case. Ishinosuke Uwano was last seen by his family when he went off to fight
in the Second World War. Uwano was drafted to the Imperial Japanese Army as a teenager
and in 1943 he was sent to Sakhalin Island, to the north of Japan. The northern part was
occupied by the Soviets, with the Japanese on the south. When in august 1945 the Soviet
Union declared war on Japan, they rapidly invaded and seized the remaining half of the
island. All Japanese soldiers that surrendered were forced into a prisoner of war camps,
frequently spending decades in these gulags. And as for Uwano, well, after the Second World
War ended, he didn’t come home. Now, it wasn’t rare for the Soviet Union to send
captured Japanese off to labour camps which was assumed had happened to him. And Uwano
wasn’t a rare case of a missing soldier either; there were thousands of Japanese that
were either left stranded on islands in the pacific, perished in gulags or were never
found again and probably killed in action. The last part did not happen to Uwano for
sure because the last confirmed sighting of him was on the Sakhalin island in 1958. Other
sources state that year was the last time he had been in touch with his family. Either
way: it was certain he was alive by 1958. One theory goes that once he found himself
behind enemy lines on the island, he tried to survive in the wilderness of Sakhalin.
After realising Japan had lost the war he must have surrendered himself to the Soviet
Union. Even today the Sakhalin island remains Russian territory, so it isn’t too odd for
Uwano to surrender himself after realising there would be no Japanese counter-offensive.
Now it is certain Uwano was put in a forced labour camp for several years, if not decades
after the war. But it is blurry what exactly happened after 1945 and after 1958. What is
certain is that in 1965 Uwano somehow ended up in Ukraine, probably after he was allowed
to resettle by the former Soviet government. He moved to Zhytomyr, a city in central Ukraine.
Over there, he married a local woman and raised three children, living his life closed-off
from his past for multiple decades. Considering the last sighting was in 1958, his family
tried their best to locate him in the following decades, but without any success. In 2000
they gave up hope of ever finding him alive, assuming he probably perished in a forced
labour camp. Even the Japanese health ministry, which was tasked with finding missing overseas
veterans, said they believed Uwano had died. So imagine the surprise when the Japanese
embassy in Ukraine contacted them in 2006 saying that Uwano came to them and asked them
to locate his surviving family in Japan. So why didn’t he reach out to them earlier?
According to Uwano, the Soviet government prevented him from contacting his family and
considering the circumstances that is very likely. The Soviet Union was notorious for
being secretive. Since Uwano seems to have been both captured and moved to Ukraine at
the height of the Cold War, it is understandable the Soviet Union didn’t feel like informing
the Japanese government, let alone Uwano’s family. When the Japanese embassy of Ukraine
reached out to the family, the Japanese government prepared for Uwano to come over to Japan.
It finally happened in 2006, when Uwano was 83 years old, as he arrived at Tokyo airport
to meet his family he hadn’t seen in over 60 years. His Japanese was rusty, which is
understandable, after all, he hadn’t spoken Japanese in 6 decades. Because he was declared
legally dead in 2000, he could only visit Japan as a Ukrainian tourist instead of an
actual citizen, something the Japanese government promised to resolve.
I wish I could tell you more about Uwano, but literally all sources are of his visit
from 2006, which lasted for 9 days. I don’t think there has been an English news-outlet
that has done a follow-up article. It is curious, because even today, 14 years later, Uwano
is still alive. He is currently 97 years old and although the Japanese government said
that they would try to give him back his Japanese citizenship, I assume he is still living in
Ukraine. Although Uwano is the last missing Japanese
soldier to turn up, the year previous to his discovery there was another fascinating case.
In 2005 a media-craze erupted about supposedly missing Japanese soldiers. On the island of
Mindanao two men, Yashio Yamawa who was 87 years old and Tsuzuki Nakauchi, who was 85
years old, claimed they had been Japanese soldiers during the second world war. It seems
these men knew the war was over but decided to remain on the island to start a new life.
Not quite for any easy reasons though: according to the men they had stayed on the island for
60 years because they feared returning home. It was because of their fear of being court-martialed
for getting lost from their division during the fighting. Now, if you’re interested
in Hidoo Orona, the soldier that emerged from the jungle in 1974 to surrender his weapons
finally, then make sure you watch that video after this one. I’ll link it on-screen and
in the description. Thank you for watching this video. I would
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