In 2006, more than sixty years after the end of World War II, reports emerged that a Japanese soldier who had been reported missing in action and since declared dead, had resurfaced in Ukraine.
A Holdout in Sakhalin Island
Ishinosuke Uwano (1922 – 2013) was drafted into the Imperial Japanese Army in WWIII, and posted to the then-Japanese southern half of Sakhalin Island in 1943 – the northern half belonged to the Soviet Union. The Soviets declared war on Japan in August, 1945. Despite fierce resistance, they successfully invaded and seized the southern half of Sakhalin. The war ended with Japan’s surrender a few weeks later, and the Soviets shipped the Japanese survivors captured in Sakhalin to POW camps in Siberia. There, they labored for years, until repatriated to Japan in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Uwano was not among those sent back home. For years after the war, his family received reports of scattered sightings of him in Sakhalin. They suspected he had gone into hiding in the island’s rugged and harsh terrain after he found himself cutoff and behind enemy lines. The last reported sighting of Uwano in Sakhalin was received by his relatives in 1958, thirteen years after WWII had ended. In 2000, his family recorded his disappearance in accordance with a law for registering Japanese military personnel who did not return after WWII as war dead.
Resurfacing in Ukraine
Uwano, however, was not dead. In 2006, it was discovered that the by-then83-years-old Uwano was still alive and kicking in Ukraine. After holding out for some time, he seems to have eventually accepted that Japan had lost the war, and surrendered. He was imprisoned and eventually released, but between the Soviets’ paranoid penchant for excessive secrecy, Cold War tensions, and bureaucratic ineptness, neither the Japanese government nor Uwano’s family were notified. Rather than return to Japan after he was set free, Uwano started a new life in the USSR. He was eventually naturalized as a citizen, settled in the Ukrainian SSR in 1965, married, and had three children.
Decades later, news of Uwano’s survival came out after he asked Ukrainian friends to contact the Japanese government, which then sent officials to interview him in Kiev. He wanted to visit Japan to reconnect with his family, pray at his parents’ grave, and once more see his birth country’s cherry blossoms. However, because he had been declared dead in 2000, he was technically no longer considered a Japanese citizen. He was eventually allowed to visit Japan, but only as a Ukrainian citizen travelling on his Ukrainian passport. Not that Uwano minded. As he told reporters, he had no plans to live in Japan. “Ukraine has become my homeland”, he said.
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Some Sources & Further Reading
CBC, April 17th, 2006 – Japanese Soldier Missing Since WWII Resurfaces in Ukraine
New York Times, April 19th, 2006 – 60 Years After the War, Japanese Soldier Returns
