Category Archives: war

by | 22 June 2005 · 7:02 am

Somalia, 1993: Watching Haiti on CNN

I check in with Heidi at India Base. She’s watching CNN with the American Intel officer who’s been hovering around her lately. Wonder what’s up there. They’re watching breaking news from Haiti. The Intel guy says the USS Harlan County arrived yesterday to deploy American and Canadian peacekeeping troops and a crowd of Haitians came to the dock to greet the ship, shot in the air, shouting “Aidid, Aidid,” and the Harlan County was ordered to retreat. Turned tail. Withdrew.

From Haiti?

I look at the Intel guy. Are you shitting me? We retreated from Haiti? They barely have an army for fucksake. The macoutes will run riot now. Open season. They win. He looks back at me with a cold stare. I try to hold his gaze. There’s an entire doctoral dissertation communicated in the three-second silence of that stare-down. It’s the most coherent articulation of an American foreign policy critique I’ve ever heard in my life, and he didn’t have to say a thing.

I’m ashamed in front of the officer. For being a civilian. Like I personally represent everything that’s wrong with the policies we’re all watching fall apart. Only civilians would imagine that you can keep the peace in a hot war without fighting.

This will never work now. It’s over. I gave this idea everything I had, literally. Why am I taking this all so personally? It’s not about me, I tell myself, even as I talk to myself. This is exactly why Heidi thinks Andrew and I are full of shit: it’s always about us and our ideas, not about individual humans. But an idea died this week, just like a human dies. How many successful peacekeeping missions will never be sent now? How many lives we could have saved will be lost now? The question is palpable as India Base Somalia watches CNN Haiti.

SOURCE: Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures: A True Story from Hell on Earth, by Kenneth Cain, Heidi Postlewait, and Andrew Thomson (Miramax Books, 2004), pp. 171-172

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Filed under Africa, Caribbean, NGOs, U.N., war

by | 21 June 2005 · 5:33 am

In a Haiti Hospital, 1993: No Rules

I was debating whether to post excerpts from Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures, but after viewing the CBC documentary Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire this weekend, I lost any qualms I might have had. (And it has only been six months since I saw Hotel Rwanda when it premiered in NYC.) The abject failure of the U.S. and UN interventions in Somalia and Haiti in 1993 practically guaranteed an even more pusillanimous effort to stop full-on genocide in Rwanda a few months later. So here, without pity, is the first of a short series of excerpts from the memoirs of UN workers in Haiti and Somalia in 1993.

After a short briefing, my new boss sends me straight to the [Port-au-Prince] city hospital. The UN’s mission here is to gather enough evidence of brutality to convince the world to reverse the coup and force the military from power. All over Haiti, 250 unarmed observers are investigating and documenting atrocities against the civilian population. Most of the victims are too terrorized to talk to foreigners or provide any meaningful evidence, but I have an advantage and the boss is happy to exploit it: victims need doctors and doctors get access.

My task at the hospital is to interview a beating victim, see whether there’s anything we can do to help him, and take a statement. The sleepy receptionist thumbs through a grubby admissions book. He’s in the surgical ward, she says in French, throwing her arm in a wide, unspecific arc, in the general direction right. So I head off down a series of endless corridors and soon get lost. Clouds of flies lift off the chipped floor tiles, resettling behind me as I pass. When I finally find the surgical ward, I give the victim’s name to a nurse.

He was here but now he’s not, she says. I look at her, waiting for more, but she just stares off somewhere over my shoulder. She’s uneasy. The ceiling fan turns slowly, cobwebs dangling from its blades. No air moves.

Well, where is he now? I need to talk to him. She shrugs.

I start to lose patience.

I tell her I’m a doctor with the UN and I need to talk to the treating doctor now. She goes away and doesn’t return.

There’s no one around except patients and orderlies. I linger for half an hour until finally a slight man in his fifties appears. It’s the surgeon. He invites me into his office and closes the door behind him.

Look, he says, I know why you want to talk to him, but he’s gone. He was brought in several days ago after they’d beaten him terribly, for hours. He was barely alive when I first saw him, skull fracture, both arms broken, multiple rib fractures, smashed kneecaps, urinating blood. We did what we could for him, he says sighing, set the fractures, dressed the wounds. He did well, but he was weak and couldn’t afford to buy any blood for a transfusion.

So where is he now? I ask. When they heard he was still alive, they came in here last night and just dragged him away again, he tells me.

And no one did anything to stop them? I was in the operating theater when I heard the screams, he says, and I ran down here in my greens and gloves to plead with them. But one of them just stuck his gun in my face and told me he’d turn me into a patient if I didn’t back off. There was nothing I could do, they have all the guns. I have to go, he says wearily, there are patients waiting. A bitter look crosses his face as he opens the door to leave. They should have just finished him off the first time, he adds, it would have been much more humane.

I sit staring through the cracked pane of the office door at the post-op patients in their beds. I should write up a report, but I can’t think straight, so I drive back up to the villa and gaze out past the bougainvillea at the pool. I can’t quite believe what I’ve just heard.

In Cambodia I treated children who stepped on landmines, villagers stabbed in their sleep, shoppers shelled in the marketplace, drivers shot up at roadside checkpoints. The victims all made a beeline for our hospital and I was usually able to help. We didn’t care who they were or how they got there; everyone knew that the killing stopped at the red cross on the front gate. Once you made it past there, you were safe, a custom of war so accepted that I never even heard it discussed. Check your weapons in at reception, get a receipt. Do whatever you must to your enemies out in the killing fields, but do not ever bring that shit inside my hospital.

Maybe there are no rules here.

SOURCE: Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures: A True Story from Hell on Earth, by Kenneth Cain, Heidi Postlewait, and Andrew Thomson (Miramax Books, 2004), pp. 112-113

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by | 20 June 2005 · 6:35 am

Reporting on the Kosovo War

Why did the [Kosovo] war end when it did? If you believe Nato or any of the alliance governments it ended because the bombing campaign had succeeded. The high-tech weapons performed largely as advertised and Milosevic and the Serb people no longer had the stomach to see their country being destroyed around them. If you believe some of the correspondents, the war ended because during peace talks on June 3 the Russians urged Milosevic to do a deal, threatening to cut gas supplies to Serbia.

It took the BBC’s documentary division to reveal why Russia, which had steadfastly supported their fellow Slavs throughout the war, brought this pressure to bear on Serbia. The second BBC programme on Kosovo called “An Audit of War” broadcast on October 18 said, “Shortly after Serbia accepted the peace deal the International Monetary Fund provided Russia with nearly three billion pounds to payoff the interest on its foreign debts.”

This leaves us with the most intriguing question of all–what was the war really all about? The Spectator doubted if it was actually about the ethnic cleansing of the Kosovars. “In the three years leading up to 25 March 1999, between two and three thousand people had died in Yugoslavia’s latest ethnic conflict,” wrote Mark Steyn, the magazine’s American correspondent. “Not a pretty sight. But let’s say it was the upper number, 3,000. That still gives it a lower murder rate per capita than New Orleans or New York … Washington, Oakland, Houston, Las Vegas, Dallas.

“Sitting in Belgrade browsing through the homicide statistics Slobo must have thought that the Americans of all people would appreciate how some societies can tolerate a level of slaughter others might find excessive.” But, said Steyn, Milosevic failed to understand a crucial distinction–if you kill people in drive-by shootings, liquor store hold-ups and child custody disputes, that was the sign of healthy mature democracy. But if you killed people because of an ongoing blood feud rooted in centuries of history, that was barbaric.

Perhaps President Clinton gave the game away when early into the bombing campaign he tried to ease America’s doubts. “Had we not acted,” he said, “the Serb offensive would have been carried out with impunity.” The bombing, therefore, was to punish the Serbs. Punishment is an established part of U.S. foreign policy [and not that of every country outside of late 20th-century Europe?]. Gary Sick, who was then in charge of Gulf policy at the National Security Council, said after Iran took American hostages in Teheran in 1979, “There was a strong view … that Iran should be punished from all sides.”

But what was Serbia being punished for? “For the humiliation we suffered at their hands in Bosnia,” according to Robert Fisk. “For daring to resist the project of establishing the West’s hegemony” said the celebrated Russian dissident Alexander Zinoviev in Le Monde.

SOURCE: The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero and Myth-maker from the Crimea to Kosovo, by Phillip Knightley, with an introduction by John Pilger (Johns Hopkins U. Press, 2000; first published in 1975), pp. 517-518

Interesting that, when it comes to the Kosovo War, the Telegraph/Spectator’s Mark Steyn appears to have kept company with the Guardian/Observer’s John Pilger and the Independent’s Robert Fisk.

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by | 18 June 2005 · 9:37 am

Algeria: Split by the Gulf War

Initially, the Gulf crisis, set off by Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, drew increasingly marked lines of separation within the Algerian political class. Although all the parties condemned the Western reaction–the massing of troops and weapons in Saudi Arabia–whose aim, according to some, was only to “preserve their interests,” or even “seize control of hundreds of billions of Arab dollars and threaten the Islamic and Arab nation in its security,” the position toward Saddam Hussein’s regime was far from unanimous.

The ISF [Islamic Salvation Front] Islamists proved to be increasingly embarrassed. How ought one to “protect” Saudi Arabia’s appeal for Western troops? Response: “Let us brandish the torch of Islam. Let us brandish the jihad. Down with the servants of colonialism! No to Iraqi intervention in Kuwait, no to the intervention of unbelievers in Saudi Arabia, no to the governments that have compromised with the West. Yes to the peace dialogue. My dear brothers, we reject all intervention in our affairs.” The ISF preacher who gave this speech in Constantine ended it with the search for the inevitable scapegoat, “the Jews, who occupy all the holy places of Islam” (Sigau 1991).

The rejection of “the American war,” which increased after the air offensive by the coalition against Iraq on January 17, 1991, did not signify adherence to the doctrine of Iraq’s sole party, the Baas [= Baath]. From one end of the Maghreb to the other, the violence of the conflict provoked the return in force of the tradition of revolutionary populism, of a movement of unanimity without any possible differences in points of view. And yet, in the many pro-Iraqi demonstrations that occurred in Rabat, in Algiers, and in Tunis, a rift appeared.

On the one hand, there were those who demanded peace, an immediate cease-fire. They spoke of safeguarding the unity of the “Arab nation.” They adopted the tone of the Third World movement of the 1960s, supported in the past by the Moroccan Mehdi Ben Barka and the West Indian writer Frantz Fanon: they denounced the oppression of the peoples of the “Arab nation” by a regime resolved to establish its hegemony over it. The rejection of US intervention against Iraq was accompanied by a denunciation of the petroleum monarchies in the Gulf. They were accused of placing their capital in Western financial institutions when, in the overwhelming majority of Arab countries, social progress remained very slow. But that effort at social clarification collided with the power of consensus based on identity, the sense of belonging to the same “Arab camp.” And the “Palestinian cause” further united people. Some, however, particularly the heads of the human rights leagues, attempted to explain the necessary distinction between Saddam Hussein’s totalitarian regime and the suffering of the Iraqi people.

On the other hand, in Morocco and Algeria the Islamist movement championed the jihad. The Western view of the Arab world, simplified to the point of caricature, encouraged this movement. Feeding the worship of a fixed past, the Islamist movement assimilated democracy (seen simply as a product of European history) to irreligion, that is, to one of the weapons in the vast conspiracy fomented by the enemies of the Prophet.

The West, out of habit or laziness, has relegated all the Arab countries to a global otherness–a homogeneous whole, sometimes invaded by abrupt fits of fever–without understanding that these peoples, in mobilizing against the war, aspired not to a return to military nationalism, but only to a greater degree of justice.

Public opinion brandished the democratic argument with the slogan “two weights, two measures.” The Algerians emphasized the glaring inequality in the application of UN resolutions. But the majority of them did not embrace Saddam Hussein’s regime. In Rabat and Tunis as well, there was a demand for more rights and not for the withdrawal of the international community.

The tragedy lay in the refusal by the “North” to take these considerations into account. It has then been easy for the Islamists to demonize the idea of democracy, understood as a product of the West and not as a universal principle.

SOURCE: Algeria, 1830-2000: A Short History, by Benjamin Stora (Cornell U. Press, 2001), pp. 208-209

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by | 16 June 2005 · 5:18 pm

Algeria: Recycling Terms from the Last War

Beginning in Algeria in July 1993 there were forests burning once again in the Aurès, Algiers was still living under a curfew, terrorist attacks attributed to Islamists were striking police officers and intellectuals, and hundreds of “suspects” remained in detention, sometimes without trial. The Algerian press had begun to mention the “sweep operations,” and the French press added reports from “the underground.” “Terrorism” and “torture” made their reappearance in the vocabulary of all the triumphant communiques, announcing, on the one hand, the “eradication” of the “last armed groups,” and, on the other, “the imminent victory of the Muslim people.” A strange sensation has developed that this is a remake of the war of independence [1954-62]: an impression of déjà vu or “déja entendu.”

Forty years later, the vocabulary is unifying, consolidating the two eras, making them look alike. Has the country, then, entered a second–and identical–Algerian war?

Nothing is less certain. In the first place, in history, formal analogies have but little pertinence if they confine themselves to highlighting the similarity between certain forms, in this case the resurgence of terrible forms of violence. And, in the second place, the Algeria of the 1990s has only a very distant relation to that of 1962.

The country today is highly urbanized; the rural areas no longer play the same role; more than 60 percent of the population is under thirty; and the rate of schooling is very high. The differences could be multiplied, with, at the center, the end of the colonial system, the massive departure of pieds noirs [French colonists], and the political operation of an independent state. It may therefore seem absurd to assert that the same scenario is being repeated. Yet the protagonists in the confrontation–the followers of the ISF [Islamic Salvation Front], the “democrats,” the army–have intentionally adopted the terms inherited from the past of the Algerian War. And that is what is truly of interest–Islamists speaking of “the valorous mujahideen,” wanting to hunt down “the new pieds noirs” who have appropriated the revolution; “democrats” calling the ISF militants “harkis“ [Muslim colonial auxiliaries] who want to crush the Algerian nation. Some circles within the regime have launched campaigns against the “secular assimilationists,” as during the time of the colonial system, when a lost identity had to be reestablished. And all the camps mention a shadowy “party of France” (Hizb França) supposedly destabilizing Algeria.

This mimicry is striking. The memory of the war of independence operates as a factor in the assignment of the roles to be played. The contemporary actors dress in theoretical garments borrowed from the past. But, if they do not realize the novelty of the present, and if they subjectively replay the old situation, it is because they remain under the automatist influence of a memory fabricated forty years ago.

SOURCE: Algeria, 1830-2000: A Short History, by Benjamin Stora (Cornell U. Press, 2001), pp. 232-233

For a more hopeful follow-up, see this OxDem Report from April 2004.

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Filed under Mediterranean, Micronesia, religion, war

by | 6 June 2005 · 9:32 pm

Ultimului Strajer al Capitalei, 1916

Halfway Down the Danube shares a telling snapshot of the monument To the Last Defender of Bucharest against the Germans in 1916.

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Filed under Eastern Europe, Germany, Romania, war

by | 6 June 2005 · 8:48 pm

Can Rwandan Genociders Return?

Black Star Journal translates the gist of a Senegalese report (in French) about Rwandan refugees in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

According to the Senegalese daily, many of them remain in hiding in the bush and drown themselves in alcohol. They are torn between the desire to return and turn in their weapons and the fear of having to answer for a macabre past.

The paper estimates that there are some 10,000 former combattants and 30,000 of their relatives exiled in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Interestingly, the paper notes that since a wide majority of these Hutu ex-pats were too young to have participated in the 1994 genocide, some analysts think that conditions would be favorable for a return to Rwanda.

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by | 3 June 2005 · 9:23 pm

Reporting Both Sides from Spain, 1936-39

Ideological partisanship during the Spanish Civil War was every bit as blindly irresponsible as it is today with regard to the war in Iraq.

The main target for the [pro-Franco] Catholic press was Herbert Matthews. His newspaper, the New York Times, was determined to cover the war with impartiality and had formulated a plan to achieve this: it would print the news from both sides and would give both equal prominence, equal length, and equal treatment. This scheme, fine in theory, was a disaster and pleased no one. To begin with, the Times’ correspondent with the Franco forces was William P. Carney, a Catholic, who felt strongly about Republican excesses against the clergy, and who was simply not in Matthews’ class as a correspondent. Giving his stories equal length with Matthews’ often meant overplaying a bad story and cutting a good one. Next, the Times’ “bullpen,” its group of senior editors who read the news as it comes in and decide how much of it will be printed and where it will appear in the paper, was dominated at that time by Catholics who were known to reflect a Catholic viewpoint when assessing the news, with results ranging from playing down stories about birth control to playing up stories expressing alarm over Communism. And, third, the Catholic opposition to Matthews was much more active in pressing its campaign against him than his admirers were in supporting him.

How the New York Times’ plan worked out in practice can best be assessed by … examples….

In March of 1937, a large Franco force had struck towards Guadalajara, north of Madrid, but was stopped well short of its objective. Matthews went there and found that the attacking troops had been Italian. They had been routed and had left behind prisoners, rifles, machine guns, and some disabled tanks. Matthews talked to the prisoners (he knew Italian), examined the arms, and watched the dead Italians being buried. Back in Madrid, he filed his story, an important one because it contained the first positive evidence that Mussolini had sent not only arms and advisers but also an expeditionary force–a fact, at that time, of great political and emotional significance. To emphasise this point, Matthews wrote that the attacking troops “were Italian and nothing but Italian.” In New York, on the instructions of the assistant managing editor, Raymond McCaw, wherever the word “Italian” appeared in Matthews’ copy it was struck out and the word “insurgent”–one used to describe the Franco troops–was substituted. This was done even to the extent of making the quoted phrase read “they were Insurgent and nothing but Insurgent,” thus completely distorting Matthews’ point. To make matters worse, McCaw sent a cable to Matthews saying that the only papers to emphasise the Italian point had been those in Moscow and pointing out that, as far as the New York Times was concerned, “we cannot print obvious propaganda for either side even under bylines.”…

Small wonder that the editor at the New York Times responsible for the “Letters” column complained, “No matter who writes the dispatch [from Spain] the other side will accuse him of broadcasting propaganda or downright lying. In all my ten or twelve years’ experience with letters to the editor, I have never encountered a situation in which so much absolutely rabid partisanship was manifested. It is partisanship that cannot be reasoned with and which, consequently, gets nowhere.”

SOURCE: The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero and Myth-maker from the Crimea to Kosovo, by Phillip Knightley, with an introduction by John Pilger (Johns Hopkins U. Press, 2000; first published in 1975), pp. 215-217

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by | 30 May 2005 · 10:08 pm

Conscientious Objectors Who Earned Medals of Honor

At least two U.S. soldiers awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor have been conscientious objectors: Desmond T. Doss of Newport News, Virginia, during World War II; and Tom Bennett of Morgantown, West Virginia, during the Vietnam War. Both served as combat medics.

World War II

Desmond T. Doss seemed an unlikely candidate to become a war hero. As a devout member of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, he would not drill or train on Saturday because his church recognizes it as their Sabbath Day. He would not carry a gun because he believed all killing was wrong. He wouldn’t even eat meat after seeing a chicken flopping around with its head cut off….

Prior to the time World War II had broken out Doss had been working as a joiner at a shipyard in Newport News, Virginia. This was considered an essential industry to the military so he had no worries of being drafted. He had begun dating Dorothy Schutte and they had fallen in love, but they decided that they should wait until after the war to get married. With the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, he knew he would be drafted if he did not enlist, so that is exactly what he chose to do.

His minister went with him to establish his status as a non-combatant. The officer in charge told him there was no such thing, but that he could register as a conscientious objector. Doss said he wasn’t a conscientious objector because he would gladly serve his country, wear a uniform, salute the flag, and help with the war effort. He would gladly help tend sick or hurt people any day. Finally he was convinced to accept the 1-A-O Conscientious Objector classification, so he could join the army without fear of court martial….

On April 1, 1942 he was inducted into the U.S. Army and headed to Ft. Jackson in South Carolina for basic training…. 23-year-old Desmond Doss entered service as a medic for the 77th Infantry Division. From the beginning, the other men in his company made fun of Doss for his beliefs. Even though he worked long, hard hours to make up for not working on Saturday, the men cursed, ridiculed, and taunted him….

In July of 1944 on the island of Guam Doss began to prove his courage and compassion for the very men who had taunted, belittled, and even threatened him…. By now, his fellow soldiers were used to his reading the Bible and praying, so it didn’t seem unusual when, on that April 29th morning in 1945, he suggested that they might want to pray. They were facing a sheer 400-foot cliff that split the island of Okinawa known as the Maeda Escarpment….

However on May 5th the tide turned against the Americans as the Japanese launched a huge counterattack. Enemy fire raked Company B and almost immediately 75 men fell wounded. The remaining troops who were able to flee, retreated back down to the base of the escarpment. Left at the top of the cliff were the wounded, the Japanese, and Desmond T. Doss.

For the next five hours, while his wounded comrades fought back their attackers, Doss began to lower man after man to safety down the face of the cliff using little more than a tree stump and a rope. Doss said that he just kept praying that the Lord would let him rescue one more man. No one knows for sure how many men Doss lowered to safety that day. The Army determined that this medic, whom no one had wanted in the Army, had personally saved 100 lives….

On October 12, 1945, Desmond Doss was invited to the White House to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor from President Harry S. Truman for his brave service on May 5, 1945 – the first noncombatant to ever receive the Congressional Medal of Honor. He would spend a total of six years in hospitals as a consequence of his wounds and a bout with tuberculosis…. Incidentally, May 5, 1945 was a Saturday, Doss’ Sabbath day.

Vietnam

The Vietnam War presented many young men with a moral dilemma as they became subject to the draft in the late 1960s. These were men whose deep-seated religious convictions held that killing was wrong, even in war. At the same time, a number of them also possessed a strong sense of patriotism and felt that service to one’s country was a vital duty. One youngster torn by those conflicting values was Thomas W. Bennett of Morgantown, West Virginia.

By Christmas 1967, Bennett was on academic probation at West Virginia University because of poor grades. He didn’t lack the mental acumen to do college-level work. Bennett earned high grades whenever he applied himself — but he applied himself more vigorously to extracurricular campus activities than to his classes…. His main focus was the Campus Ecumenical Council he’d helped found in his freshman year.

Tom Bennett saw himself as a moderator. Though raised as a Southern Baptist, he openly embraced the validity of all religions — hence his activities in the ecumenical council. He wanted devotees of different religions to share their similarities rather than face off over their differences. To learn more about different religions, he began attending services of different faiths, visiting some churches so often that parishioners thought he was one of them. Through these experiences his belief in the sanctity of human life solidified — a frequent theme when he preached at his own church….

But Bennett was torn by other allegiances. His stepfather, Kermit Gray, a World War II Navy veteran, had raised him to believe in patriotism and to be ready to fight for his country if necessary. By late 1967 a number of young Bennett’s friends had already entered the service…. Bennett reported for induction on July 11, 1968. Under the Army’s program, he and the other conscientious objectors would take their weaponless basic training at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, then attend the field medical school there. It was a perfect compromise for Bennett, the moderator….

On January 12 he learned he was going to the 4th Infantry Division in the Central Highlands. Ten days later he joined Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 14th Infantry, at FSB Charmayne, deep in the thick jungles of the Central Highlands….

On April 7, 1970, Tom Bennett’s 23rd birthday, President Richard M. Nixon presented his posthumous Medal of Honor to his mother and stepfather. When first notified of the award, Bennett’s mother had considered refusing it, her way of protesting the war and the senseless loss of her son. But then her husband spoke up, “No. It was the boys in his outfit that put him in for it. They wanted him to have it.”

Thus Thomas W. Bennett became the only conscientious objector to earn the Medal of Honor in the Vietnam War, and only the second in history to be so recognized. The first was Desmond Doss, a Seventh Day Adventist who was cited for his heroism on Okinawa in World War II.

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by | 27 May 2005 · 5:08 pm

Two More Japanese Holdouts in the Philippines?

This BBC report explains why I’ve been getting so many search engine referrals to my blogpost last August about Japanese holdouts in the Philippines.

Japanese officials are investigating claims that two men living in jungle in the Philippines are Japanese soldiers left behind after World War II.

The pair, in their 80s, were reportedly found on southern Mindanao island.

The men were expected to travel to meet Japanese officials on Friday, but have yet to make contact.

The claim drew comparisons with the 1974 case of Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda, who was found in the Philippines jungle unaware the war had ended.

The Australian carries an update:

Kyodo News agency, citing Japanese Government sources, identified the two men as Yoshio Yamakawa, 87, and Tsuzuki Nakauchi, 85.

The Sankei Shimbun daily said the men were believed to belong to the “panther division”.

About 80 per cent of the division’s members died or went missing while battling US forces.

And the Japan Times adds an update on reactions by relatives in Japan.

News that two Japanese Imperial Army soldiers were found living in a Philippine jungle evoked both surprise and joy Friday in Japan.

“I was surprised, because I had heard he died in the war,” said Wakako Nakauchi, sister-in-law of Tsuzuki Nakauchi, who belonged to the army’s 30th Division.

Her husband, Nakauchi’s younger brother, died several years ago.

“His mother and brother would certainly have been happy to hear the news if they were still alive,” said the 75-year-old Wakako, who lives in Nakauchi’s hometown in Ochi, Kochi Prefecture.

The other Japanese who was reported alive on Mindanao Island, Yoshio Yamakawa, had a younger brother who died in April in Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture [where the recent, deadly JR train wreck occurred].

Seiichi Tsurumaki, a shop owner in Amagasaki who knew Yamakawa’s brother for more than 60 years, said: “(The brother) used to tell me that his older brother fought and died in the Philippines. Had (Yamakawa) been found a little bit earlier, he would have been able to see his brother.”

Goichi Ichikawa, chairman of a group of 30th Division veterans, expressed joy over the news at his home in Higashi-Osaka, Osaka Prefecture.

“I am glad that they were able to survive for 60 years,” said Ichikawa, 89, who has been working to bring Imperial army soldiers back to Japan.

In February, Ichikawa mailed a petition to Health, Labor and Welfare Minister Hidehisa Otsuji, saying he had obtained reliable information that three Japanese men — including Yamakawa and Nakauchi — were living in the mountains on Mindanao.

The Japan Times report has been updated. Here are some new bits of information:

According to the Defense Agency, the 30th Division was originally formed in 1943 on the Korean Peninsula — then under Japan’s colonial rule — and was trained to prepare for war with the Soviet Union. But they were eventually deployed to the southern front and landed on Mindanao in 1944 to battle U.S. forces….

Yoshihiko Terashima, 85, said, “We have filed a petition (for investigations) but the government has taken no action.” He said he first received information from a local contact last August about Japanese soldiers possibly still on Mindanao.

When he visited the island in December, he received information that Nakauchi, Yamakawa and two other soldiers still lived on the island….

After the war, Sakurai reportedly provided medical service to local residents at their request, he said.

They are all aware that Japan was defeated, but are afraid of being punished as deserters, Terashima said, adding he heard there are at least 20 more surviving Japanese soldiers in the area.

Frog in a Well has more links and historical context.

UPDATE, 30 May: Doubts about the story are beginning to surface.

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