GENERAL SANTOS (Philippines), May 27: Japan was checking on Friday if at least two elderly Japanese men found on a Philippine island plagued were soldiers left behind from World War II who were unaware of Tokyo’s surrender. Japanese diplomats flew to General Santos city, 1,300kms south of Manila, to meet two men in their 80s who were said to live in fear of being executed for deserting the now defunct imperial army.

“What a surprise it would be if it’s true,” Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told reporters in Tokyo. Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said the embassy in Manila received information that ‘two men believed to be former Japanese soldiers are alive’.

Yoshihiko Terashima, 86, who heads a council of Japanese war veterans’ associations, said he spoke last year to a Filipina logger whose husband is Japanese and reported running into two lost former soldiers.

“The men told the woman, ‘We may be court-martialled and executed if we return to Japan’,” Terashima said.—AFP