Ishinosuke Uwano

Ishinosuke Uwano
Born	October 1922 (age 102) Ōno, Iwate, Japan
Allegiance	Empire of Japan
Service / branch	Imperial Japanese Army
Years of service	1941–45
Battles / wars	World War II Sakhalin Island
Children	3

Ishinosuke Uwano (上野 石之助, Uwano Ishinosuke, October 1922) is a former soldier in the Japanese Imperial Army and a prisoner of war in the Soviet labour camps, who came to media prominence in April 2006 after it was found that he had been living voluntarily in Ukraine for six decades after the end of World War II. He had been recorded as dead in official Japanese databases.

Background

Uwano was stationed in the Japanese half of Sakhalin Island at the end of the war, and had been in contact with his family as late as 1958. He subsequently married a Ukrainian woman and settled in Kiev, where he had three children. However, his lack of contact with his family led to the declaration that he was legally dead in 2000; as a result, when he returned to Japan to visit family in 2006, he had to enter his homeland on a Ukrainian passport.

Disappearance

The last time that Uwano's family saw him was in Sakhalin in 1958. After that, they lost all contact with him. He reappeared in Ukraine in 2006.

See also

• Japanese holdout
• List of solved missing persons cases

External links

• "Japanese WWII soldier found alive", BBC News, 18 April 2006
• "Missing WWII vet returns to Japan", BBC News, 19 April 2006
• "Mr Uwano comes back from the dead to say 'Good Day'", The Times, 20 April 2006
• "Japanese WWII veteran found in Ukraine has reunion with family", The Associated Press in USA Today, 20 April 2006