Stateless man of Japanese descent in Philippines eager for Japan citizenship
Earlier this month, almost 80 years after the end of the war, Takei came to Japan for the first time, with the support of Japan's Foreign Ministry. He met with his relatives in the city of Kawachinagano in Osaka Prefecture last Wednesday. During the visit, he also filed an application for Japanese nationality with the Tokyo Family Court.
Takei was born in May 1943 to a Japanese man who was an employee of the Philippines' national railway company and an unmarried Filipino woman.
His father left the family just before he was born to join the Japanese military during the war. A reference check with Japan's welfare ministry in 2009 found that the father returned to Japan at the end of the war.
Before the war, many Japanese nationals moved overseas at the request of the government, including about 30,000 to the Philippines. Some of them married local women.
Japanese men were recruited locally by the Japanese military once the war started. Some of them died fighting in the war while others were separated from their families as they were deported back to Japan from internment camps.
Many of the people of Japanese descent who lost their Japanese fathers were left in the countries where they were born and faced persecution for the wartime invasion by Japan. Under such circumstances, they were left with no choice but to conceal their real names and the fact that they are of Japanese descent.
In the Philippines, many of such people, including Takei, became stateless because the country's policy of determining nationality based on that of the person's father.
According to the Japanese Foreign Ministry and the Philippine Nikkei-jin Legal Support Center, a nonprofit organization, Japanese descendants left in the Philippines number at least 3,800, including those who have died.
Of these, more than 1,800 died without being able to get Japanese citizenship while some 50 people who are alive still hope to become Japanese nationals. The average age of survivors is 84.
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba met with Takei and two other Japanese descendants in the Philippines when he visited Manila in April this year.
Ishiba promised to help them get Japanese nationality and visit Japan.
The Foreign Ministry aims to continue supporting Japanese descendants' visits to the country.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Mainichi
2 hours ago
- The Mainichi
Japan, Germany foreign ministers agree to boost security cooperation
TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya and his German counterpart Johann Wadephul agreed Monday to strengthen bilateral cooperation, amid China's increasing military presence in the Indo-Pacific and Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine. During the first "strategic dialogue" between the two nations, Iwaya and Wadephul agreed at a meeting in Tokyo to work closely toward a "just and lasting peace" in Ukraine, the Japanese Foreign Ministry said. The ministers also pledged to cooperate on Indo-Pacific issues, including North Korea's nuclear and missile programs, and on the Middle East, where a humanitarian crisis continues in Gaza amid Israeli attacks, the ministry said. "With the international order facing a severe situation, there has been a growing need for cooperation between Japan and Germany," Iwaya said at the outset of the meeting, while Wadephul described Japan as Germany's "special partner in Asia," sharing common values. After the talks, Wadephul told reporters that China is helping Moscow wage its war in Ukraine by supplying dual-use items and buying Russian crude oil, adding "attempts to change the status quo" have been observed in the Taiwan Strait and the East and South China seas. Iwaya and Wadephul also agreed to step up efforts to ensure economic security, including reinforcing supply chains, according to the Japanese ministry. Wadephul is on a three-day visit to Japan through Wednesday in his first trip to the Asian country since he became foreign minister in May following the inauguration of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. Japan and Germany, both Group of Seven members, have been beefing up their security relations in recent years, sharing the view that the security of Asia and Europe is inseparable. In July last year, a bilateral "acquisition and cross-servicing agreement" took effect to facilitate joint exercises by simplifying the process of sharing defense supplies between the Japanese Self-Defense Forces and the German military.
NHK
2 hours ago
- NHK
Japan, Germany FMs agree on need for G7 unity over early Ukraine ceasefire
The foreign ministers of Japan and Germany have agreed on the importance of unity among the Group of Seven nations to realize an early ceasefire and lasting peace in Ukraine. Iwaya Takeshi met with his German counterpart, Johann Wadephul, for about 40 minutes on Monday for the first Japan-Germany Foreign Ministerial Strategic Dialogue. The German Foreign Minister is visiting Tokyo for the first time since he took office. At the start, Iwaya noted that the need for cooperation and collaboration between their countries is increasing. He expressed readiness to engage in constructive talks not only on the situation in Ukraine, the Indo-Pacific region, but also on ways to deepen bilateral cooperation including economic security. In response, Wadephul said Japan is a special partner in Asia, and in this time of crises and conflicts, this exceptional bilateral relationship plays a significant role. The two also agreed on the importance of unity within the G7 bloc to realize an early and complete ceasefire, as well as a just and lasting peace in Ukraine. The consensus comes against the backdrop of talks between the presidents of the US and Russia, as well as the scheduled meeting between the presidents of the US and Ukraine in Washington on Monday, local time. To realize a free and open international order, the top diplomats also agreed to hold another Foreign and Defense Ministers meeting, or a 2 plus 2 meeting, at an early date. They also agreed to strengthen dialogue in the cyber domain to further materialize bilateral cooperation in security fields.
Japan Times
2 hours ago
- Japan Times
103-year-old remembers Soviet attack right after WWII
A 103-year-old former soldier of the now-defunct Imperial Japanese Army still vividly remembers suffering a sudden Soviet attack on one of the Chishima islands, also known as the Kuril Islands, he had been stationed three days after Japan's surrender in World War II. "I want no more war," says Shoichi Takahashi, also a former Soviet labor camp detainee in Siberia. "War is simply unacceptable." A native of Aomori, Takahashi moved to Otaru in Hokkaido when he was 19 and became a fisherman. Later, he joined the army. Initially, he was assigned for service on the Attu island, the westernmost isle of the Aleutian group stretching from the Alaska Peninsula. But as U.S. fighter planes prevented Japanese troops from landing there, he was sent to the Shumshu island of the Chishima chain in the North Pacific in March 1943. On the island, Takahashi was mainly digging trenches. Meanwhile, the Attu garrison he was to join ended with a banzai charge. Takahashi and other members of the Shumshu unit were ordered to gather at a tent on Aug. 15, 1945, and listened to a radio broadcast by the then Emperor Hirohito announcing Japan's surrender in the war. "I thought I could go back to Otaru now," he recalled. However, Soviet troops opened fire from the Kamchatka Peninsula against the Shumshu Island shortly past 1:30 a.m. on Aug. 18, 1945, by breaking a Japan-Soviet nonaggression pact, and landed on the Takeda beach, located on the northern end of the island, according to a government record. "Since we had been fighting Americans, it was beyond my imagination that Soviets launched an attack on us three days after the end of WWII," Takahashi said. The Japanese army unit faced Soviet troops at a mountain it had its headquarters. Takahashi saw a Japanese tank blown up 100 meters away and confirmed dead bodies of some of his colleagues in the scene. He also saw numerous bodies of Soviet soldiers when passing through the Takeda beach later. The Shumshu battle is estimated to have claimed some 600 lives on the Japanese side and about 3,000 on the Soviet side, a government record shows. Truce negotiations were concluded three days after the Soviet attack launch, and Takahashi and other surviving members of the unit were forced to get on a Soviet ship as captives. The Japanese soldiers were told in Russian that they were heading "for home." But Takahashi found out that the ship was traveling north by making use of fishers' skills to navigate boats with the starts. They were disembarked at Magadan, a Soviet port city facing the Okhotsk Sea, and taken to a town 50-60 kilometers away from the city for forced labor. They had to cut down trees after having only gruel and cabbage broth for breakfast even when the temperature dropped to minus 30 degrees Celsius. Those who failed to meet a logging requirement were punished by being forced to eat less. Takahashi said he was able to achieve his quota thanks to his physical strength and was rewarded with tobacco leaf powder, among others. He made flake tobacco with the powder and gave it to Soviet soldiers in exchange for brown bread. Takahashi survived on the bread. "But it was really tough" to see fellow internees die of malnutrition, he said. In September 1949, he was told to go home in Russian but thought that "they were lying again." But when Takahashi watched a Japanese ship anchored in Magadan, he realized that it was true. After arriving at Maizuru Port in the western prefecture of Kyoto, Takahashi returned to Otaru and has since made living chiefly as a fisher. Eight decades have passed since Japan's WWII surrender, Takahashi cannot forget at all what happened to him during and after the war. "I'm not trying to keep my (war-related) memories, but they just automatically pop into my head," he says. Takahashi expressed his strong frustration against ongoing wars including the one between Russia and Ukraine. "War is a silly act that unlimitedly kills people," he points out. "Nothing good comes from war."
