3. The Long Lost Soldier
Ishinosuke Uwano, born in 1922, was drafted into the Japanese Imperial Army during WWII. He was posted to the garrison of the then-Japanese southern half of Sakhalin Island in 1943 – the northern half belonged to the Soviet Union. In August of 1945, the USSR declared war on Japan and successfully invaded and seized Southern Sakhalin, despite fierce Japanese resistance.
After Japan surrendered, the Soviets shipped the surviving Japanese of the Sakhalin garrison to POW camps in Siberia. There, they labored for years, until repatriated to Japan in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Uwano was not included in their numbers. In subsequent years, his family received reports of scattered sightings of him in Sakhalin. It was suspected that he had gone into hiding in the rugged and harsh terrain after he found himself cut off and behind enemy lines.
