2. Finding Uwano
The last reported sighting of Ishinosuke Uwano in Sakhalin was received by his relatives in 1958, thirteen years after the war had ended. No more was heard of him after that date. In 2000, Uwano’s family recorded his disappearance in accordance with a law for registering as war dead Japanese military personnel who did not return after the conflict had ended.
Then in 2006, it was discovered that Uwano, by then 83 years old, was still alive, and living in the Ukraine. At some point, it seems he had reconciled himself to Japan’s defeat and surrendered to the Soviets. Between the Soviet Union’s paranoid penchant for excessive secrecy, exacerbated by Cold War tension, as well as bureaucratic ineptness, neither the Japanese government nor Uwano’s family were notified.
