LETTER FROM SOLDIER

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27489, 25 October 1954, Page 11

LETTER FROM SOLDIER

JAPANESE FORMERLY REPORTED DEAD

(Rec. 10. pjm.) TOKYO, October 23. A spokesman for the Japanese Demobilisation Bureau in Tokyo, said today some Japanese soldiers reported as killed in action might still be alive hiding in the New Guinea jungles. He was commenting on press reports from Okayama, Western Japan, that a former Army corporal. Mamoru Kojima, aged 37, listed as dead, had sent a letter to his relatives informing them he was alive and being held With three other Japanese in a camp in Hollandia, New Guinea. Kojima said in a letter to his brother in Okayama that he hid in the jungle for 10 years until found by Dutch authorities last month. He said he had not realised the war had finished.

Kojima said in the letter he had been informed by Dutch officials he would be repatriated to Japan within two or three months. Press reports said relatives in Okayama identified the handwriting in the letter as Kojima’s. Reroi's said the relatives bought t; j.rurial stone for Kojima shortly after they were officially notified in April, 1944, that he had been killed m action.