Timeline
| 1962 | Crown Prince Akihito and Crown Princess Michiko make a state visit to the Philippines (November 5–10), meeting with first President Emilio Aguinaldo |
| 1970 | Okinawa Prefecture erects the war memorial “Okinawa no Tō” (Tower of Okinawa) on the site of the former Japanese cemetery in Mintal, Davao |
| 1973–77 | The late Reverend Ryoichi Kato (chairman of the Southeast Asia Cultural Association), in cooperation with Manila Mayor Bagatsing, erects the Takayama Ukon statue and memorial plaza (Plaza Dilao) in the former Dilao district (unveiled November 17) |
| 1974 | Former Second Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda, who had been hiding on Lubang Island, surrenders after contact with Norio Suzuki and a mission-release order from his former superior officer, returning to Japan after 29 years (March 12) |
| 1978– | The Japanese robot anime “Voltes V” begins broadcasting in the Philippines, becoming a national sensation with a peak viewership rating of 58%. Banned by the Marcos administration, it resumes after the 1986 revolution, and enjoys a cross-generational revival in 1999, becoming a symbol of the Philippines’ growing familiarity with Japanese popular culture |
First President Emilio Aguinaldo and the Visit of the Crown Prince and Princess
Just six years after the normalization of diplomatic relations, from November 5 to 10, 1962, then-Crown Prince Akihito and Crown Princess Michiko made a state visit to the Philippines as representatives of Emperor Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa). This was the first visit to the Philippines by an heir to the Japanese throne, and coming just 17 years after the end of the war, it carried great political and symbolic weight at the time. In addition to a welcome from President Macapagal, the Crown Prince was awarded the Order of Sikatuna (Rank of Rajah), the highest order the Philippines can bestow. When the author was taking graduate courses at the University of Santo Tomas in 1986, after the revolution, it was this same former President Macapagal — father of Gloria Macapagal, who would later become president herself — who, though already 90 years old, was still vigorously teaching political science.
On November 6, during the visit, after laying flowers at the monument to the Declaration of Independence, the Crown Prince and Princess stopped at Kawit, Cavite, on their way to Tagaytay, and met with Emilio Aguinaldo, father of Philippine independence and its first president. Aguinaldo, then 93 and hospitalized, is said to have temporarily left the hospital for this meeting and received the Crown Prince and Princess at his own residence. This scene — the hero of Philippine independence himself welcoming members of the Japanese Imperial Family into his home — is still recounted today as a symbol of reconciliation transcending the complicated wartime memories shared by the two countries.
Former Second Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda’s Return from Lubang Island
The postwar history of Japan-Philippines relations also includes one “war” that remained unresolved for nearly 30 years after the fighting officially ended. Second Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda, trained in guerrilla warfare and intelligence at the Army’s Nakano School, was dispatched to Lubang Island, off the western coast of Mindoro, at the end of 1944, having received orders from his superior officer: “Do not die needlessly; keep fighting until you receive an order releasing you from your mission.” Even after Japan’s defeat, unaware that this order had ever been rescinded, Onoda continued guerrilla activities in the jungles of Lubang Island together with fellow soldiers. As comrades fell in gun battles with Philippine forces, he alone survived.
On February 20, 1974, Japanese adventurer Norio Suzuki, after a solo search on Lubang Island, succeeded in making contact with Lieutenant Onoda and informed him that the war had long since ended. Still, Onoda insisted he could not act without a formal release from his mission, so on March 4, his direct superior at the time of Japan’s surrender, former Major Yoshimi Taniguchi, traveled to the island, and on March 9, formally delivered the order releasing him from duty, deep in the jungle.
Only then did Lieutenant Onoda lay down his arms, returning to Japan on March 12. For fully 29 years, he had continued fighting a war that had already ended, entirely on his own. Because clashes with Philippine forces during his time on the island had caused casualties among local residents, a meeting with President Marcos was arranged before his departure; the President accepted Onoda’s military sword and indicated that he would not be held criminally responsible. This episode is still recounted today on both sides as a story symbolizing just how long the memory of the Pacific War lingered.
That said, Onoda, hailed as “the last Japanese soldier” upon his return, has also long faced persistent criticism. Makoto Tsuda, who ghost-wrote Onoda’s own memoir “My Thirty Years’ War on Lubang Island” (1974) shortly after his return, later sharply criticized him in his own book, “The Illusory Hero: Three Months with Lieutenant Onoda” (1977). Tsuda argued that Onoda himself had testified to killing more than 30 islanders, that some of these killings appeared difficult to justify, that Onoda had in fact been aware the war had ended and that no “standing mission” had actually remained in force, and that the real reason he did not leave the jungle until 1974 was, alongside his stubborn character, fear of retaliation from the islanders. At the very least, it is widely acknowledged as an objective fact that, among the residents of Lubang Island, Onoda was long feared as a dangerous man and was not regarded favorably.
A Modern Legacy of the War: The Statelessness of Japanese-Filipino Descendants
Before the war, more than 30,000 Japanese immigrants lived across the Philippines, concentrated especially in Davao, and among them were many who married local women and raised second-generation (nisei) children. However, after Japan’s defeat in August 1945, the Japanese fathers were sent through internment camps and forcibly repatriated to Japan, while many of their nisei children, born of Filipino mothers, were simply left behind in the Philippines.
At the time, the Philippines was consumed by intense hatred of the Japanese military, and being “Japanese” meant mortal danger. Yoshitaka Takamori (born 1931, living on the outskirts of Davao on Mindanao, son of a father from Hiroshima and a Tagabawa mother) has testified to witnessing people killed for carelessly speaking Japanese, and that he survived by getting a tattoo in the style of his mother’s tribe, sealing away his Japanese name, and passing himself off as Filipino. Many nisei left behind buried or burned, with their own hands, evidence of their Japanese identity — photographs, letters, and memorial tablets of their fathers — in order to protect themselves.
Nearly 80 years after the end of the war, this problem remains unresolved today. Its legal basis lies in Japan’s old Nationality Act, enacted in 1899. Article 1 of that law adopted a paternal-line jus sanguinis principle, providing that “a child shall be deemed Japanese if, at the time of birth, the father is Japanese.” Under this provision, children born to a Japanese father and a Filipino mother should, in principle, have acquired Japanese nationality at birth regardless of their mother’s nationality (this provision remained in effect until a 1984 revision introduced bilateral jus sanguinis, recognizing descent through either parent).
Investigations by support organizations have found that roughly 4,000 nisei remained behind in the Philippines, but because of scattered evidence and concealed identities, many have grown old without ever recovering Japanese nationality (which, under the paternal jus sanguinis principle, they should have held by law, but which remains unrecognized — and thus effectively stateless — unless formally acknowledged by the Japanese government). Recent surveys estimate that about 900 of these remaining nisei have never had their identities confirmed, and that some 600–700 remain effectively stateless, unable to recover Japanese nationality; their average age has already reached the 80s. About half of them are believed to be concentrated around Davao, a distribution that reflects the historical depth of the prewar Japanese community there, in which residents from Okinawa Prefecture made up some 70% of the Japanese population.
Behind these nisei’s continued insistence on recovering Japanese nationality through the koseki (family registry) process lies a complicated question of belonging that goes beyond mere legal or economic motives. After the war, these nisei — treated with hostility by those around them simply for having Japanese blood, and forced to hide their identities to survive in the mountains — were, in effect, denied a place even within Philippine society.
Despite having a Japanese father, they were denied recognition of Japanese nationality, while in the Philippines they were persecuted precisely for being Japanese — left suspended in a limbo where neither society fully recognized them as belonging. Now, in old age, securing their status as Japanese through the legal koseki process is more than simply obtaining a nationality right; it can be understood as a final effort to reclaim the very sense of belonging — of knowing who they are — that was taken from them throughout their lives.
Here, I would like to add my own personal view.
Today, the Philippine economy is dominated largely by two lineages of business conglomerates. One traces its roots to the former colonial power, Spain — the mestizo conglomerates such as the Ayala group. The other traces its roots to Chinese immigrants — the ethnic-Chinese conglomerates such as the Sy, Gokongwei, and Lucio Tan groups. On Forbes’ rankings of the wealthiest, families from these two lineages continue to occupy most of the top positions. By contrast, the Japanese in the Philippines have not gone on to build business empires of comparable scale that could be called conglomerates.
Before the war, the first-generation Japanese who traveled to Davao and other parts of the Philippines earned deep trust from local society through their diligence, perseverance, and technical skill, and built genuine wealth and standing. But with Japan’s defeat, the second generation who should have inherited that wealth and standing instead became targets of intense hatred simply for having Japanese blood, and were forced to live stateless, hiding their identities. Far from inheriting family businesses, they found themselves unable even to start new ones.
Had there been no war, no defeat, and had the wealth and trust built by the first generation passed unbroken to the second and third generations, might a conglomerate of Japanese lineage, too, have carved its name into today’s history of the Philippine economy?
That is my own view. And I quietly hope that, someday, from among the Japanese who have settled in the Philippines and built businesses here, a Japanese-lineage conglomerate will emerge to rival — or even surpass — the ethnic-Chinese and Spanish-lineage conglomerates.
Sister Umino, Who Went in Search of Hidden Japanese-Filipino Descendants
It was the Catholic nun Sister Teresia Umino who was first to shine a light on the plight of these remaining nisei. After retiring from teaching at a mission school in Japan, Umino was posted to Baguio in 1972 at the age of 60, where she learned of the desperate circumstances of Japanese-Filipino mestizos hiding in the mountains for fear of postwar persecution, and set out to visit and protect them one by one. She devoted herself to educational support for children who at the time had almost no access to schooling, to helping form agricultural cooperatives, and to collecting the remains of former Japanese soldiers. In 1972 she established an organization that would later become the Nikkei-jin Kai of Northern Luzon (“Abon”), and in 1987 she founded the Northern Luzon Philippines-Japan Foundation. She was named an honorary citizen of Benguet Province in 1981, received the Order of the Sacred Treasure, 6th Class, in 1984, and passed away in 1989.
The Abon Hall in Baguio still bears her name today as the “Sister Teresia Umino Memorial Hall,” and today’s support for remaining Japanese-Filipino descendants, including by PNLSC, can be seen as an extension of Umino’s pioneering work. It is said that whenever Umino spotted a child in town with Japanese-looking features, she would approach them and say, “You look Japanese,” and use that as a starting point to track down the stateless, hidden nisei parents — a patient, painstaking method she practiced throughout her life. This is described in detail in Mamoru Kamono’s book “Rainbow of Baguio: Sister Umino and a Hundred Years of Japanese-Filipinos.”
The author had the opportunity to meet Umino in her later years. She recalled, cheerfully laughing, “You know, I have dementia now. So when I’m delighted at a restaurant and say, ‘Oh, this is really delicious,’ someone teases me, saying, ‘Sister, you said the exact same thing last week.’ But that just means I get to taste something delicious for the first time, over and over — so losing your memory isn’t so bad after all.” Not long after that meeting, Umino passed away.
Norihiro Inomata of the Nikkei-jin Legal Support Center
The organization supporting these remaining Japanese-Filipino descendants is the certified NPO “Philippine Nikkei-jin Legal Support Center (PNLSC),” founded after attorney Hiroyuki Kawai, attending the 100th anniversary of Japanese immigration to Davao in November 2003, declared that he would “provide legal support to Japanese-Filipino descendants throughout the Philippines.” Norihiro Inomata, who serves as PNLSC’s representative director, has spent more than 20 years traveling across the Philippines, supporting identity investigations of remaining nisei and their petitions to Japanese family courts for koseki-shūseki (the procedure by which a person without a family registry obtains court permission to create a new one). The first such approval was granted to the Idehata sisters in 2006, and by November 2017 the number of people granted koseki registration had reached 200.
In 2015, a delegation of remaining nisei traveled to Japan and presented then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe with a petition bearing 28,000 signatures. In 2016, the then-Emperor and Empress met with 86 nisei during their visit to the Philippines. In 2020, Kawai and Inomata co-authored the book “Reclaiming Hapon: The War and Nationality Recovery of Japanese Left Behind in the Philippines,” and in 2021 the UNHCR (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) Philippines office published a report officially recognizing the remaining nisei as “people at risk of statelessness.” At a 2022 session of the House of Councillors Budget Committee, then-Prime Minister Fumio Kishida responded that “the government as a whole will work on this with real commitment,” and the Japanese government has gradually been advancing its response.
As a concrete example of support for temporary homecoming visits, from December 14 to 19, 2023, Samuel Akahichi and Rosa Kinjo made a temporary visit to Okinawa with donation-funded support, accompanied by Inomata, meeting relatives, visiting their fathers’ graves, offering condolences at the “Okinawa no Tō” within Okinawa Peace Memorial Park, and paying a courtesy visit to Okinawa Governor Denny Tamaki. Also, from August 6 to 10, 2025, as part of a Ministry of Foreign Affairs visit-to-Japan program, Jose Takei made a temporary visit to Kawachinagano City in Osaka Prefecture, where he met relatives and visited his father’s grave. While funding differs — private fundraising for Okinawa visits, a government program for visits to mainland Japan — in both cases Inomata accompanied the travelers, providing consistent support from identity investigation through travel arrangements to on-the-ground guidance.
What the remaining nisei seek is not financial compensation, but simply “confirmation of their roots as Japanese.” However, the koseki procedure requires evidence proving birth and marriage, and in many cases the records of city halls and churches were lost in the fighting, meaning that individual koseki applications alone have real limits.
With little time remaining, Inomata points out that the enactment of special legislation within Japan will ultimately be indispensable — this issue represents, within the history of Japan-Philippines war relations, a “postwar” that has still not been fully settled. All the nisei who lost everything to the war’s defeat are asking for is the modest wish of, at the very least, Japanese nationality. Now that Japan has risen from the ashes of defeat to become the world’s second-largest economy, should it not extend a more generous measure of relief to these remaining nisei?
Carlos Teraoka, one of the nisei Sister Umino discovered, is also a figure who embodies this process of postwar reconciliation. Born in Baguio as a second-generation Japanese-Filipino, Teraoka served as chairman of the Nikkei-jin Federation and chairman of the Northern Luzon Philippines-Japan Foundation before serving as Honorary Consul-General of Japan in Baguio. In 2016, during the visit to Manila of the then-Emperor Emeritus and Empress Emerita, he was among the first to be personally addressed by them. Known also for having helped guide many remaining nisei toward employment in Japan, Teraoka was awarded the Medal with Purple Ribbon by the Japanese government in recognition of his achievements, and a commemorative lecture was held in the reception room of the Japanese Embassy in Pasay City, Metro Manila. The Japanese Business Club, Philippines (JBCP), of which the author serves as chairman, co-hosted this lecture together with the Embassy.
(Asahiko Yara, Chairman, Japanese Business Club, Philippines [JBCP], a non-profit organization)
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