WWII stragglers story 'a hoax'

[emad]

WWII stragglers story 'a hoax'

TOKYO, Japan (AP) -- The mediator who tried to arrange a meeting with two alleged Japanese soldiers supposedly hiding in the Philippines since World War II has confirmed the story is a hoax, a media report said Wednesday.

The unidentified 58-year-old Japanese man, a trader who first reported the men's existence, told the national Yomiuri newspaper that he had met the two alleged soldiers in the mountains on Mindanao island and found they were not Japanese.

Neither of the men could answer when asked where they were born and to which military unit they belonged, the mediator was quoted as saying in the Yomiuri.

After the Japanese trader's Filipino staff notified him about the the wartime stragglers, he spent 5 million yen ($46,000) paying local residents for information in hopes of tracking them down, the paper said.

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/05/31/japan.soldiers.ap/

[jobycom]

1. Geeze, there was doubt? Who didn't know that was a hoax the moment

they read the story? It's not even an original hoax, it's one of the oldest in the book.

[sniffa]

2. am i the onLy one

who thought of giLLigan's isLand?

[deutsey]

3. That's the first thing I thought of