Former Enemy to return Ex-POW's Photos

KOFU, Japan - A former Imperial Japanese Army soldier who was stationed on Luzon Island in the Philippines during World War II is trying to track down the owner of a photo album he found at a camp housing U.S. prisoners of war.

The soldier was based on Bataan Peninsula, the site of the infamous Bataan Death March of April 1942, in which the Imperial Japanese Army forced many U.S. and Filipino prisoners of war to walk 60 miles in scorching heat to prison camps, causing the deaths of many prisoners along the way.

Tokio Watanabe, who is now 91 and lives in Oshinomura, Yamanashi Prefecture, said he returned to Japan in 1942 with the album he took from a prison camp in Bataan. In the album, the names of seven people had been written, including the surname Milliken.

This year, the names were found in a record stored at the Bataan Memorial Military Museum in Santa Fe, N.M.

An acquaintance of Watanabe will soon travel to the United States to try to track down the Soldiers listed in the album.

In addition to the seven names, the album contains photographs thought to have been taken at Angel Island near San Francisco, which was the departure point for U.S. troops headed to the Philippines, and in Honolulu, which was one of the stops en route.

Watanabe, then a sergeant, said he went to Bataan Peninsula as an army platoon commander in 1942, where he witnessed the Bataan Death March.

He said that as he watched the exhausted prisoners of war march in rows of five, he pondered how he would feel if he were in their situation.

Watanabe said he found the album one or two months after witnessing the march. It was placed alongside deserted pots and kettles in a U.S. Soldiers' tent at a POW camp.

Unable to find someone to give it to, he took the album to his next posting, and has held onto it since in the hope that he might one day be able to return the album to its owner.

Watanabe published a book about his war experiences in April.

He said he was then contacted by Kofu-based Takao Koishi, 72, who searches for the owners of the many items left behind on battlefields, and he told Koishi about the album.

Koishi sent an e-mail to the Bataan Memorial Military Museum, and a museum employee informed him that the seven names listed in the album belonged to one troop unit, and that the museum would try to locate the owner.

"I wanted to return the album some day after peace had come," Watanabe said. "I hope someone related to the owner will be found."