Japanese-Filipino woman to meet Japanese father after 66 years 日裔菲女尋父66年終團聚

MANILA (Kyodo) -- A Japanese-Filipino woman said Wednesday she will meet her Japanese father in Okinawa on Friday for the first time in 66 years.

"I am immensely happy that I will see my father again," Pacita Okuma, 69, told reporters at a news conference one day before flying to Japan.

Okuma will be reunited with her 95-year-old father, Manzo Okuma, at Izena Island near Okinawa, according to the Philippine Nikkei-Jin Legal Support Center, a nonprofit group that is organizing the reunion.

Okuma, who lives in Negros Occidental province in the central Philippines, was separated from her father when she was almost 3 years old because he was repatriated to Japan at the end of World War II along with other members of the Imperial Japanese Army, said Norihiro Inomata of the center.

The older Okuma was among many Japanese immigrants in the Philippines before the war. He was engaged in the fisheries sector in Negros Occidental until he married Pacita's mother. The couple had two children. During the war, he joined the Japanese Army.

"I really want to see my father because I miss him so much. It has been many years already. I could not even recall his face any more," an emotional, teary-eyed Okuma told Kyodo News in an interview.

Okuma will be flying to Japan along with six other Filipinos of Japanese descent who will be meeting their Japanese relatives.

While in Japan, all seven will make personal appearances at the Tokyo Family Court as part of their petition to acquire Japanese citizenship.

The center, together with the Nippon Foundation, has been supporting second-generation Japanese left in the Philippines whose Japanese fathers are not identified.

It has successfully helped 63 individuals gain Japanese citizenship.

"Even if they wanted to live with their fathers, they had no choice because it was wartime, the circumstances did not permit it. And, aside from being stateless, they grew up being discriminated against, they have to hide their identities," Inomata said.

Economically, getting recognized as Japanese citizens will also benefit them because it will allow their children to work in Japan, said Inomata.