Japan issues passport to 90-year-old Japanese-Filipino woman Adelaida Kakazu, who hopes to visit her late father's Okinawa hometown

Separated from her Okinawa-born father after World War II, Adelaida Kakazu regained Japanese nationality this year and received her passport in Manila, as the Embassy of Japan invites other Nikkei-jin descendants to apply.

Adelaida Kakazu, a 90-year-old Japanese-Filipino woman who was separated from her Okinawa-born father after World War II, received a Japanese passport at the Japanese Embassy in Manila on Friday, 23 October. She regained her Japanese nationality this year, Kyodo reported in The Mainichi, and hopes to visit her father's hometown as early as December.

"Please enjoy meeting your family in Okinawa," Consul General Maya Hamada said as she handed Kakazu the passport. "I am so happy. Finally, I can meet my relatives in Okinawa," Kakazu said after receiving it.

A family split in 1946

Kakazu was born in December 1935 in Quezon Province to a Filipino mother and a Japanese father, Noboru, who had emigrated to the Philippines to trade coconut oil before the war. He served as an interpreter for the Imperial Japanese Army, was captured by U.S. forces and was forcibly repatriated to Okinawa, leaving his family behind, according to the Philippine Nikkei-jin Legal Support Center in Tokyo.

Her father wrote in a letter that he wished to bring his family to Japan, but he died in 1951. Kakazu said she wants to visit his grave and "tell him everything that happened from the time he left us in 1946, when I was 10 years old." At a press conference in September she appealed for help finding relatives believed to be in Okinawa, and they were located later that month.

Embassy invites other Nikkei-jin to come forward

In a statement reported by GMA News, the Embassy of Japan said Kakazu "has maintained her ties with Japan" despite the hardships Japanese descendants faced during and after the war, and that it supported her registration in the Japanese family registry through interviews and examination of relevant documents.

The embassy urged descendants who want to acquire Japanese nationality to contact its office, and said individual interviews for Japanese nationality acquisition will be conducted in various regions across the Philippines. Applicants are advised to prepare as many supporting documents as they can, including:

• Birth certificate (or delayed registration)
• Parents' marriage and death certificates
• An affidavit from a witness
• Baptismal certificate and statelessness certification
• Records of captivity
• Photographs indicating Japanese ancestry

Hamada said Japan "will continue to strive to respond to (their) earnest wishes," referring to Kakazu and other people of Japanese descent left behind in the Philippines during World War II.

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