Banzai!!

Sixty years after the end of the Second World War, two Japanese veterans have reportedly emerged from the Philippines jungle, declaring that they wish to go home but are afraid of a court martial.

According to one version, the pair - in their mid-eighties - had no idea the war was over until they came down from the thickly forested mountains near General Santos, a city on the southern island of Mindanao.

It seems barely conceivable that the men could have spent six decades in hiding, possibly unaware of Japan's defeat. Yet in 1974 a former Imperial Army intelligence officer, Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda, was discovered in the rainforests of Lubang island in the Philippines, 30 years after being assigned there.

Mr Onoda, now 83, refused to believe that the war had ended, and it was only when his former commanding officer was flown over from Japan that he agreed to leave the jungle. In 1975 he emigrated to Brazil. Another Japanese ex-soldier, Shoichi Yokoi, was found on the North Pacific island of Guam in 1972. He came home, and died in 1977.

Japan's Sankei Shimbun newspaper said the two men had probably belonged to the Panther division, which was virtually wiped out as the war drew to a close. It said that the pair ended up in the mountains after becoming separated from their comrades. The newspaper quoted an unidentified source as claiming that as many as 40 Japanese soldiers were still in the Philippines, all yearning to return home.

This is amazing, if true. But out of curiosity: Does this shed light on the old Bugs Bunny cartoons, in which we all were assured, "You're a sap sap sap, Mr. Jap."?