Two more Nikkei-jins, both in their 80s, are finally bound for Japan.

Rosa Masako Kanashiro, 80 and Samuel Akaiji, 81, will be leaving from Terminal 1 of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) in Paranaque at 9:30 am on Thursday.

Akaiji, an 81-year-old resident of Coron, Palawan said he was happy that he could finally see his father’s family.

“I am happy. It is my dream to go to Japan to see my relatives and my father’s family,” he said at a press conference held at the office of the Philippine Nikkei-jin Legal Support Center in Malate.

“I just want to get to know them so that I can be happy that we’re together,” he added.

He learned at four years old from his mother that his father, Kametaro Akaiji, was a Japanese fisherman, who was killed by guerillas during World War II while he was buying rice for his family.

Kanashiro, an 80-year-old resident of Davao, said she wants to go to Japan to visit her father’s birthplace.

“I am going there so I can see my father’s homeland so I can see where he grew up,” Kanashiro said.

When she was little, Kanashiro thought that her father was the second husband of her mother, but she began to notice that he never celebrated her birthday while her siblings had grand birthday celebrations.

However, she never resented her father for how differently she was treated from her siblings.

“I don’t bear grudges even towards those who used to bully me,” Kanashiro said, recalling how she was bullied in high school for having slanted eyes as a Japanese.

She only found out from her aunt, the sister of her mother, that her real father was a Japanese barber.

Her mother initially denied it but eventually admitted that her father was Japanese.

Kanashiro said her mother told her that her father joined the Japanese Army during the war and promised to come back but he never returned.

She also shared that she would not have survived if her mother didn’t hide her from the guerillas.

“My mom told me when I got older that she used to hide me. Whenever there were guerillas, she would run. Her cousin who was a guerilla asked if I was the child of a Japanese. She denied it. Then her cousin told her to go somewhere far because the guerillas are roving there,” she said

Kanashiro said it has been almost 40 years since she applied for Japanese citizenship. It took a while to process because her Filipino mother and her Japanese father are not legally married. Jaspearl Tan/DMS