Ishinosuke Uwano

was a Japanese soldier who later became a Soviet and Ukrainian citizen. An officer in the Imperial Japanese Army, he was captured as a Soviet prisoner of war. Declared dead in Japan, he attracted media attention in April 2006 after he was discovered alive in Ukraine, where he lived voluntarily after his release.

Missing person case

Uwano was stationed in Karafuto Prefecture on Sakhalin at the end of World War II. He had been in contact with his family as late as 1958. The last time that Uwano's family saw him was in Sakhalin in 1958. After that, they lost all contact with him.
According to Japanese media, Uwano moved to Ukraine in 1965. He subsequently married a Ukrainian woman and settled in Zhytomyr, where he had three children. However, his lack of contact with his family led to the declaration that he was legally dead in 2000.
Uwano contacted the Japanese embassy in Ukraine in 2006 and returned to Japan. Because he had been declared legally dead, when he returned to Japan to visit family in 2006 he had to enter the country on a Ukrainian passport.