Japan gives passport to 90-year-old PH-born woman separated from dad after WWII

The Embassy of Japan has issued a Japanese passport to Adelaida Kakazu, a 90-year-old Japanese descendant who remained in the Philippines after World War II.

"Despite the hardships experienced by Japanese descendants during and after the war, Ms. Kakazu has maintained her ties with Japan. The Embassy has supported her registration in the Japanese family registry through interviews and examination of relevant documents," the Japanese Embassy said in a statement.

According to The Japan Times, Kakazu is a second-generation Japanese woman born in the Philippines. She is a Nikkei-jin, a Japanese term meaning Japanese emigrants who left Japan to live in other countries and their descendants.

She was separated from her Japanese father after World War II when the latter was repatriated. She plans to use her new passport to visit her father's native Okinawa and hopefully meet members of her family.

The embassy urged descendants wanting to acquire Japanese nationality to contact its office via this link.

It added that individual interviews for Japanese nationality acquisition will be conducted in various regions across the Philippines.

Japanese descendants are advised to prepare as many of following documents to confirm their identities:

• Birth certificate (or delayed registration),
• parents' (first-generation) marriage certificate (or delayed registration),
• parents' (first-generation) death certificate (or delayed registration),
• an affidavit from a witness,
• baptismal certificate,
• statelessness certification,
• records of captivity,
• photographs indicating Japanese ancestry,
• academic transcripts from your student years, and
• intertribal marriage certificates,

— Mariel Celine Serquiña/RF, GMA News