U.S. to Quiz Monk on Reports of POWs

TOKYO — The United States is sending a military attache to interview a Japanese monk who reportedly saw American POWs in Vietnamese prison camps recently, despite Hanoi’s assertions that it holds no prisoners.

The Buddhist monk, Iwanobu Yoshida, 65, has been hospitalized in northern Japan with what are termed mental and physical problems since he was freed in January after 14 years’ imprisonment in Vietnam.

In the past week, Japanese media reports and his daughter have said that Yoshida shared a cell with Americans in the re-education camp where he was held.

The Vietnamese Embassy in Tokyo denied the claims, reiterating that Hanoi holds no prisoners from the Vietnam War.

But the U.S. government has for years pressed Hanoi for an accounting of the 1,730 Americans listed as missing in action in Vietnam and 634 missing elsewhere in the war zone.

A U.S. Embassy spokesman said Saturday that a military attache planned to fly to northern Sapporo today to interview Yoshida.

The United States sought to interview Yoshida earlier but until now had been turned down by his daughter, Keiko Takatsuka, on grounds he was too ill, said the embassy spokesman.

Takatsuka on Saturday said her father had shared a cell with three American prisoners for the last six years before returning to Japan.

“My father told me that when he asked them if they were Americans, they nodded,” Takatsuka said from her home in Sapporo, on Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost island. The prisoners were not allowed to speak to each other, she said. Her father does not remember the names of the three men held in his cell, she added, but he said they were still “young and healthy.”

A spokesman for the hospital where Yoshida is being treated said he suffers from mental disorders and a speech impediment and that only his daughter can understand him. Takatsuka said her father had a stroke three years ago.

Yoshida had been a city councilman in Mibari on Hokkaido before he became a monk in 1966 and emigrated to Vietnam. He set up a temple in Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, and became a South Vietnamese citizen in 1973.

He was arrested in 1975, after the takeover of South Vietnam by Communist forces. On Jan. 20, Vietnam released him on humanitarian grounds.