FEATURE: Ex-Japanese POWs in Russia cannot receive pension.

Japan Weekly Monitor, June, 2002

YUZHNY, Russia, May 31 Kyodo

Sadao Nakagawa, a former Japanese military pilot who claims to have shot down many enemy planes in World War II, lives in destitution in the Republic of Kalmykiya in southern Russia without a pension from the Japanese government.

Nakagawa, 82, is fighting an uphill battle to get official recognition from Tokyo that he is Japanese and eligible to receive a pension.

Toshimasa Meguro tried to gain confirmation of his Japanese nationality when then Russian President Boris Yelstin and then Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto held summit talks in Krasnoyarsk in eastern Siberia in October 1997.

Japanese officials brushed him off. Nakagawa and Meguro, 81, who lives in Krasnoyarsk, were among the nearly...