Japanese diplomats flew to General Santos city, 1,300 kilometersmiles) south of Manila, to meet two men in their 80s who were said to live in fear of being executed for deserting the now defunct imperial army.

"What a surprise it would be if it's true," Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told reporters in Tokyo.

Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said the embassy in Manila received information that "two men believed to be former Japanese soldiers are alive."

The welfare and labor ministry, which handles veterans' affairs, said it had heard from Japanese people in Mindanao about four possible former soldiers on the lawless island of Mindanao who wanted to return to Japan.

Japan's consul general in Manila, Akio Egawa, said the diplomats will interview the pair to confirm if they were soldiers left over from World War

"It is an incredible story if it is true," he told AFP.

Yoshihiko Terashima, 86, who heads a council of Japanese war veterans' associations, said he spoke last year to a Filipina logger whose husband is Japanese and reported running into two lost former soldiers.

"The men told the woman, "We may be court-martialed and executed by firing squad if we return to Japan,'" Terashima said.

The comment would indicate the men have no idea that the once-ruthless imperial army has been defunct for six decades and Japan officially no longer has a military.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda, the government spokesman, said the two men had a go-between who apparently feared what would happen if the recluses suddenly saw a mass of journalists.

But a senior Filipino police intelligence officer in the area cautioned that the story was yet to be confirmed.

"There is a possibility that this could just be a hoax. Somebody may just want to gain something," the officer said.

Mindanao, an island of dense jungle, has witnessed more than two decades of Islamic insurgency. Japanese media reports said the pair had been living in guerrilla-controlled mountains near sprawling General Santos.

A former soldier who served in the same unit the men were reported to belong to said he heard from other veterans that one of them had been telling residents in Mindanao that his family name was Sakurai.

"In October or November, I heard local residents went into the mountains and met the man, who said 'My name is Sakurai. I am a Japanese,'" said Goichi Ichikawa, 89, speaking in Japan.

"The man apparently said he wanted to go home, but was worried," he told reporters.

Kyodo News agency, citing Japanese government sources, identified the two men as Yoshio Yamakawa, 87, and Tsuzuki Nakauchi, 85.

The Sankei Shimbun daily said the men were believed to belong to the "panther division". About 80 percent of its members died or went missing while battling US forces.

Japan attacked the Philippines, then a US colony, hours after its 1941 air raid on Pearl Harbor and formed a puppet government of Filipino oligarchs. The occupation was brutal. About one million Filipinos are estimated to have died. Filipina women were sexually enslaved.

Japan was stunned in 1974 when former imperial Japanese army intelligence officer Hiroo Onoda was found living in the jungle on the Philippine island of Lubang. He did not know of Japan's surrender 29 years earlier.

After being repatriated, Onoda emigrated to Brazil.

Another former Japanese soldier, Shoichi Yokoi, was found on Guam in 1972. He returned home and died in 1997.

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