By Benjamin Cuaresma
Foreign Sources
MANILA — A 95-year-old Japanese-Filipino woman who was left behind in the Philippines after World War II has once again been denied recognition as a Japanese citizen, despite presenting DNA evidence and personal testimony linking her to her late Japanese father.
Rosalina Kamba Fernandez’s application for Japanese nationality was rejected by the Yonago branch of the Family Court in Japan’s Tottori Prefecture on Wednesday, citing insufficient documentary evidence, particularly the absence of her parents’ marriage record.
The ruling came just months after Fernandez traveled to Japan in January under a Japanese government program designed to assist descendants of Japanese nationals stranded overseas in securing citizenship more than eight decades after the war.
Fernandez filed her petition before the family court in March following the visit, hoping renewed evidence and support would strengthen her long-running bid for legal recognition.
Her legal team argued that DNA testing, combined with her recollections, established that her father was Rita Kamba, a native of Hoki, who died in 1983.
However, the court ruled that the available evidence failed to satisfy legal requirements because official records proving her parents’ marriage could not be produced. Fernandez has maintained that such documents were destroyed during World War II.
The Japan-based Philippine Nikkei-jin Legal Support Center said Fernandez will immediately appeal the decision before the Hiroshima High Court.
This is the second time Fernandez has failed to secure Japanese nationality. In 2024, the Tokyo Family Court also denied her application for the same reason.
During her January visit, Fernandez traveled to Hoki, where she met residents who had known her father. She recalled seeing him only once, when she was around 10 years old.
Her case underscores the continuing challenges faced by many Japanese-Filipinos born before and during World War II, whose efforts to reclaim Japanese citizenship have been complicated by the wartime destruction of official records and decades of separation from their ancestral homeland.
ia/xf
