Visiting Japanese missing in GenSan

GENERAL SANTOS CITY — A Japanese national vacationing here has reportedly been missing since Dec. 11, the police said.

Senior Superintendent Alfredo Toroctocon, city police chief, said Yasauki Sawada, a resident of Sennansi, Osaka, Japan, was last seen on the night of Dec. 11 coming out of the East Asia Royal Hotel together with another Japanese identified as Satoshi Ueda, also of Osaka.

"We have mobilized our personnel to look for the Japanese," he said.

Hotel personnel said Sawada and Ueda, along with two other compatriots, Kenji Ida and Minore Tsunotu, checked in the hotel on Dec. 7. However, Ida and Tsunotu checked out on Dec. 10.

According to the hotel guards, only Ueda returned at dawn of Dec. 12. The following day, Ueda left for Manila and informed the hotel’s front desk that Sawada failed to come back along with him the night before.

Ueda also left the airline ticket of Ueda with the hotel personnel.

Hotel manager Romeo Bartolome said the two Japanese went out bar-hopping the night before Sawada went missing.

"I suspect that he (Sawada) could have gone with a girl whom he met in a bar," he said.

Investigation, however, showed that the two Japanese met in the city a certain Rowena, an entertainer who used to work in Japan. The girl was reportedly Ueda’s girlfriend.

"At this time, we cannot say yet that (Sawada) was kidnapped," said Toroctocon, who was already informed by the Japanese embassy in Manila about Sawada’s disappearance.

Taxi driver Mario Bongay said that in the morning of Dec. 11 he fetched Sawada from the hotel to buy car accessories from a hardware store. He said he drove Sawada back to the hotel at about 4 p.m.

He said Sawada informed him that they were engaged in tuna exports here.