Published December 12, 2015
An American-Japanese team of researchers has identified four of the seven European refugees in decades-old photographs given to a Japanese tourism official who helped rescue them during World War II.
Descendants of three of the seven met this week in the New York City area with Akira Kitade (ah-KEER'-uh kih-TAH'-day), who has written a book about the late Tatsuo Osako (taht-SOO'-oh oh-SAH'-koh) and the seven people in the photos, who include four Jews, one gentile and two women whose identities and religion remains unknown.
Osako was a tourism bureau clerk who received the photos from seven grateful refugees he assisted during arduous voyages from a Russian Pacific port to Japan in 1940 and 1941.
Kitade tracked down some of the descendants with the help of another Japanese researcher and Mark Halpern, a genealogy buff from Pennsylvania.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/after-75-years-researchers-help-id-photos-of-wwii-refugees-saved-by-japanese-tourism-official