June 6, 2004

BY ERIC TALMADGE

TOKYO -- While on assignment in Iraq two months ago, photojournalist Shinsuke Hashida was so moved by a boy partially blinded by glass shards during a gun battle that he made a promise: to return to Iraq and bring the child to Japan for medical treatment.

Hashida went back for the boy, only to be killed in an ambush. But his promise stands.

On Friday, 10-year-old Mohamad Haytham Saleh arrived in Tokyo from Amman, Jordan. Following through on arrangements Hashida made before he and his nephew Kotaro Ogawa, also a journalist, were killed in an attack south of Baghdad, a local Rotary Club will sponsor the boy and pay for his medical care.

''I'm grateful to all the Japanese for helping me,'' Saleh, smiling shyly, told Japanese reporters before boarding the plane. ''I'm really excited.''

Though he has undergone two operations in Iraq, Saleh cannot see with his left eye, which was pierced by glass shards last November during fighting in Fallujah.

His story has touched Japan, where he has become something of a celebrity.

Updates of his situation appear daily on nationwide television. Before leaving Amman, Mohamad and his father, a taxi driver, went on a quick tour of the city with Japanese TV networks in tow. Video of the child mounting a mechanized horse at an arcade and waving goodbye at the airport were among the top stories of the day.

At the same time, the murder of Hashida and his nephew last Thursday has deepened concerns here over Japan's involvement in Iraq.

Japan has about 500 noncombat troops in southeastern Iraq on a humanitarian mission intended to help improve the local infrastructure and provide badly needed drinking water. The deployment is the biggest and most dangerous conducted by this country's military since World War II and was made possible by the strong backing of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

Despite Koizumi's repeated claim that it is essential for Japan to keep the troops in Iraq to show support for President Bush, increasing violence -- including the killings of Hashida and Ogawa, the taking of five Japanese hostages and bombings near the Japanese base -- has made an already dubious public even more skeptical.

Though officials say they have no intention of pulling out the troops -- and deny that the deployment area is a combat zone -- they have issued several calls for all civilians, including journalists and aid workers, to leave the country.

Hashida, one of Japan's top free-lance combat photographers, was among a handful of Japanese journalists to ignore that warning.

No stranger to Iraq, he was killed while on his fifth trip there -- this time to report for the daily tabloid Nikkan Gendai.

According to authorities, Hashida, 61, and Ogawa, 33, were attacked while driving about 20 miles south of Baghdad in the city of Mahmoudiya. Details of the ambush remain sketchy, but gunmen are believed to have sprayed the vehicle with bullets before it exploded in flames.

The nephew's body was found about 6 miles from the site of the attack. Japanese media speculated that Ogawa, who worked with Japanese public television network NHK before becoming a free-lancer, may have been abducted and later shot dead.

Hashida's interpreter also was killed, and his driver survived a bullet wound in the head. It was the second fatal incident involving Japanese in Iraq since the U.S. invasion last year. Two diplomats were murdered in an ambush near the northern Iraqi city of Tikrit last November.

Hashida's widow, Yukiko, and son Daisuke identified his badly burned remains at a U.S. military base in Kuwait on Wednesday. They were to return to Japan after stopping off in Bangkok, where Hashida was based.

AP