WORLD : Monk Who Saw POWs Hallucinates

TOKYO — The daughter of a Japanese Buddhist monk who claims he saw several American prisoners of war in Vietnam at a prison camp where he was from 1986 until his release in January said today her father suffers from hallucinations.

The daughter of Iwanobu Yoshida, a 65-year-old priest who was held as a political prisoner in Vietnam for 13 years, did not link the hallucinations with the reported POW sightings, but the statement cast doubt on his reported claims to have seen Americans in Vietnam recently.

“Recently he has started having hallucinations,” said Keiko Takatsuka, 37, in a telephone interview from her home in Sapporo, Hokkaido, the northernmost main island of the Japanese archipelago.