DESK REVIEW ON POPULATIONS AT RISK OF STATELESSNESS A large number of Japanese migrants came initially to engage in road construction, and subsequently to work on abaca (Manila hemp) plantations. Some returned to Japan, while others stayed in the Philippines for work spreading out throughout the country with various occupations. The largest community formed in Davao, and the number of Japanese companies and employees steadily increased in the Philippines mainly in Manila and Davao. The number of local-born Nisei children steadily increased. Many Japanese men married Filipino women and raised families, adapting themselves to the Philippine local communities. However, at the breakout of World War II, Japanese immigrants in the Philippines were conscripted into the Japanese military, which turned the U.S. Army and Philippine guerrillas against Japanese nationals. After its two-year occupation of the Philippines, Japan was beginning to lose the war. In the war-triggered turmoil, Japanese migrants working for the Japanese Military were killed or taken as hostages, and were repatriated to Japan after the war. On the other hand, most children of those Japanese migrants were left behind, mostly with their Filipino mothers, in the country. Because they became retaliatory targets of Japanese atrocities during the war, many Japanese descendants fled into remote locations and hid their Japanese bloodline and discarded the documents and pictures indicating their Japanese origin. Consequently, many were unable to have proper education, and remain marginalized. Among the population, there are some cases where both the mother and father were Japanese, and there were some cases where only the mother was Japanese, but the vast majority of cases were those with a Japanese father and Filipino mother. Indeed, at present, the client database of the PNLSC currently consists mostly of cases with a Japanese father and Filipino mother. Article IV of the 1935 Constitution of the Philippines grants Filipino citizenship to “[t]hose whose fathers are citizens of the Philippines.” Furthermore, the Supreme Court of the Philippines has held that, “…the …constitutional and statutory requirements of electing Filipino citizenship apply only to legitimate children. These do not apply in the case of respondent who was concededly an illegitimate child, considering that her Chinese father and Filipino mother were never married. As such, she was not required to comply with said constitutional and statutory requirements to become a Filipino citizen. By being an illegitimate child of a Filipino mother, respondent automatically became a Filipino upon birth. Stated differently, she is a Filipino since birth without having to elect Filipino citizenship when she reached 60 UNHCR / April 2021