Japan

Nearly 80 years after a devastating fire tore through a Japanese military prison during World War II, a Defense Department agency is working to identify American prisoners of war who died in the blaze.

Former pupils visited an elementary school at Yokota Air Base in Japan to open a time capsule that was buried in 2000.

The first refugees out of Saigon — 54 Vietnamese orphans — arrived at Yokota AB early Thursday after a dash to freedom from an increasingly nervous South Vietnamese capital. This article first appeared in the Stars and Stripes Pacific edition, April 4, 1975. It is republished unedited in its original form.

Nine Red Cross registered nurses and volunteers, all of them wives of Air Force men stationed in Japan, returned from a “babylift” flight carrying Vietnamese orphans to the United States and said they’d “make the trip again anytime.” This article first appeared in the Stars and Stripes Pacific edition, Apr. 9, 1975. It is republished unedited in its original form.

Young athletes from as far away as South Korea gathered recently at Yokota Air Base in western Tokyo for an NFL Pro Camp hosted by Morgan Fox, a defensive tackle for the Atlanta Falcons.

A soroban “allows students to see and manipulate a physical representation of abstract numbers,” according to The Japan Society website. Japanese third- and fourth-graders are required to practice soroban in math class, according to the education ministry’s website.