Mainichi: Recovery of Japanese war dead in Philippines postponed amid probe
The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare has announced that the latest round of work to collect the remains of fallen Japanese soldiers in the Philippines will be postponed, following claims that collected remains may include the bones of Filipinos.
Ongoing work to collect remains of Japanese soldiers who perished in the Philippines during World War II was due to resume on Oct. 21. However, following claims that remains collected by a nonprofit organization (NPO) possibly contained those of Filipinos, the ministry decided to postpone the work and question the NPO as part of an investigation into whether the work was being performed appropriately.
The collection of remains of fallen Japanese soldiers in the Philippines began in 1957, and by 2008 the remains of about 130,000 people had been brought back to Japan. In 2009 the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare placed the work in the hands of a Japanese NPO. In 2005 the remains of just 24 soldiers were collected, but in 2009 the figure shot up to 7,740.
This fiscal year 47 million yen was earmarked for the work, and the remains of 6,289 people have already been collected. The latest round of collection work was scheduled to take place between Oct. 21 and Nov. 5.
Ministry officials said that the NPO paid staff to perform the collection work. In cases where no belongings were found with the body, testimonies of the finder and the local mayor would be used to create affidavits, and that would be used as notarized documentation to acknowledge the bones as those of Japanese.
"We judged that the documentation had the same official probative force as Japanese notarized documents," a ministry representative commented.
However, on Oct. 8, a group of bereaved family members and servicemen who had just returned from the Philippines held a news conference at the ministry, saying that in the province of Ifugao on the island of Luzon and other areas, they had often heard from residents that Filipinos hired for 250 pesos a day were handing the remains of Filipinos over to the Japanese NPO. Ministry officials subsequently ordered improvements to the work.