Fury Over UC Berkeley Collection Of Japanese War Dead Remains

[Mulboyne]

Life magazine, May 22, 1944, p. 34f.: "Picture of the week. When he said good bye two years ago to Natalie Nickerson, 20, a war worker of Phoenix, Ariz., a big, handsome Navy lieutenant promised her a Jap. Last week Natalie received a human skull, autographed by her lieutenant and 13 friends, and inscribed: 'This is a good Jap - a dead one picked up on the New Guinea beach.' Natalie, surprised at the gift, named it Tojo. The armed forces disapprove strongly of this sort of thing".

SF Gate: Japanese war dead skulls at UC museum
The skulls and bones of Japanese war dead from World War II's Battle of Saipan are being kept at UC Berkeley in apparent violation of the Geneva Conventions for the protection of war victims, The Chronicle has learned. The remains of several Japanese soldiers or civilians removed from the island of Saipan in 1945 by a Navy doctor are housed on storage shelves maintained by the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology on the UC Berkeley campus, museum officials have confirmed. The admission has sparked the fury of international law experts and anthropologists, who say the university has a legal and ethical duty to return the remains to Japan. Three sets of skeletal remains with skulls, and various bones of three additional Japanese war dead without skulls, are stored in wooden containers in vaults beneath the Hearst Gymnasium swimming pool. International law experts say the United States is violating the Geneva Conventions by allowing the museum to possess and do scientific research on the remains of Japanese who committed suicide - some who may have jumped off cliffs rather than surrender in the American invasion of Saipan...UC Berkeley executives say they thought they had legal authority to keep the remains in the public institution's vast collection, which also includes about 10,000 remains of Native Americans. However, after The Chronicle contacted them about the Saipan remains, they now say they are looking into the matter...more...

[MeinJapanLongTime]

Life magazine, May 22, 1944, p. 34f.: "Picture of the week. When he said good bye two years ago to Natalie Nickerson, 20, a war worker of Phoenix, Ariz., a big, handsome Navy lieutenant promised her a Jap. Last week Natalie received a human skull, autographed by her lieutenant and 13 friends, and inscribed: 'This is a good Jap - a dead one picked up on the New Guinea beach.' Natalie, surprised at the gift, named it Tojo. The armed forces disapprove strongly of this sort of thing".

SF Gate: Japanese war dead skulls at UC museum
The skulls and bones of Japanese war dead from World War II's Battle of Saipan are being kept at UC Berkeley in apparent violation of the Geneva Conventions for the protection of war victims, The Chronicle has learned. The remains of several Japanese soldiers or civilians removed from the island of Saipan in 1945 by a Navy doctor are housed on storage shelves maintained by the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology on the UC Berkeley campus, museum officials have confirmed. The admission has sparked the fury of international law experts and anthropologists, who say the university has a legal and ethical duty to return the remains to Japan. Three sets of skeletal remains with skulls, and various bones of three additional Japanese war dead without skulls, are stored in wooden containers in vaults beneath the Hearst Gymnasium swimming pool. International law experts say the United States is violating the Geneva Conventions by allowing the museum to possess and do scientific research on the remains of Japanese who committed suicide - some who may have jumped off cliffs rather than surrender in the American invasion of Saipan...UC Berkeley executives say they thought they had legal authority to keep the remains in the public institution's vast collection, which also includes about 10,000 remains of Native Americans. However, after The Chronicle contacted them about the Saipan remains, they now say they are looking into the matter...more...

Yep. They need to do the right thing and return them. We wouldn't want our boys in a museum in some foreign land and we shouldn't be holding any as well.

[Greji]

We wouldn't want our boys in a museum in some foreign land and we shouldn't be holding any as well.

I don't know. When I think about some of the guys I served with in the military, there were a few that I wouldn't have minded seeing stuffed and hung up to dry.....

[MeinJapanLongTime]

I don't know. When I think about some of the guys I served with in the military, there were a few that I wouldn't have minded seeing stuffed and hung up to dry.....

I can't argue with that.
Some children even a mother can't love...but war is war and there's no way to know if those bones belong to an idiot or a dedicated warrior who fought for his country so we usually assume it is the latter.

[Mulboyne]

SFGate: UC offers to return Japanese remains

University of California officials have sent letters to Japanese authorities offering to return a collection of skulls and bones from World War II to Japan, a UC Berkeley spokesman said Thursday. They have also sent an e-mail to the Defense Department, asking for legal advice regarding the applicability of laws and regulations to a U.S. Navy doctor's procurement of the remains on Saipan and the museum's housing of them. The Chronicle reported Sunday that the skulls and bones of several Japanese who committed suicide during the U.S. invasion of Saipan in 1944 are being kept in an underground vault at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the UC Berkeley campus. Anthropologists, international law experts and state lawmakers have expressed outrage, saying the case presents legal and ethical issues, including apparent violations of the Geneva Conventions for the protection of war victims.

The skulls and bones were kept in the former Navy doctor's private collection until 1974, when he donated them to the university museum. Correspondence was sent Tuesday to the Japanese ambassador in Washington, the Japanese consul general in San Francisco, the Japanese consul general in Saipan and Japan's War Victims Relief Bureau, said UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof. Mogulof said he would not make public copies of the letters until Japanese officials and U.S. military officials respond. Tadayuki Mizutani, a first secretary at Japan's Embassy in Washington, said Japan will soon decide how to proceed. University officials have not acknowledged that any errors in judgment were made in accepting the Saipan remains into the collection. UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau and UC President Mark Yudof have declined requests for interviews.

[Mulboyne]

SFGate: UC's return of Japanese bones put on hold

The Phoebe A. Hearst Museum's collection of human remains from Saipan appears to have touched Japan's cultural, political and religious sensitivities concerning World War II, causing Japanese officials to balk at accepting UC Berkeley's offer to return the skulls and bones. "The remains are not verified as ones of Japanese, so the Japanese government is asking for additional information," Tadayuki Mizutani, a first secretary at Japan's Embassy in Washington, said Friday. But the museum's documentation on the remains is sketchy. Although its card catalogs list some of the Saipan remains as "Japanese who committed suicide during the American invasion," UC anthropologists can only verify that the remains are of East Asian origin.

Japan isn't keen to repatriate the skulls and bones of non-Japanese. Because of Japan's long history of Buddhism, a person's lineage is considered significant and human remains are treated with reverence. The dead are often cremated, and their ashes buried in a family grave. Professor Duncan Williams, director of UC Berkeley's Center for Japanese Studies, said that Japan has good reason to tread carefully. "This is a hot political issue in Japan for family members for whom deceased soldiers cannot be identified," he said. "This is not just any remains, but remains of those who passed away in World War II. The Japanese government and people are trying to ... come to closure with Japan's role in that war."

Williams said he expects that Japan ultimately will accept the museum's offer to return the Saipan remains. "There is an appropriate location in Japan to repatriate these remains, so I think the government of Japan will provide a place for them," Williams said, referring to a Japanese cemetery that has the remains of unknown soldiers and civilians killed in war. "There may be ways to identify the actual families, to pinpoint the possible range of families." It is unclear whether the remains are of soldiers or civilians, but experts may try to match any teeth from the skulls to Japan's military or civilian dental records.

International law experts have said that, if the remains are of soldiers who fought in World War II, the United States may be violating the Geneva Conventions and customary international law provisions by allowing the museum to keep the collection. If the remains are those of civilians, the applicability of international laws and military regulations designed to protect civilians during war are debatable. Such protections for civilians have evolved significantly since World War II.

Museum officials now say that no research has been done on the Saipan remains, except for an inspection in the 1980s. Judson King, the museum's interim director, had written previously that the remains were used in 1995 and 1998 for osteological research funded by the National Science Foundation. Dr. Max E. Childress, a former Navy doctor, told museum authorities he collected the remains on Saipan. Some marked bones were from hospitals where he worked, while other "unmarked specimens were collected on Saipan in 1945." He kept the remains in his private collection, before donating them to the museum in 1974. He died five years ago. It is unclear to what degree Childress' conduct was authorized by the Navy - or whether he violated regulations.

Childress, who later taught surgery at UCSF medical school, obtained a one-sentence note from a colleague in 1945 that authorized him to remove remains from Saipan for osteological research. Senior commanders had warned U.S. personnel not to remove enemy remains.
Changing guidelines The Code of Ethics for Museums, approved in 1993 by the directors of the American Association of Museums, has vague guidelines for human remains, but museums are changing how they view the dead. "Fifty years ago it was simply accepted that museums owned human remains and sacred objects from other cultures," Elizabeth Merritt, founding director of the Center for the Future of Museums, wrote in a published essay. "Now there is considerable debate about whether and when this is ethical."

It is unclear whether the university took steps since 1974 to notify the Japanese government about the existence of the Saipan remains. Two days after The Chronicle published its first report about the remains, UC Berkeley officials sent several letters to Japanese officials offering to return the bones to Japan. A whistle-blower apparently sent a phony letter from the museum's director to Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo last year, offering to return the Saipan remains to Japan. A shrine official wrote back informing museum officials that the shrine prays for the spirits of war dead, but does not accept remains. He referred the museum to a Japanese bureau. UC officials would not say whether they notified the bureau. "Given the sensitivity of this issue in Japan we cannot say more at this time," said Dan Mogulof, a university spokesman.

[Behan]

I guess trying to track down relatives or descendants for DNA checks would be a lot of work.