Japan NPO accused of passing off Pinoy skeletons as Japanese soldiers for cash

[Mulboyne]

[Mulboyne]

The story has begun to appear in the Japanese press:

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.

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

[Mulboyne]

Mainichi: Philippine gov't asked to ban Japanese group from collecting WWII bones

A group of former Japanese soldiers and Philippine tribal leaders formally sought Wednesday a permanent ban on the collection of remains of World War II Japanese soldiers in the Philippines by a Japanese nonprofit organization, alleging the skeletal remains of Filipinos are being passed off as those of Japanese soldiers. In a petition letter, retired Japanese soldier Toshio Kawamura and Wataru Kamei, son of a missing Japanese soldier assigned in a northern Philippine province during the war, asked President Benigno Aquino to "immediately ban Kuentai's retrieval activities in the Philippines." The letter, which was received by officials of the country's Commission on Indigenous People, claimed the Tokyo-based group's retrieval activities "are totally illegal" as well as "unjustifiable, profane and even socially evil."

Kuentai was officially tasked by the Japanese government in 2008 to collect the remains of Japan's war dead in the Philippines. Since that time, it has collected the remains of many thousands of people. It is believed that more than 500,000 Japanese soldiers died in the Philippines during WWII, of which the remains of about 380,000 have yet to be recovered. The increase in the number of retrieved bones during the Kuentai missions compared with previous years and missions has raised doubts as to the authenticity of the remains recovered, said Koji Nakamura, a facilitator for Kawamura, Kamei and other petitioners. Aside from the difficulty of finding and authenticating Japanese remains so long after the war, the petition alleged there have been "terribly disgusting cases" in which the remains of Filipino tribe members have been dug up and stolen to be sold off and passed off as those of Japanese soldiers.

It said strong protests have been to Japan's Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare which is responsible for the retrieval of remains of the war dead, about the possible burial of non-Japanese remains at a Japanese national cemetery. Amid the allegations, which Kuentai has denied, the ministry in October suspended the group's operations in the Philippines and announced that an investigation would be conducted. The Philippine government has also ordered a probe into the matter.

Supporting the petition against Kuentai, Ceasar Dulnuan and Aniw Lubag, representing the tribes from Ifugao and Mindoro Oriental provinces, respectively, asked for "justice" for the loss of the remains of their ancestors and tribesmen. Lubag claimed that the remains of some 1,600 people from the Mangyan tribe graves in Mindoro Oriental have been stolen since 2009, while Dulnuan said some 500 skeletal remains from his tribe in Ifugao have gone missing since 2008. "We are asking for help to correct the policy (in the collection of the remains). There should be some form of compensation for our ancestors' remains that were stolen," Dulnuan said.

[Mulboyne]

A report is die out soon into this incident. It is expected to confirm that large numbers of non-Japanese remains were collected. There will likely be compensation claims from the Filipino side.

Source (Japanese)