No Remains Collected in Philippines Identified as Japanese Soldiers’: Experts

August 17, 2018

Tokyo- Experts have reported that DNA tests found that no remains collected and kept in the Philippines as those of Japanese soldiers who died during World War II were identified as those of Japanese people, informed sources said.

Japan's welfare ministry received the results in 2012 from the two experts, but they have not been made public.

Work to collect the remains of Japanese World War II soldiers in the Southeast Asian country has been suspended since 2010 after suspicions were raised that the collected bones include those of Filipinos.

In May this year, the ministry announced a decision to restart the work.

In January 2011, the ministry asked three experts to conduct DNA tests on 311 pieces of remains collected by a Japanese nonprofit organization and kept in the Philippines.

One of the experts reported that of the 110 pieces of remains tested, five had DNA types of Japanese people and 54 had those of Filipinos. The ministry released a report including this result in October the same year.

In October 2012, the two other experts reported that remains of Japanese people were not apparently included, the sources said.

A ministry official said the results from the two experts were not released because they did not affect a broad conclusion that the collected remains were mostly those of Filipinos but contained those of Japanese people. Jiji Press