Japan Returns Wrongly Collected Remains to Kazakhstan, Myanmar

Tokyo, Sept. 23 (Jiji Press)--Japan's welfare ministry has said that it returned to Kazakhstan and Myanmar human remains mistakenly brought from the countries in a project to collect remains of Japanese who died overseas in World War II.

This marked the first time that the ministry has returned remains of foreign people mistakenly collected in the project. The return followed the revelation in 2019 that the ministry had confused the remains of foreign people with those of Japanese people detained in Russia's Siberia after the war. Similar mix-ups also occurred in the Philippines.

The returned remains were two sets collected in Kazakhstan in 2001 and four sets collected in Myanmar in 2001 and 2003.

Following the 2019 revelation, Japan examined the remains and found between 2023 and 2024 that there was little possibility that they were Japanese. The ministry returned the six sets between June and July this year.

Apart from this incident, two samples of remains brought to Japan due to uncertainty about whether they were Japanese had been returned to Kazakhstan in 2022.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]