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In an official, secular ceremony attended by Princess Takamado, Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and several Cabinet ministers, the remains were laid to rest under a large tombstone at the Chidorigafuchi National Cemetery in a solemn atmosphere with musical accompaniment by the palace police troupe.
According to Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare Yoichi Masuzoe, whose ministry organized the event, the remains were collected over the past year by missions dispatched to the island of Iwo Jima and the Solomon Islands in the Pacific, as well as the former Soviet Union and other places.
Japan lost nearly 3.1 million people during the war, including 2.1 million soldiers and 300,000 civilians abroad, many of them emigrants to Japan’s colonies or occupied territories.
Also as many as 700,000 citizens were killed within Japan, about half of them victims of the two atomic bombs dropped by U.S. forces on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Almost 100,000 civilians lost their lives in one day during the bombing of Tokyo on March 10, 1945.
Since 1947 the Japanese government has organized missions for the retrieval of the remains of its citizens, bringing them home for interment at the memorial. Those positively identified were returned to their kin. Minister Masuzoe, who followed the princess and Prime Minister Fukuda in paying his respects to the deceased in front of the tomb, announced that a total of 352,926 people have been buried there to date.
Included among the new remains are 143 bodies from Russian Siberia, where nearly 575,000 soldiers were held prisoner in labor camps during the war. One in ten would not see their homeland again.
Among the latest group to return, the remains of two soldiers were positively identified by their DNA and returned to their relatives in Nagano prefecture, north of Tokyo.
The Chidorigafuchi National Cemetery is only a short distance from the Yasukuni Shrine, where the names of 2.4 million known war dead are listed. The spirits of those who died in service to Japan, particularly military service, are enshrined there.
The Yasukuni Shrine has been the center of controversy when Japanese leaders have paid their respects there. Some Asian countries, especially China and Korea, are opposed to such visits because the spirits of 14 Class-A war criminals are among those enshrined there. The Koreans and Chinese see the leaders’ visits as honoring Japanese militarism.
Whenever the controversy surrounding the Yasukuni Shrine has become heated, some people have suggested that the Chidorigafuchi Memorial should replace Yasukuni as the place for leaders to honor the war dead.
Foreign dignitaries have frequently joined in the ceremonies at the memorial. During Monday's 45-minute ceremony, ambassadors from several Asian countries and Russia joined nearly 500 people who lost relatives in the war, politicians and local leaders.
