The bilateral relations between Dhaka and Tokyo have facilitated Japan's efforts to recover the remains of soldiers who died during World War II and were buried in Bangladesh.
"We were able to do this because of our strong relations with Bangladesh," said Inoue Tatsuaki from the Japan Association for Recovery and Repatriation of War Casualties (JARRWC) during a press briefing at the Japanese embassy in Dhaka on Sunday.
A team from Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare (MHLW), along with JARRWC, conducted excavation work to recover the remains of former Japanese soldiers buried at the Mainamati War Cemetery from November 13 to November 22.
Inoue Tatsuaki, the team leader from JARRWC, briefed the media alongside Hanaguri Kazushige, Matsunaga Daisuke, Higashikawa Yuichi, Mizobe Masaki, Konuma Toshio, and Hayashi Atsuko.
JARRWC is the designated organization by Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare to oversee the recovery of Japanese war casualties’ remains.
The team excavated the remains of 23 soldiers. Part of these remains will be taken to Japan for DNA testing. Most of the soldiers were between the ages of 17 and 30 at the time of their deaths.
If a match is made, the full remains will be returned to their families.
"Most of the time, we are able to identify the family members and return the remains to them," Inoue explained, adding that only in a few hundred cases have they been unable to match the DNA.
In those cases, the remains are returned to the original cemetery and buried properly.
After the war, the Japanese public demanded that the government recover the bodies of fallen soldiers. The government initially set the goal of completing this process by 2005, but later extended the target to 2030.
To date, Japan has recovered 1.28 million of the 2.4 million soldiers who went missing across various countries.
Bilateral relations and religious factors have sometimes complicated the recovery process.
For example, they were unable to return remains from Uzbekistan due to religious reasons, although the country has been taking proper care of the graves.
They also could not recover remains from China and North Korea due to political issues.
