Old bones on jungle island sound warning to those living here today

Itoman: Takamatsu Gushiken turns on a head-torch and enters a cave buried in Okinawa’s jungle. He gently runs his fingers through the gravel until two pieces of bone emerge. These are from the skulls, he says, of an infant and possibly an adult.

He carefully places them in a ceramic rice bowl and takes a moment to imagine people dying 80 years ago as they hid in this cave during one of the fiercest battles of World War II. His hope is that the dead can be reunited with their families.

Takamatsu Gushiken leaves a cave after a session of searching for the remains of those who died during the Battle of Okinawa, in Itoman, Okinawa archipelago, southern Japan.Credit: AP

The remains of some 1400 people found on Okinawa sit in storage for possible identification with DNA testing. So far just six have been identified and returned to their families. Volunteer bone hunters and families looking for their loved ones say the government should do more to help.

Gushiken says the bones are silent witnesses to Okinawa’s wartime tragedy, carrying a warning to the present generation as Japan ups its defence spending in the face of tensions with China over territorial disputes and Beijing’s claim to the nearby self-governing island Taiwan.

“The best way to honour the war dead is never to allow another war,” Gushiken says. “I’m worried about Okinawa’s situation now ... I’m afraid there is a growing risk that Okinawa may become a battlefield again.”

Takamatsu Gushiken pauses to look for an easier way out of the bush while searching for the remains of those who died during the Battle of Okinawa.Credit: AP

On April 1, 1945, US troops landed on Okinawa during their push toward mainland Japan, beginning a battle that lasted until late June and killed about 12,000 Americans and more than 188,000 Japanese, half of them Okinawan civilians. That included students and victims of mass suicides ordered by the Japanese military, historians say.

The fighting ended at Itoman, where Gushiken and other volunteer cave diggers – or “gamahuya” in their native Okinawan language – have found the remains of what are likely hundreds of people.

Gushiken tries to imagine being in the cave during the fighting. Where would he hide? What would he feel? He makes a guess about the age of the victims, whether they died by gunshot or explosion, and puts details about the bones in a small red notebook.

After the war, Okinawa remained under US occupation until 1972, 20 years longer than most of Japan, and it remains host to a major US military presence to this day. As Japan enjoyed a postwar economic rise, Okinawa’s economic, educational and social development lagged behind.

Gushiken says when he was a child growing up in Okinawa’s capital, Naha, he would go out hunting bugs and find skulls still wearing helmets.

Kanai from Yokohama (only her last name provided), back, and her friends pray in front of a Cornerstone of Peace monument with the name of her grandfather imprinted, created in memory of those who died in Okinawa, at the Peace Memorial Park in Itoman.Credit: AP

Nearly 80 years after the end of World War II, 1.2 million Japanese war dead are still unaccounted for. That’s about half of the 2.4 million Japanese, mostly soldiers, who died during Japan’s early 20th century wars.

Thousands of unidentified bones have been sitting in storage for years waiting for testing that could help match them with surviving families.

Gushiken says the government’s DNA matching efforts have been too little and too slow.

Of the estimated 188,140 Japanese killed in the Battle of Okinawa, most of their remains had been collected and placed in the national cemetery on the island, the health ministry says. Around 1400 remains found in recent decades sit in storage. The process of identification has been painfully slow.

Takamatsu Gushiken, a “gamafuya,” an Okinawa dialect meaning a person who digs in a cave, searches in a cave for the remains of those who died during the Battle of Okinawa.Credit: AP

It was only in 2003 that the Japanese government started DNA matching after requests from the families of the dead, but tests were limited to the remains found with teeth and man-made artefacts that could provide hints to their identities.

In 2016, Japan enacted a law launching a remains recovery initiative to promote more DNA matching and co-operation with the US Department of Defence. A year later, the government expanded the work to civilians and authorised testing on limb bones.

In all, 1280 remains of Japanese war-dead, including six on Okinawa, have been identified by DNA tests since 2003, the health ministry said. The remains of around 14,000 people are stored in the ministry mortuary for future testing.

Hundreds of American soldiers remain unaccounted for.

Their remains, as well as those of the Koreans mobilised by the Japanese during the war, may yet be found, Gushiken says.

Locating and identifying decades-old remains have become increasingly difficult as families and relatives age, memories fade, artefacts and documents get lost, and the remains deteriorate, says Naoki Tezuka, a health ministry official.

“The progress has been slow everywhere,” Tezuka said. “Ideally, we hope to not just collect the remains but return them to their families.”

The burden of history

Japan is undertaking an accelerating military buildup, sending more troops and weapons to Okinawa and its outer islands. Many here who have bitter memories of the Japanese army’s wartime brutality view the current military buildup with wariness.

Visitors bring flowers and pray at the “Himeyuri” cenotaph (not in picture), created by a cave in Itoman, on the main island of the Okinawa archipelago.Credit: AP

Washington and Tokyo see the strong US military presence as a crucial bulwark against China and North Korea, but many Okinawans have long complained about noise, pollution, aircraft accidents and crime related to American troops.

Okinawa today is home to more than half of the 50,000 American troops stationed in Japan, with the majority of US military facilities on the small southern island. Tokyo has promised to relocate a US Marine Corps air station that sits in a crowded town after years of friction, but Okinawans remain angry at a plan that would only move it to the island’s east coast and may use the soil possibly containing the remains for construction.

Gushiken says the Itoman caves should be protected from development so that younger generations can learn about the war’s history, and so searchers like him can complete their work.

AP

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.