Social Welfare and War Victims' Relief Bureau, Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Japan.
Social Welfare and War Victims' Relief Bureau, Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Japan.
Forensic Sci Int. 2021 Jul;324:110791. doi: 10.1016/j.forsciint.2021.110791. Epub 2021 May 21.
During and after World War II, around 2.4 million Japanese died overseas. The bodies of nearly half of them are still missing as they remain in the field where they fell and have never been repatriated. The tasks of recovering and repatriating the remains of Japanese war dead started in 1953 by the former Ministry of Health and Welfare, and are now carried out by the Social Welfare and War Victims' Relief Bureau of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW). In 2016, the "Act on Promoting the Recovery of the Remains of Japanese War Dead (Act No. 12 of 2016)" was enacted. The Act designates Fiscal Year (FY) 2016 (from April 2016 to March 2017) to FY 2024 as the period of intensive implementation and stipulates that the state shall establish a process to promote the identification of the war dead. In line with this Act, physical anthropologists were employed as full-time experts by the MHLW to conduct scientific analysis on the remains in the field, and since then, they have accompanied all overseas delegations for repatriation. The authors of this paper have been sent to the sites in the partner countries overseas such as the former Soviet Union, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands, and nationally to Ioto (Iwo Jima) to analyze the minimum number of individuals (MNI), ancestry, age at death, and sex of the remains. Along with the morphological investigations, DNA analyses of mitochondrial polymorphism and Y-chromosomal/autosomal short tandem repeat (STR) have been applied for estimation of the ancestry and identification of the individual. By narrowing down the possible candidates based on the historical records such as name list of the missing, if individual identification of the remains is achieved, the remains are returned to the bereaved families, and if not, they are placed in the Chidorigafuchi National Cemetery in Tokyo to rest in peace. Also, the implementation of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) analyses with next generation sequencing (NGS) for ancestry is under discussion. This paper provides an overview of the process of recovery and identification of the missing bodies from World War II in Japan.
在第二次世界大战期间和之后，大约有 240 万日本人在海外死亡。其中近一半人的遗体仍下落不明，因为他们仍留在倒下的地方，从未被遣返。从 1953 年起，前厚生省开始了收回和遣返日本战死者遗体的工作，现在由厚生劳动省社会福利和战争受害者救济局（MHLW）负责。2016 年，颁布了《促进日本战死者遗体回收法》（2016 年第 12 号法）。该法案将 2016 财年（2016 年 4 月至 2017 年 3 月）至 2024 财年指定为强化实施期，并规定国家应建立一个促进战死者身份识别的程序。根据该法案，厚生劳动省聘请了全职的体质人类学家作为专家，对实地的遗体进行科学分析，此后，他们一直陪同所有海外遣返代表团。本文作者被派往前苏联、菲律宾、巴布亚新几内亚和所罗门群岛等伙伴国家的遗址，以及国内的伊东（硫磺岛），对遗骸进行最小个体数（MNI）、祖先、死亡年龄和性别分析。除了形态学调查外，还应用线粒体多态性和 Y 染色体/常染色体短串联重复（STR）的 DNA 分析来估计祖先和个体识别。通过根据失踪人员名单等历史记录缩小可能的候选人范围，如果能够确定遗骸的个体身份，则将遗骸归还给遗属，如果不能，则将遗骸安置在东京的千鸟渊公墓安息。此外，正在讨论使用下一代测序（NGS）进行单核苷酸多态性（SNP）分析来确定祖先。本文概述了日本从二战中收回和确认失踪人员遗体的过程。
