Japan sends search team to find remains of Iwo Jima dead

Aug. 28, 2011, The Telegraph

Japanese search teams are to return to the island of Iwo Jima after US documents identified sites where thousands of soldiers killed in the bloody battle for the island may have been interred.

The remains of more than 12,000 Japanese have still to be located on the island, 66 years after the Americans captured the Pacific outpost in one of the most savage battles of the Second World War.

The documents have been handed over to Japan's health ministry by the US National Archives and Records Administration and identify four sites on the island – a mere 5 miles from north to south – where there was heavy fighting and the American forces are believed to have buried the dead Japanese.

One of the sites is at the base of Mount Suribachi, at the southern tip of the island. The mountain was riddled with caves and turned into a fortress by the defenders, under Lieutenant Tadamichi Kuribayashi, and the picture of the rising of the Stars and Stripes atop the peak is one of the most iconic images of the war in the Pacific.

Lt.-Gen Kuribayshi's remains are amongst those that have never been located.

Another of the sites was close to a field hospital, while the documents also pinpoint the location of a bunker that US troops reported contained the remains of more than 200 Japanese soldiers.

The health ministry plans to dispatch survey teams to the island, around 1,000 miles south of Tokyo, to carry out preliminary investigations of the sites before the end of the year.

Ground-penetrating radar may also be employed to locate remains, with ministry officials telling the Yomiuri newspaper here that the present military airfield on the island may be dug up if human remains are identified below the concrete.

US troops came ashore on the island on February 19, 1945, although it took them more than a month to clear Iwo Jima of its defenders. An estimated 22,000 Japanese died in the fighting, while more than 7,000 US service personnel were killed and a further 21,000 were injured.

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