Japanese dig for war dead

Press, 24 October 1984, Page 39

Japanese dig for war dead

NZPA-Reuter Honiara Japanese searchers are digging up a Guadalcanal beach hoping to find the mass grave of 500 troops killed in World War 11. The troops were members of Japan’s 28th regiment killed by United States Marines in the Solomons in August, 1942. Guadalcanal Island was the scene of some of the fiercest fighting. Fifteen Japanese, including two survivors from the regiment, are digging near a coconut grove at Alligator Creek by the Ilu River. About 11,000 Marines stormed ashore near the creek, killing 800 Japanese and burying them in mass graves. Japanese searchers have recovered the remains , of about 300 troops in the last two years. They were cremated under Buddhist rites and returned to a war memorial in Tokyo. “We believe many of the remaining 500 bodies have been washed out to sea by the tides,” said Mr Gentaro Otomo, aged 66, one of the survivors. ' ■ “But we will still probably be able to find about 150 bodies,” he said. Mr Otomo was accompanied here by another survivor from the regiment, Mr Takeo Kasai, aged 64. Japanese students are doing most of the digging.