Julian Ryall 
The lagoon surrounding Chuuk state served as the Imperial Japanese Navy's most important central Pacific base during World War II. It was the target of Operation Hailstone in February 1944, in which dozens of Japanese ships were sunk. (©Julian Ryall)
The bones have been laid out with great care. Discolored by age, leaked oil, iron rust, and the effects of eight decades under water, they have been placed atop waterproof sheets that have been taped down. Plastic bags bear the date the remains were recovered and the ships where they were discovered. The remains laid out here are of 22 men who were killed in February 1944.
They were aboard the Aikoku Maru when it was attacked as she lay at anchor in the vast lagoon that surrounds the islands of Chuuk state, one of the four archipelagos in the central Pacific that today make up the Federated States of Micronesia.
A further set of remains was also recovered in June 2024. They were from the Kiyosumi Maru, another Japanese vessel sunk in the attack by planes launched from aircraft carriers that made up a powerful United States strike force. It had been ordered to carry out Operation Hailstone, the assault on Imperial Japan's most powerful naval base in the central Pacific during World War II.
As many as 60 Japanese vessels were sunk in the lagoon over the course of two days. They were mostly transport ships but also included Imperial Japanese Navy destroyers, patrol vessels, and even the I-169 submarine. Dozens of Japanese aircraft, from fighters to torpedo bombers and even an enormous four-engine Kawanishi long-range amphibious reconnaissance aircraft, were also shot down within the 2,131 square km of the lagoon, fringed by a 225-km coral reef.
Many of their crew and passengers went down with their ships and aircraft and were never seen again.
Hallowed Ground for Recovery and Repatriation
Today, Chuuk is regarded as the best spot in the world for recreational wreck divers to explore. For the team from the Japan Association for the Recovery and Repatriation of War Casualties (JARRWC), it is hallowed ground. And in the year that marks the 80th anniversary of Tokyo's surrender at the end of World War II, their task is to recover all human remains that they can locate and to return them to a final resting place in Japan.
For Tatsuaki Inoue, who headed the association's week-long mission to Chuuk in late February, the mission is critically important.
"I have been interested in helping to repatriate the remains of fallen soldiers since I was a university student, when I joined a volunteer youth organization that went to the Solomon Islands to help with a repatriation project there," said Inoue. He has worked for the association since 2020.
This is Inoue's seventh mission to Chuuk, with the team examining remains that were recovered by divers from the ships in June 2024. In total, 39 sets of remains were brought to the surface last summer (2024). Anthropological examinations provided sufficient evidence to conclude that 22 were of Japanese origin. The local Chuukese authorities granted permission for them to be repatriated.
Identifying the Remains as Japanese
Inoue is accompanied by a Japanese government official and one of Japan's most preeminent experts in identifying remains from their teeth. His role is to conclude that these remains are highly probably those of Japanese service personnel.
Hideki Saka is dean of Meikai University and director of the university's Forensic Odontology Center. He holds the skull up to the light, but it is still not enough to reveal what he needs to see. Saka opens the sliding door onto the balcony and steps out, holding the remains in the bright sunlight to reveal some unmistakably Japanese dental work.
"Typically, we see that molars have two or three roots, but the enamel of the tooth extending to the root is much more common in Japanese people than in Americans or islanders," he said.
"That is not a 100 percent marker, but it is one of the indicators that we commonly use," he told JAPAN Forward.
Another sign that a skull is of a Japanese serviceman are gold open-faced crowns. Those were commonly used by Japanese dentists in the 1930s and '40s, said Saka. He has previously worked with the association in Saipan, Kiribati, and Palau.
Recovering and Repatriating the War Dead
The JARRRWC was set up in 2016. It has been designated by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare as the sole Japanese organization contracted to recover and repatriate remains of the nation's war dead. Previously, government agencies had worked with a range of volunteer groups. That was until it was decided that a centralized organization was needed to coordinate and plan all the missions. The Diet passed a law in March 2016 designed to accelerate the recovery of the nation's war dead.
The task is a daunting one. Some 2.4 million Japanese service personnel were killed in World War II. Of those, 1.12 million remains have yet to be recovered. Three hundred thousand were lost at sea, and a further 230,000 are listed as "difficult to recover." That leaves approximately 590,000 individuals waiting to be discovered and returned to Japan.
The area that JARRWC works in is similarly vast. Around 22,590 remains are in the Aleutian Islands or the territories off the far north of Japan that were seized by the Soviet Union in the closing stages of the war. More than 10,000 are in India. At least 32,000 are buried in former prison camps in the former Soviet Union, where they were forced to labor until as late as 1956.
Vast Numbers of Remains Still Missing
Nearly 173,000 are still listed as missing in the islands of the central Pacific. Over 369,000 are in the Philippines, and 233,000 are in China. Of those totals, many are lost at sea ー although, as Inoue's mission shows, that does not necessarily mean they cannot be found. Being underwater just adds another element of difficulty.
Officially accompanying Inoue is Moku Nakagawa, a government official of the ministry office for the recovery and repatriation of war remains. For Nakagawa, the personal motivation to find these missing men is also strong.
DNA Samples Help
In Chuuk, as elsewhere, DNA samples are taken wherever possible as another way of potentially identifying remains, he said.
"We do not have a comprehensive database at present. However, the government obtained a list of the crew of the Aikoku Maru and requested any relatives of those men to come forward and provide DNA samples to compare," he said.
"We are still waiting for the results of those comparative tests. But we are optimistic because it is generally relatively easier to get DNA from bones that have been underwater as they are often better preserved in situ and with less oxygen," he explained.
When four sets of remains were brought back from the Shinkoku Maru in October 2023, he pointed out, DNA analysis was able to reunite two of the sets with their surviving families.
"When I was younger, I did kendo. I later learned that my kendo master had been in the military and served on Leyte in the Philippines during the war," Nakagawa said. "Many of his subordinates were killed in the fighting, and he always said it was one of his greatest regrets that he had to leave the remains of his subordinates there.
"What we are doing today is nothing in comparison to the hardships of the war years. And I wanted to serve in this particular department when I joined the ministry," he said.
"I used to work in the section that handed identified remains over to their families, so I saw the feelings of the families. Today, doing this task, I still feel that connection."
One Set of Bones, One Ship at a Time
The team's work for this mission to Chuuk is nearly done. Yet, Inoue knows that it will take many more years before all the remains can be recovered from the lagoon or the jungle-clad islands that make up the state.
"We have made good progress on the Aikoku Maru, although we do believe that there are some more remains there that we can find, given time," he said. "But we are considering our next target, which may be the Oite, although that has yet to be decided."
In February 1944, the Imperial Japanese Navy destroyer Oite was carrying a crew of 148, as well as 451 officers and men rescued from the light cruiser Agano, which had been sunk in an attack by a US submarine about 200 km northwest of Chuuk. A few kilometers inside the northeast passage to the lagoon, the destroyer was attacked by bombers taking part in Operation Hailstone. It was hit by a torpedo amidships.
The Oite was ripped in two by a huge explosion in the engine room, with just 20 men surviving by swimming to a nearby islet. The ship was only rediscovered by divers in 1986. At a depth of nearly 70 meters, it is technically difficult for sport divers to explore and is, therefore, less commonly visited.
That may mean the wreck is relatively undisturbed and should enable JARRWC divers to conduct a thorough search. There are, Inoue points out, hundreds of men still to be accounted for.
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Author: Julian Ryall
