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The Japanese government has begun an investigation of a controversial site that some say contains human remains of prisoners of war. The Japanese military may have been involved in biochemical experiments on its prisoners during World War II.
On Monday the Japanese government began excavating a site that was used as a military hospital in Tokyo during World War II.
[Kazuhiko Kawauchi, Welfare Ministry Group Official]:
"We're now excavating this site to confirm the existence of any human remains, which I believe would be only bones now."
Unit 731 has been accused of conducting biological and chemical warfare experiments on about 3,000 Korean, Chinese and Russian prisoners between 1937 and 1945... done mostly in China.
The Unit, part of the Japanese military during World War II, was based near Harbin in northeast China but headquartered on the site of the former Tokyo Army Hospital.
If this latest excavation turns up anything, it would be the second batch of bones found since 1989 at the site of Unit 731's former headquarters.
This latest excavation was prompted by a former nurse recalling that there were bones at a different location.
Previously some Japanese historians have said that those bones were from cadavers used by the medical school located on the site, and a 1992 government enquiry cleared the bones of being those from biological experiments.
The Japanese government has neither denied nor acknowledged the activities of Unit 731, believed by many historians to have conducted tests on humans to develop biological weapons, including anthrax and bubonic plague.
