Remains of 31 WW II Japanese soldiers killed on Sakhalin, Kurils to be sent home

YUZHNO-SAKHALINSK, November 9. /TASS/. Remains of 31 Japanese soldiers killed on Russia's far eastern Sakhalin and Kuril islands at the end of World War II have been cremated in Sakhalin. Their ashes will be taken to Japan for burial, the district administration said. "Cremation took place on the bank of the Orlovka river in the Smirnykh district. The remains were placed upon 31 funeral piles of logs and set on fire. The ashes were placed in urns to be taken to Japan," the official said. This year's search for soldiers’ remains was conducted on the Haramitog Heights and Shumshu island of the Kuril range in tracking under way across an area of about 220 square kilometres since 1987. During wartime, the border between the Soviet Union and Japan lay along the 50th parallel. The Japanese built a heavily fortified stronghold in the Haramitog area, where 2,500 soldiers on both sides were killed in battle. Shumshu, one of the Kuril range’s northern islands, was the main base for Japan's 80,000-strong Kurils army group, where the island was a sea fortress. In a 1945 landing operation when the Red Army stormed Shumshu, 995 Soviet troops and 200 Japanese officers and men were killed. Systematic search work on Shumshu has been under way since 2014. Before this, casual search operations were conducted with no significant results achieved. Access to the Northern Kurils is difficult. Shumshu is uninhabited and search operations are laborious. Last year, the remains of 10 Soviet and six Japanese soldiers were found there. Read more