War-displaced woman from China to have DNA test+

TOKYO, Nov. 19 Kyodo - A war-displaced Japanese woman currently on a visit to Japan from China will undergo a DNA check to determine if she is related to a Japanese man who may be her elder brother, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare said Thursday.

Qu Meiqin, presumed to be 64, met with the man, a resident of Ibaraki
Prefecture, for about an hour Thursday morning. But no firm clues to
establishing any link between them were found, ministry officials said.
Neither Qu nor the man had any clear memories of their childhood days in China,
they said, adding the results of the DNA test will be known in about two
months' time.
Qu said she is grateful to the Japanese man for coming to see her and also to
the Japanese government and people for their help in searching for her
relatives in Japan.
Qu, who was left behind in China by her Japanese family when she was an infant,
arrived in Japan on Tuesday to search for her relatives through face-to-face
interviews.
She is the only member of the latest tour arranged by the Japanese government,
the smallest number since it launched a program in 1981 to organize trips to
Japan for the war-displaced Japanese in China. Qu was raised by her Chinese
foster parents to become a physician.
She is scheduled to stay in Japan through Nov. 28.
A number of Japanese infants were separated from their families and left behind
mainly in Manchuria, northeastern China, amid the chaos at the end of World War
II. No exact number of such infants is available.
Up to now, 2,816 people, including Qu, have been recognized as war-displaced
Japanese, of whom 1,282 have been identified.
The ministry says it has become difficult to recognize Japanese nationals
stranded in China as war-displaced and to confirm their identities due to the
aging of their relatives as well as limited material evidence and information,
now that more than six decades have passed since the end of the war.
==Kyodo
2009-11-20 00:34:44