By TAIJI ITO/ Staff Writer
September 2, 2020 at 07:20 JST
OMA, Aomori Prefecture--It was more than 70 years coming, but a Japanese soldier sent to the Manchurian front during World War II, only to die at age 24 in a Siberian internment camp, can finally rest in peace.
Choji Iwaizumi’s “homecoming” to Oma’s Okoppe district was only made possible by a central government-run DNA program, which established the identity of his remains. Iwaizumi’s ashes returned to his family home in this northeastern town on Aug. 6.
For the soldier's surviving family, learning the details of the circumstances of his death has provided both a form of closure and reopened wounds.
“You've really had a hard time, and for so many years,” Moritoshi Iwaizumi was heard telling his uncle's remains after he placed them before a household Buddhist altar and brought his hands together in prayer. Iwaizumi, 76, maintains Choji's family home.
A Japanese government mission in 2003 collected 383 sets of remains of soldiers from a burial ground in the village of Maratovo in Russia’s Irkutsk Region. The central government has since been working to establish the identities of the individuals through DNA testing and other means.
Tests of DNA samples taken from Moritoshi and from Choji’s younger brother Toshiyuki, an 89-year-old resident of Saitama Prefecture, allowed one of the sets of remains to be identified last year as Choji’s, officials said.
Choji was one of eight siblings. His mother Haru, who was widowed before World War II, raised seven sons and a daughter by herself, along with being a grandmother to Moritoshi.
Five of her sons were called up for war, and three of them perished in the conflict, Moritoshi said. Her only sons to avoid going to war were her sixth, who died young, and her seventh, Toshiyuki. Haru died in 1975 at age 90.
Growing up, the only thing Moritoshi knew about his uncle Choji, he said, was that he was sent to the front in Manchukuo, in what is today’s northeastern China. He said his grandmother and others never gave him detailed accounts of Choji or other uncles of his.
Choji was called up for military service in February 1943 at age 20 and was sent to the Manchurian front by the Imperial Japanese Army. He died of illness in June 1946, the year after the war ended, in an Irkutsk hospital, Aomori prefectural government officials said.
"If only he had held out a little longer, he could have been able to come home (alive)," Moritoshi said, choked with emotion. “I didn’t even know for sure how old he was when he died. Now that I know that, I feel really sorry for him.”
Choji is the 27th soldier from Aomori Prefecture who served in World War II whose identity has been established through DNA testing, prefectural authorities said.
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Choji Iwaizumi before he went to war (Provided by family members)
