Photo/Illutration Remains of patients who were dissected after death are housed within the ossuary at the National Sanatorium Oku-Komyoen in Setouchi, Okayama Prefecture, seen in February. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

SETOUCHI, Okayama Prefecture--More than 1,100 leprosy patients were dissected at National Sanatorium Oku-Komyoen from 1938-1998 after their deaths, a human rights committee reported on April 21.

They accounted for nearly 70 percent of the patients who died in the facility, it said. 

Yoshinori Aoki, the current director of Oku-Komyoen, told The Asahi Shimbun the autopsies were a tragic violation of the patients' human rights.

“Under the forced segregation policy, the patients had no choice but to give consent to an autopsy,” he said. “I believe that those autopsies were cases that seriously violated human rights.”

The committee, which includes sanatorium officials, patients and lawyers, held a meeting on the day and reported it had found autopsy records for more than 1,100 patients of leprosy, also known as Hansen's disease, at the sanatorium on Nagashima island in the Seto Inland Sea here.

According to a sanatorium official, almost 70 percent of the patients who died there were dissected after their deaths. The percentage of patients who were dissected differed depending on what period they died in.

In some years before and just after World War II, almost all the patients who died were dissected.

The sanatorium still has forms showing written consent for the autopsies that patients signed, it says.

The committee will interview doctors who attended the autopsies and sanatorium residents to check whether those consent forms were properly obtained.

Autopsy records for at least 1,834 leprosy patients have previously been discovered at National Sanatorium Nagashima Aiseien, also on Nagashima island. They detail autopsies conducted between 1931 and 1956.

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