Photo/Illutration Tomoko Ogura holds the stuffed animal belonging to her missing daughter Misaki in Doshi, Yamanashi Prefecture, on April 28. (Takuya Ikeda)

Human bones and a pair of children's shoes have been discovered in a mountain forest in Doshi, Yamanashi Prefecture, where a young girl went missing from a nearby campsite in 2019 and was never found, despite an extensive search.

A man on April 25 contacted the Yamanashi prefectural police and reported finding human bones on a dry canyon slope. 

Police said the man was voluntarily searching for Misaki Ogura, who went missing in the wilderness during a camping trip with her family and friends in September 2019. She was 7 at the time.

Police on April 28 dispatched 30 searchers to the site and surrounding area.

They discovered a child's emerald-green right shoe at the side of a mountain trail, about 600 meters east from the campsite where Misaki went missing from.

The spot was not far from where the bones were discovered, police said.

The shoe resembles the pair Misaki wore the day she went missing, as its color and manufacturer match the shoes she was wearing, police said.

Police said the bones appear to be part of cranial bones and belong to a young person.

Police are conducting a DNA analysis on the bones.

Police are also checking to see if there is any part of the shoe that it can conduct a DNA analysis on to determine its owner.

On April 29, police deployed 40 searchers to the area, searching for more bones and other items left behind.

Yamanashi prefectural police said in the evening that another child's shoe was found on the mountain. The shoe is for the left foot and the same type as the right-foot shoe that police found on April 28.

Yamanashi police also said they have found a sock. 

Misaki’s mother, Tomoko Ogura, who lives in Narita, Chiba Prefecture, visited the wilderness site on April 28 where the bones were found.

She stared at the lush mountain forest for about three minutes and said, “I feel sad thinking about Misaki’s smiling face.”

Ogura said police notified her of the discovery of the bones on the evening of April 25.

“These human bones are not Misaki’s,” she told reporters while holding a white stuffed animal.

The stuffed dog was her daughter's favorite, so much so that she brought it along with her to the campsite. 

“I came here because I just wanted to make sure that what I feel is right,” Ogura said.

She said she has continued searching the area many times in the past.

“I don’t know if my small-footed daughter would walk this far while feeling frightened,” she said, looking at the steep slope on the side of the mountain trail.

“But it is true that human bones were here,” she said, expressing mixed feelings that the long search might be finally coming to an end. “I felt a surge of many different emotions and cried.”

(This article was written by Takuya Ikeda and Yasushi Sato.)

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