By HIDEMASA YOSHIZAWA/ Staff Writer
July 5, 2023 at 16:42 JST
Workers bury victims of Russia’s invasion at a cemetery in Irpin near Kyiv, Ukraine, on April 28, 2022. (Tetsuro Takehana)
From the painful experience garnered from the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami, Japanese police lab experts will be training their Ukrainian counterparts to identify victims of Russia's invasion.
Ten senior officials from the Ukrainian national police will visit Japan from July 10 to 14 and will have training sessions on performing autopsies, the National Police Agency announced on July 4.
The guidance will also include how to provide psychological support for officers who examine the remains of victims.
The visit was arranged upon request from Kyiv, which sought assistance from Japanese forensics teams who identified thousands of victims of the twin disasters in 2011.
Since Russia’s aggression started in 2022, Ukrainian officials have been overwhelmed with the mounting death toll, with an estimated tens of thousands of bodies remaining unidentified.
On July 13 and 14, the Ukrainian officials will travel to Fukushima Prefecture, where they will meet local police officers who identified bodies in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami from 12 years ago.
They will also visit the preserved ruins of Ukedo Elementary School in Namie in the prefecture.
As of the end of February 2023, Japanese police have examined the remains of 15,830 victims of the 2011 disasters in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures and identified 99.7 percent of them.
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