Japanese On Bougainville Island To Be Reburied

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31110, 13 July 1966, Page 17

Japanese On Bougainville Island To Be Reburied

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) PORT MORESBY, July 12. A party of 20 Japanese

citizens will visit Bougainville Island this month

to collect the remains of Japanese soldiers killed

there during the last war.

Some remains will be taken back to Japan for reburial and some will be reinterred in a small burial ground on Administration land near Buin. The Administrator, Sir Donald Cleland, said today that the party would travel from Tokyo to Kieta, the main town on Bougainville, in the Government training ship Shintoku Maru.

He said the visit had been arranged at the request <rf a Japanese organisation known as the Survivors of Bougainville Association, and with cooperation and assistance of the Australian and Japanese Governments.

The main object of the visitors is to honour their dead countrymen. Fallen Japanese servicemen are buried in a number of war-time burial grounds on

Bougainville. Many of these have been neglected and are becoming obliterated. Bougainville was the scene of some of the bitterest battles in the New Guinea campaign when the Japanese made a stand their during the second World War.