The skeletal remains of several Japanese soldiers or civilians who died on Saipan during World War II are being kept at the University of California Berkeley, stirring controversy because of its apparent violation of the Geneva Conventions for the protection of war victims, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
The Geneva Conventions consist of four treaties and three additional protocols that set the standards in international law for humanitarian treatment of victims of war.
The newspaper reports that UC Berkeley admitted that the skulls and bones removed from Saipan in 1945 by a Navy doctor are housed in storage shelves maintained by the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology on its campus.
The admission, according to the report, has sparked the fury of international law experts and anthropologists, who say the university has a legal and ethical duty to return the remains to Japan.
Both the U.S. and Japanese governments have been making expeditions to World War II battlefields, including Saipan and other Pacific islands, to recover remains of their war dead.
To this day, Japanese groups also regularly come to Saipan to pay respect to their war dead and pray for world peace.
The Japan Consulate on Saipan said yesterday it does not have any comment on the issue right now. Japanese Consul Tsutomu Higuchi is currently off island and won't be back until later this week.
The Battle of Saipan in June and July 1944 was one of the fiercest during the war.
According to Japan figures, some 43,000 Japanese soldiers and 12,000 civilians, including children, died on Saipan that time. The U.S. and local death toll totaled nearly 3,500 soldiers and over 900 islanders, including infants and elderly.
Thousands of Japanese jumped to their death on Saipan rather than surrender to American forces.
Officials at the UC Berkeley's Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, according to the Chronicle, note that its cache of human remains from overseas is a valuable resource for osteology-the study of bones.
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