U.S., Japan seek soldiers’ remains in the Aleutians

The searchers dug for days, ignoring blisters and sore muscles to look for the remains of Japanese soldiers buried in mass graves after a World War II battle on the Aleutian island of Attu.

But old bullets and bits of barbed wire were all that had emerged from beneath the grassy tundra -- until the end of the two-week mission by U.S. and Japanese representatives who had traveled to the remote resting place of nearly 2,500 soldiers.

On May 23, searchers’ shovels struck decaying wood boxes containing the well-preserved bones of two Japanese soldiers, probably buried by their comrades during the 1943 Battle of Attu.

“I was very happy and satisfied that everybody’s effort finally resulted in something that we all appreciate,” Hiroshi Sato of Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare said in a telephone interview from the Coast Guard station at Attu. Sato’s office is working with U.S. officials to excavate the remains of the Japanese soldiers and take them home for reburial.

The forbidding weather and terrain of Attu -- which sits at the Aleutians’ western tip about 1,500 miles southwest of Anchorage -- proved a challenge when participants arrived to icy rain in mid-May. Subsequent days were better, but the six mass graves, where the great majority of the dead are buried, lie in roadless areas on the east end of the mountainous island.

To reach the sites, searchers traveled in a tracked vehicle that was flown in. Though the Coast Guard has excavation equipment on the island, deep snow in places prevented its use. Participants had to use shovels and pickaxes to explore the three mass graves not still laden with snow.

“We were at a disadvantage because we were digging with hand tools and the graves were originally dug with bulldozers,” said Lt. Col. Matt Kristoff of the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office at the Pentagon.

The searchers tried mightily with low-tech tools, digging 15 feet deep at one site, according to U.S. Army Capt. Kurtis Schaaf, who led an eight-member team from Fort Richardson, near Anchorage, to assist. Many Attu-based Coast Guard members also helped during their time off.

A Navy ordnance specialist came up from San Diego because of concerns that unexploded shells might be hidden in the spongy ground, but no explosives were discovered, Schaaf said.

The obvious place to start looking for remains, participants decided, was near the spot where two left boots containing foot bones were found last July by Chief Warrant Officer Robert Coyle, who commands 20 Coast Guard members stationed on Attu. He discovered them during an exploratory dig by U.S. and Japanese emissaries.

“It was in an area of natural erosion,” said Coyle, who also found a leather pouch that was probably used to hold bullets. “There was a creek there, a ravine, and I was poking around in there when I found the boots.”

Those remains were reburied but have since returned to their homeland with Japanese officials, who abandoned a plan to donate the pouch to the Coast Guard station’s display of war mementos when Coyle noticed the faded inscription of a name.

The remains found in the latest expedition also were reburied and will be recovered later and hopefully identified, Sato said. No subsequent digs have yet been scheduled.

Attu was one of the deadliest conflicts in the Pacific in terms of the percentage of troops killed. Japanese forces invaded Attu and the neighboring island of Kiska in June 1942. No one was living on Kiska, but the Japanese captured a small Aleut community when they seized Attu. Almost half of the 45 residents taken to Hokkaido, Japan, died during internment.

American forces arrived at Attu the following May, waging a 19-day campaign before they retook the island. Most of the fighting was hand-to-hand in 120-mph winds, driving rain and dense, damp fog.

Of an estimated 2,500 Japanese troops on Attu, only 28 were taken prisoner. The others died in battle or committed suicide with their own grenades.

American deaths numbered about 550 among more than 15,000 troops. The dead were buried at two cemeteries on the island, then exhumed and reburied in locations designated by their families.

Signs of the battle remain, including foxholes and trenches and the occasional rusted field artillery that belonged to the Japanese. But it wasn’t until the Japanese search began last year that the carnage became real for Coyle.

“Finding shoes with bones in them, that’s when it hit me that guys died here,” he said. “A lot of people perished here in a brutal battle under brutal conditions.”