Nearly 600 people, including government officials and ministers, attended an annual ceremony Monday at Chidorigafuchi National Cemetery in Tokyo in remembrance of unknown soldiers and others who died during wartime or in postwar internment.
The cemetery holds the remains of 351,324 unidentified Japanese soldiers, military employees and civilians who died during World War II or in detention after the war in the Soviet Union, Southeast Asia, China and elsewhere.
During the ceremony, the remains of 973 unknowns were newly put into the cemetery's charnel house. They include remains recovered by government missions to Russia.
The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry began using DNA analysis to identify the remains in fiscal 2003.