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Finding the Remains of the Dead: Photographs from a Japanese Mission to New Guinea, 1969-1970

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Beatrice Trefalt
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Abstract

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In 1969, a group of Japanese veterans returned to New Guinea to find the remains of their comrades and conduct funeral rites, one of many such postwar missions to former battlefields. The group documented its search in photographs and published a book of these photographs in 1970. This article shows how the visual cues of the photographs functioned to blur the temporal distance from war and encouraged an emotional response in the viewers by contrasting the recognizable, shattered remains of the dead with the peaceful and ostensibly timeless environment in which they were now found. The photographs also reveal unequal power relations between Japanese veteran visitors and their New Guinean hosts, and the enduring nature of the veterans' colonial viewpoints. This article argues that the aim of the veterans in presenting these photographs to the greater public was to contribute an emotionally engaging argument against forgetting the sacrifice of veterans in the war, underlining the powerful mechanisms that allowed conservative alliances of veterans, bereaved families and politicians to bypass debates about war guilt by appealing instead to emotions connected to grief and mourning.

Keywords

war remainsJapanveteransWorld War IINew Guineacommemorationphotographsikotsu shūshū (“bone-collecting”)fallen soldiers
Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 20 , Issue 10 , May 2022 , e5
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2022

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