Over the past three weeks, a team sent by the Japanese government
excavated and retrieved chemical weapons left by Japanese invaders
in Sunwu County in northeast China's
Heilongjiang Province.
The team worked in China from Sept. 5 to 27 in response to a
request from the Chinese government, according to a statement
released in Beijing Friday by the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs of China.
Led by Iwatani Shigeo, director of an abandoned chemical weapons
office under the Japanese Cabinet Office, the team uncovered 467
shells including 193 chemical shells, four barrels of chemical
toxicant with a net weight of 306.5 kilograms, and 154 toxic
canisters. The team also cleaned up 1.8 tons of contaminated
soil.
Such chemical weapons and contaminated materials will be sealed and
placed in special facilities, and then will be destroyed by
Japanese technicians.
The Japanese team received on-site assistance from the Office for
Chemical Weapons Abandoned by Japan in China under the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs of China.
When Japan was defeated in 1945, the Japanese invaders abandoned
large numbers of chemical weapons in Sunwu, where over 80,000
Japanese soldiers were stationed. In 1954, the county government
buried the chemical weapons in a nearby mountain.
In
order to reduce risks to public safety and to the environment, the
Chinese government repeatedly asked the Japanese government to
resolve the problem and retrieve the weapons in a timely
manner.
At
China's urging, Japan agreed to begin excavation in September 2002.
Previously, Japanese teams had been sent to China making
preparations in April and July this year. The two sides made
thorough preliminary plans and adopted necessary safety
precautions.
This issue, a legacy from the Japanese war of aggression in China,
constituted a threat to both local residents and the environment.
In July 1999, the two governments signed a memorandum on destroying
the chemical weapons abandoned in China.
In
the memorandum, Japan admitted that large numbers of chemical
weapons had been abandoned in China, and promised to destroy them
in accordance with the Convention on the Banning of Chemical
Weapons.
Currently, on the basis of the memorandum, the two governments are
making consultations on some details concerning the early
destruction of the abandoned chemical weapons.
The recent excavation is the first step to ensure safety prior to
destroying the chemical weapons.
(Xinhua News
Agency September 28, 2002)