In response to China's solemn representations, the Japanese
government will dispatch a team of experts to investigate the
latest incident involving chemical weapons abandoned by invading
Japanese troops during World War II.
The team will travel to Dunhua, Jilin
Province, where two schoolboys were injured when they found a
canister containing a chemical agent, a Japanese embassy official
said Wednesday in Beijing. She did not state when the team would
arrive, but said that further action would depend on the result of
the investigation.
China lodged official representations concerning the issue with
Japanese diplomats on Tuesday.
The two victims, now being treated in a local hospital,
uncovered the 50-centimeter-long canister six days ago when they
were playing near a river close to Lianhuapao Village. One of the
boys pried open the rusted container and was splashed with the
liquid chemical it contained, causing blisters and burns. The
second boy was less severely injured in the incident.
Farmer Yu Shuncheng told the local media that residents often
find such weapons in the nearby mountains. Few of them realize the
potential danger and many farmers simply dump such weapons in their
courtyards at random.
In 1954, Yu and his family found 360 such weapons in the nearby
mountains.
Some 670,000 chemical weapons were left in Dunhua, the area with
the most abandoned Japanese chemical weapons in China, according to
a report in Shanghai's Oriental Outlook.
(China Daily July 29, 2004)