DNA testing identifies US atomic bomb victim in Japan after 80 years
In a first, DNA testing has managed to link preserved remains of a Hiroshima victim to a teenage girl who disappeared after the US atomic bombing in 1945.
A 13-year-old girl killed in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima has been identified decades later through DNA testing of hair and ashes preserved at the city’s Peace Memorial Park, local officials and media reported.
The Hiroshima city government said on Monday that this was the first time DNA analysis had been successfully used to identify an atomic bomb victim, according to Kyodo News.
Hair and ashes stored at the Peace Memorial Park were found to belong to Hatsue Kajiyama, who went missing after the US bombing of the city on August 6 1945, near the end of the war.
The hair had been preserved, along with ashes, listed under the name Michiko Kajiyama in the burial registry for unclaimed remains.
However, Hatsue’s 60-year-old nephew, Shuji, notified the city that the name might have been recorded incorrectly and requested that the information be verified.
Between late November and earlier this month, Kanagawa Dental University extracted DNA from the hair and compared it with the DNA of Hatsue’s 91-year-old sister, confirming that the remains belonged to Hatsue.
The unclaimed ashes of 70,000 victims are kept in a memorial mound, with hair samples preserved in urns for approximately 10 of them.
In the future, the city plans to conduct DNA testing on hair samples if requested by the victims’ families.