Experts from China and Japan finished on Thursday the job of
recovering 542 chemical bombs that were abandoned by Japanese
invaders during World War II.
Most of the bombs were found at a site two meters long, two
meters wide and 0.6 meters deep in Douzhan Village, near Qiqihar
City in northeast China's Heilongjiang
Province. Only 21 of them were collected from a neighboring
area.
The job of clearing and recovering went smoothly, with no
incidence of leakage.
The joint team comprising Chinese and Japanese experts arrived
at the scene on June 16, after a local farmer named Dong Liyan
found the weapons on May 23. Dong's house, in the city's Ang'angxi
District, was the site of a Japanese airfield and deployment
regiment base during World War II.
The 30-member Japanese team was in charge of the recovery
operation, and personnel from the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Defense
Ministry and the Shenyang Military Area Command of the Peoples
Liberation Army assisted.
Dozens of Douzhan Village residents and their livestock living
within a radius of 60 meters around the site were evacuated when
the weapons were found.
Bu Ping, vice president of the Heilongjiang Academy of Social
Sciences and a researcher on chemical weapons left over by the
Japanese troops in China, estimated that the Japanese troops left
over 2 million chemical weapons in a dozen Chinese cities and
provinces at the end of World War II.
Since the end of the war, some 2,000 Chinese have been injured
by abandoned chemical weapons. Eight incidents have occurred in
Qiqihar alone since the establishment of the People's Republic of
China in 1949.
According to a treaty signed by the two countries, all chemical
weapons left in China by Japan should be destroyed by 2007.
(Xinhua News Agency June 25, 2004)