The skeletons of 26 Japanese soldiers who died during WWII have been washed up from their graves on the Marshal islands,said the country’s Foreign minister,as the nation is trying to battle rising sea levels endangering the Pacific archipelago’s existence
The skeletons have been found on Santo Island following high
tides devastated the archipelago from February to April.
"There are coffins and dead people being washed away from
graves. It's that serious," said the state’s foreign
minister Tony de Brum on the sidelines of UN climate change talks
in Germany’s Bonn on Friday.
"We had the exhumed skeletons sampled by the US Navy in Pearl
Harbor (in Hawaii) and they helped identify where they are from,
to assist in the repatriation efforts," de Brum said, adding
that the soldiers are likely Japanese.
The sea rise overrunning parts of the country has also washed up
military equipment and unexploded bombs.
The 70 000 people nation, which lies between Hawaii and
Australia, housed a Japanese naval base during WWII. The island
witnessed heavy fighting when the US occupied the islands in the
1940’s, bombing the archipelago and destroying the Japanese
garrisons. The US military set up a base on the islands and
conducted nuclear tests.
The Pacific low-lying states have urged the international
community for action on the issue of the rapidly rising sea level
that is posing an existential threat to the nations.
During environmental talks in Bonn, the Marshal Islands claimed
that global warming was ruining crops and rising seas were
overrunning parts of the islands. The nation’s 1,000-plus islands
are only about two meters above sea level.
A recent report of the UN Environment Program found that sea
levels in the Pacific were rising faster than in the rest of the
world. It stated that from 1993 to 2009 the rise was 12
millimeters a year, which is almost four times the global
average. Scientists are predicting that by the end of the century
the sea levels will rise from one to two meters.