During the Battle of Iwo Jima in the Pacific War, Japanese soldiers who survived capture by US forces were forced to bury the bodies of their fellow Japanese soldiers killed in action in the ground.

　　During the Battle of Iwo Jima in the Pacific War, Japanese soldiers who survived capture by US forces were forced to bury the bodies of fellow Japanese soldiers killed in action in the ground. Because of the rapid decomposition of corpses on the South Pacific islands, they were usually simply dug out and buried in mass graves without identification. American soldiers had to be bagged and Japanese soldiers had to be buried underground as soon as possible. Pests stripped all flesh from the corpses in a surprisingly short time. Overwhelmed by the heat and rain, the Marines buried the bodies after the battle was over, sometimes months later. As there was no one left on the Japanese side, the bodies were left to fall. Skeletons still survive today. After killing so many Japanese, the Americans dug a trench with bulldozers and pushed the corpses of the Japanese soldiers into it as one large mass grave.

　After about a week of fighting in the northern part of Iwo Jima, where Japanese forces had practically established a garrison in the mountains, the Battle of Iwo Jima, which broke out on 19 February 1945, ended on 25 March with a final banzai attack by about 300 Japanese soldiers. The US forces suffered many casualties, but eventually subdued the Japanese attack. The US forces declared Iwo Jima occupied the following day. American troops spent weeks roaming the jungles of Iwo Jima, finding and killing remaining Japanese soldiers who refused to surrender and chose to continue fighting, and taking some of the surrendered Japanese soldiers as prisoners of war. 2 remaining Japanese soldiers finally surrendered on 2 January 1949, almost four years after the end of World War II. They continued to hide in caves on Iwo Jima, continuing to scavenge food and supplies until they finally surrendered on 2 January 1949, almost four years after the end of World War II.

　On Iwo Jima, the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare discovered two mass graves in October 2010 that may have held the remains of up to 2,000 Japanese soldiers buried there. Almost all of the 22,000 Japanese soldiers tasked with defending the rugged volcanic rocky mountain were killed in the battle. The Battle of Iwo Jima claimed the lives of 6,821 American and 21,570 Japanese soldiers. Dozens of remains are recovered each year, but some 12,000 Japanese are still classified as missing and were estimated to have died on Iwo Jima, along with 218 Americans.