The remains of former Japanese soldiers who died in battle during the Philippine campaign of World War II were cremated, and their ashes were collected. The bones were carefully cleaned and then piled into small individual mounds.

 　　The remains of former Japanese soldiers who died in the Battle of the Philippines during the Pacific War were cremated, and their ashes were collected. Due to insufficient information to identify the remains, many of the bodies collected after 1959 were buried anonymously at the Chidorigafuchi War Memorial Cemetery. The bones were carefully cleaned and then stacked in small individual piles. The skeletons were arranged and cremated, but each was cremated separately during a ceremony. The purpose of cremation was not to reduce the remains to ashes, but to purify the bones with fire. After cremation, the bones were cleaned again and placed individually in separate urns.

　　The Japanese government began serious efforts to recover the remains 20 years after the war, in the mid-1960s.This was a period when the economy had recovered and the scars of war had faded from the cities. Large-scale excavations were carried out after the Tokyo Olympics, with the games taking priority over the war victims. After the 1980s, reports of politicians visiting the Yasukuni Shrine led to a distancing from the national excavation project.

　　Internationally, the recovery of Japanese soldiers' remains frequently became a topic of negotiation with Russia and China. China had long refused to allow Japan to recover remains, maintaining political pressure on Japan and avoiding revisiting the past. Amid the chaos of the civil war, official figures were convenient for both the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party, as the major parties involved in the war, to avoid detailed reexamination of their responsibilities toward Japan.

　　The importance of civil society groups cannot be underestimated. Volunteer organizations played a crucial role in remains recovery campaigns. Many young people participated in these arduous missions. In 2009, over 50 volunteers took part in excavation work in Siberia, Mongolia, New Guinea, and Okinawa. Some participants demonstrated strong patriotic or nationalistic tendencies.

　　In Europe and Western countries, the handling of remains recovered from battlefields is of little importance. Japan's remains recovery mission was highly ritualized. The first legal document addressing the issue of remains recovery was issued in 1954, establishing the following procedures: “Exhumation and collection of remains; classification of discovered artifacts; identification of remains; cremation; recovery of remains; disposal of ashes.”These procedures were indeed followed, and even as the number of discovered remains decreased, this aspect was notably adhered to.