As a volunteer cave digger, Takamatsu Gushiken has unearthed the remains of several hundred people. Excavation is not his ...

Takamatsu Gushiken turns on a headtorch and enters a cave buried in Okinawa’s jungle. He gently runs his fingers through the gravel until two pieces of bone emerge. These are from the ...

Gushiken shows a tooth of someone believed to have died during the Battle of Okinawa towards the end of World War II in 1945. (Hiro Komae/AP) In all, 1,280 remains of Japanese war dead ...

Takamatsu Gushiken has spent years voluntarily locating bodies, and fragments of bodies, of World War II victims in Japan’s ...

the remains of those who died during the Battle of Okinawa towards the end of the World War II in 1945, while in a cave in Itoman, on the main island of the Okinawa archipelago, southern Japan ...

ITOMAN, Japan — Takamatsu Gushiken turns on ... ago as they hid in this cave during one of the fiercest battles of World War II. His hope is that the dead can be reunited with their families.

Nearly 80 years after the end of World War II, 1.2 million Japanese war ... Of the estimated 188,140 Japanese killed in the Battle of Okinawa, most of their remains had been collected and placed ...