UN heritage body refuses request to preserve letters of kamikaze pilots
Heritage agency rejects request to preserve suicide fliers' personal documents, which Seoul and Beijing say glorify Japan's war record
A Japanese bid to have letters of farewell and other papers written by kamikaze pilots included in a registry of historic documents has been rejected by the UN heritage body, after fierce opposition from China and South Korea.
The advisory panel to Unesco announced on Thursday that it had refused to recommend the inclusion of the documents in the organisation's Memory of the World Register.
The decision will be seen as a victory for both China and South Korea, who had expressed anger that symbols of Japan's militarist and colonialist past were being considered for a repository designed to preserve unique historical archives.
Documents that have previously been accepted into the register include the Magna Carta and the diaries of Anne Frank.
Despite the rejection of the kamikaze pilots' writings, other Japanese wartime documents were approved for inclusion in the register by the panel.
These included drawings and diaries kept by Japanese soldiers captured in the closing days of the second world war and held in Siberian prison camps, many of whom were not permitted to return to Japan until 1950. Of the 600,000 soldiers held in Soviet camps, more than 55,000 died of the brutal conditions, overwork, malnutrition or disease.