A group of Japanese experts arrived on Thursday at a northeast China village to start retrieving chemical weapons left by invading troops during World War II.

A local villager named Dong Liyan found more than 50 bombs buried in rural Qiqihar, Heilongjiang Province, last month. Some of them are believed to be chemical weapons.

The heavily rusted bombs were reburied after Dong reported them to the local government.

Dong is now in hospital suffering from headaches; his family and nearby households have been evacuated. The site was cordoned off and guarded by police.

At the request of the Foreign Ministry, the Japanese government sent a special team to Touzhan Village in to excavate the weapons and transfer them to a temporary storage facility in the city.

During the war, the Japanese army's top-secret chemical-weapons research facility, Unit 516, was based in Qiqihar.

The 25-member team arrived in the city early Thursday morning and went to the site before noon. Clad in full chemical protection gear, they began their work at about 4:10 PM, assisted by Chinese soldiers.

The team moved away the earth within one meter from the first point where the bombs were found before wrapping up for the day at around 5:00 PM. No new items were found.

"It is our first day of work. We exchanged information with Chinese government officials and the military, so we began late," said Akihiko Aoyama, an official with Japan's office in charge of the disposal of abandoned chemical weapons in China.

The team will excavate the bombs reburied last month and search for any more weapons at the site. They plan to finish the excavation, packing and storage in about 10 days, although the time may be extended depending on whether other weapons are found, said Aoyama.

Dong has been in Angangxi People's Hospital since June 11 with a headache and low blood pressure.

"It is not unusual to dig up a shell or two around the village, but it was horrible to find one bomb after another until the number went up to 52," said Dong, 54. He was digging to build a new house when he found the bombs.

He touched them while trying to throw them behind his house. Dong's six-year-old granddaughter was playing beside him at the time.

Dong is not the first victim of abandoned Japanese chemical weapons in the village.

Liu Fengwu, now 73, was nearly killed by a chemical bomb he found in his backyard 48 years ago.

"His head swelled as big as a balloon, he could not see anything and the skin on his chest peeled off as he fainted," Zhang Xiuying, his wife, recalls.

Liu's neck, arms and chest are still scarred from the incident, and one eye was permanently damaged. He has difficulty breathing and suffers coughing spells at night, although he says he has never smoked.

On August 4, 2003, one person was killed and 43 wounded when several barrels of mustard gas leaked at a construction site in urban Qiqihar.

Japan has compensated the August 4 victims or their families, but the Chinese are preparing to launch a lawsuit against the Japanese government seeking an official apology.

Japan has promised to recover and destroy by 2007all the chemical weapons abandoned in China.

(China Daily June 18, 2004)