Japanese prisoners of war in the Soviet Union
After
The majority of the approximately 3.5 million Japanese armed forces outside Japan were disarmed by the United States and Kuomintang China and repatriated in 1946. Western Allies had taken 35,000 Japanese prisoners between December 1941 and 15 August 1945, i.e., before the Japanese capitulation.[6] The Soviet Union held the Japanese POWs in a much longer time period and used them as a labor force.
Soviet Union behavior was contrary to the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact from the beginning[citation needed], and also to the Potsdam Declaration, which guaranteed the return of surrendered Japanese soldiers to Japan. When Russian President Boris Yeltsin arrived in Japan in October 1993, he apologized for being an "inhumane act."[7]
However, the Russian side said, "The transferred Japanese soldiers are" prisoners of war "who were legally detained during the battle and do not fall into the category of" detainees "who were unfairly detained after the end of the war."[8]
History
After the
Handling of Japanese POWs was considered inhumane and mishandled by Russia. There were deaths caused by malnutrition, overwork, cave-ins, floods, unsanitary working conditions which led to epidemics, harsh winter colds, violent guards, brutal suppression of mild resistance, and even lynchings of Japanese by their fellow Japanese.
A significant number of Japanese were assigned to the construction of the
The repatriation of Japanese POWs started in 1946.
year | number released | notes |
---|---|---|
1946 | 18,616 | |
1947 | 166,240 | |
1948 | 175,000 | |
1949 | 97,000 | 971 transferred to PRC
|
1950 | 1,585 | leaving 2,988 remaining in USSR |
Beginning in 1949, there were reports of returnees being uncooperative and hostile upon returning to Japan, owing to Communist propaganda they had been subject to during their imprisonment. These incidents resulted in the Japanese public gaining a more negative perception of the returning soldiers, and increased SCAP's hostility towards the left-wing in Japan.
Those remaining after 1950 were detained having been convicted of various crimes. Their release continued from 1953 under various amnesties. Following the death of
From then on, some Japanese POWs were released in small groups, including those who would only return in the 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Some Japanese prisoners who had been held for decades, who by this point had married and had started families, elected not to permanently return to Japan.[11][12]
There are about 60 associations of Japanese former internees and members of their families today. The Soviet Union did not provide the lists of POWs and did not allow the relatives of those POWs who died in captivity to visit their burial sites. This became possible after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.[13]
Japanese internees and Russians
Historian S. Kuznetsov, dean of the Department of History of the Irkutsk State University, one of the first researchers of the topic, interviewed thousands of former internees and came to the following conclusion:
"Siberian Internment" (the Japanese term) was a unique and paradoxical phenomenon. Many of them have nostalgic and sentimental recollection of this period of their life. In their memoirs and recollections they drew a distinction between the attitude of the Soviet state machine and ordinary Russian people. Unlike Germans, Japanese were not associated in the perception of Russians with
Soviet system. All of them recall the ideological indoctrination during the compulsory daily "studies of democracy", however only a very small number of them embraced communism.
However, many of the inmates do not share Kuznetsov's views and retain negative memories of being robbed of personal property, and the brutality of camp personnel, harsh winters and exhausting labor.
Most Japanese were captured in Soviet-occupied Manchuria (northeast China) and were taken to Soviet POW camps. Many Japanese died while they were detained in the POW camps; estimates of the number of these deaths vary from 60,000, based on deaths certified by the USSR, to 347,000 (the estimate of American historian William F. Nimmo, including 254,000 dead and 93,000 missing), based on the number of Japanese servicemen and civilian auxiliaries registered in Manchuria at the time of surrender who failed to return to Japan subsequently. Some remained in captivity until December 1956 (11 years after the war) before they were allowed to return to Japan. The wide disparity between Soviet records of death and the number of Japanese missing under Soviet occupation, as well as the whereabouts of the remains of POWs, are still grounds of political and diplomatic contention, at least on the Japanese side.[citation needed]
According to the map formulated by combining two maps, published by the former Ministry of Health and Welfare and the current Ministry of Labor, Health and Welfare of the Japanese Government, there were more than 70 labor camps for the Japanese prisoners of war within the Soviet Union:
Because of the difficulty in retrieving formal USSR Government records, the numerical data are based on reports obtained from former POWs and elsewhere by the former Ministry of Health and Welfare and the current Ministry of Labor, Health and Welfare of the Japanese Government. The Japanese Government is disinterring the remains of the Japanese POWs who died in the USSR; more data may be anticipated, for example, at sites such as "シベリア抑留中死亡者に関する資料の調査について" [Investigation of records regarding persons deceased during detention in Siberia]. Ministry of Labor, Health and Welfare Policy Reports. 2009.
Japanese ex-internees today
Various associations of former internees seek compensation for their wartime treatment and for pensions from the Japanese government.
Japan had a moral and legal responsibility to compensate the victims of its aggression, yet the Japanese Government had so far refused to provide compensation to former prisoners of war for their period of forced labour in Siberia, although it had made concessions to prisoners from other regions. The veterans had sued the Japanese Government in 1981 for compensation and had eventually been issued with labour certificates by the Russian Government, as requested by the court, but their appeal had been rejected.
Those who chose to stay in Russia and eventually decided to return had to deal with significant Japanese bureaucracy. A major problem is the difficulty in providing the documentary confirmation of their status. Toshimasa Meguro, a 77-year-old former POW, was permitted to visit Japan as late as in 1998. He served eight years in labor camps and after his release, he was ordered to stay in Siberia.[16]
Tetsuro Ahiko was the last remaining Japanese POW living in Kazakhstan prior to his death in 2020.[17][18]
Research in Russia
Research into the history of the Japanese POWs has become possible in
Japanese POWs have become the subject of the historians of
In the 2000s, several books about Japanese POWs were published in Russia.[20][21][22]
About 2,000 memoirs of Japanese POWs in the Soviet Union have been published in Japan.[14]
At least one memoir of a Japanese POW in the Soviet Union has been published in English.[23]
Legacy
In 2015, records of the internment and repatriation were registered as a UNESCO Memory of the World under the title "Return to Maizuru Port—Documents Related to the Internment and Repatriation Experiences of Japanese (1945-1956)".
In fiction
The Japanese novelist
A dramatisation of experiences as a Soviet POW form a portion of the latter part of the epic movie trilogy,
Kiuchi Nobuo reported his experiences about Soviet camps in his The Notes of Japanese soldier in USSR online comic series.
The 2011 South Korean movie My Way also shows the treatment of Japanese and Japanese-recruited Koreans in Soviet POW camps.
See also
- Japanese prisoners of war in World War II
- Japanese Surrendered Personnel
- Soviet invasion of Manchuria
- Japanese people in Russia
- German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union
- Italian prisoners of war in the Soviet Union
- Romanian prisoners of war in the Soviet Union
- Finnish prisoners of war in the Soviet Union
References
- ^ "シベリア抑留、露に76万人分の資料 軍事公文書館でカード発見". Sankeishinbun. 24 July 2009. Archived from the original on 26 July 2009. Retrieved 21 September 2009.
- ^ Japanese POW group says files on over 500,000 held in Moscow, BBC News, 7 March 1998
- Commission on Human Rights, 56th session, 13 April 2000.
- ^ ISBN 5-88439-093-9
- )
- ISBN 978-0-295-98336-3.
- 衆議院. 11 May 2007. Retrieved 7 August 2011.
- 日本経済新聞. 23 October 2015. Retrieved 23 August 2016.
- ISBN 978-0-674-05598-8.
- S2CID 252014619.
- ^ Kristof, Nicholas D. (12 April 1998). "Japan's Blossoms Soothe a P.O.W. Lost in Siberia". The New York Times.
- ^ "The last Japanese man remaining in Kazakhstan: A Kafkian tale of the plight of a Japanese POW in the Soviet Union". 7 February 2011.
- ^ Japanese POW in the USSR (in Russian)
- ^ a b Russia in the Eyes of Japanese Internees Archived 29 January 2008 at the Wayback Machine (in Russian)
- ^ Japanese, Korean, Dutch POWs to hold meeting in Tokyo Archived 2 November 2007 at the Wayback Machine
- New York Times, 12 April 1998
- ^ "Ahiko Tetsuro passed away today – Академия "Bolashaq"". Bolshaq Academy. 18 June 2020. Retrieved 17 March 2024.
- ^ Noorbakhsh, Sarah (7 February 2011). "The last Japanese man remaining in Kazakhstan: A Kafkian tale of the plight of a Japanese POW in the Soviet Union". Japan Subculture Research Center. Retrieved 21 February 2011.
- ^ Internment of Japanese in the USSR in Soviet and Russian historiography Archived 26 October 2007 at the Wayback Machine (in Russian)
- ISBN 5-89282-218-4(in Russian)
- ISBN 5-7444-1326-X(in Russian)
- ISBN 5-89282-258-3(in Russian)
- ISBN 080324262X.
Further reading
- "Japanese POW in Primorye (1945–1949)"
- Issue 1: "POW Labor in Coal Industry" ("Японские военнопленные в Приморье (1945–1949 гг.) Вып.1 Труд военнопленных в угольной промышленности" Владивосток: Государственный архив Приморского края, Мор. гос. ун-т им. адм. Г. И. Невельского) 2005.- 152 pp. (in Russian)
- Issue 2: "POW Labour in Various Spheres of the Notional Economy of the Primorsky Krai"(Японские военнопленные в Приморье (1945–1949 гг.) : документы Государственного архива Приморского края Выпуск 2: Труд военнопленных в отраслях народного хозяйства Приморского края, 2006 ISBN 5-8343-0355-2
- Nicole Piper, "War and Memory: Victim Identity and the Struggle for Compensation in Japan" War & Society (2001) vol. 19, issue 1, pp. 131–148.