Nikolayevsk incident
Nikolayevsk incident | |
---|---|
Part of the POWs | |
Attack type | Massacre |
Deaths | Thousands |
Perpetrators | Red Army Partisan detachment under Yakov Tryapitsyn |
The Nikolayevsk incident (尼港事件, Nikō Jiken) was an international conflict in Nikolayevsk-on-Amur in the Russian Far East between Japan and the Far Eastern Republic during the Japanese intervention. The culmination was the execution of imprisoned Japanese prisoners of war and survivors of Japanese residents without trial from 23 to 31 May 1920, which followed after the armed conflict between the guerrillas and the Japanese army from 12 to 15 March 1920 in Nikolaevsk-on-Amur. A total of 129 Japanese prisoners and a number of local residents and guerrillas were held in the prison at that time. The destruction of the town and the fortress and the execution took place after the evacuation of the entire population due to the offensive of the Japanese army. The Nikolayevsk incident was used by Japan as a pretext to justify the retroactive occupation of Northern Sakhalin, which was occupied by the Japanese on 22 April 1920.
Nikolayevsk-on-Amur was occupied in September 1918 by the
On 24 February 1920, realizing that he was outnumbered and far from reinforcement, the commander of the Japanese garrison allowed Tryapitsyn's troops to enter the town under a
After this, he was free to start a reign of terror and execute all those civilians he deemed dangerous to his forces. Being short of ammunition, one of the methods to execute the victims was to stab them with a bayonet and thrust them in a hole under the ice of the river Amur. Several thousand inhabitants of the town were killed like this and with other execution methods.[1]
In late May, as a Japanese relief expedition approached, Tryapitsyn executed all of the remaining inhabitants of the town, both Japanese and Russian, and burned the town to the ground.[1]
The Japanese government lodged a protest against the Bolshevik government in Moscow, demanding compensation. The Russian government responded by capturing and executing Tryapitsyn and 31 others involved in the massacre; however, the Japanese government felt that this was not sufficient, and used the incident as a rationale to occupy the northern half of Sakhalin island, and to delay diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union until 1925.
References
- ^ a b c The destruction of Nikolayevks-on-Amur: An episode in the Russian civil war in the Far East, book review in the Cambridge University Press.
- Hara, Teruyuki. Niko Jiken no Shomondai (Problems in the Incident at Nikolaevsk-na-Amure) // Roshiashi Kekyuu, 1975, No. 23.
- Gutman, Anatoly. Ella Lury Wiswell (trans.); Richard A. Pierce (ed.) The Destruction of Nikolaevsk-on-Amur, An Episode in the Russian Civil War in the Far East, 1920. Limestone Press (1993). ISBN 0-919642-35-7
- White, John Albert. The Siberian Intervention. Princeton University Press (1950)