Japanese prisoners of war in the Soviet Union

After the defeat of the Kwantung Army in Manchuria, Japanese POWs were sent from Manchuria, Korea, South Sakhalin and Kuril Islands to Primorski Krai, Khabarovsk Krai, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Kazakhstan (South Kazakhstan Province and Zhambyl Province), Buryat-Mongol ASSR, and Uzbek SSR. In 1946, 49 labor camps for Japanese POWs under the management of GUPVI housed about 500,000 persons. In addition there were two camps for those convicted of various crimes. Prisoners were grouped into 1,000 person units. Some male and female Japanese civilians, as well as Koreans were also imprisoned when there were not enough soldiers to fill a unit. 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 Baikal-Amur Mainline (over 200,000 persons), in eight camps, in Komsomolsk-on-Amur (two camps, for two railroad branches), Sovetskaya Gavan, Raychikha railroad station (Khabarovsk Krai), Izvestkovaya railroad station (Khabarovsk Krai), Krasnaya Zarya (Chita Oblast), Taishet, and Novo-Grishino (Irkutsk Oblast). The last major group of 1,025 Japanese POWs was released on 23 December 1956. 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. ==Japanese internees and Russians==

File:MAP&LIST of the General location of the Japanese POW Laborers’ camps in the Soviet Union and in Outer Mongolia around 1946.pdf|thumb|upright=1.5|NOTE 1. ☉ Large Circles with heavy outline (numbered in red): Over 20,000 detained.● Black circles (numbered in blue): Over 10,000. ○White.☉ small circles (numbered in black): Less than 10,000.△ Triangles (numbered in Green): Small number.NOTE 2. The above-designated graphic symbols show the principal area of the labor camp location. Created 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:1) Kôseishô engokyoku [Bureau of Assistance, Ministry of Health and Welfare]. Hikiage to engo sanjûnen no ayumi [Thirty-year progress of the repatriation and assistance]. Kôseishô. 1977. p. 56.2) Kôseishô shakai/engokyoku engo gojûnenshi henshû iinkai [Editorial Committee of Fifty-year history of assistance. Bureau of Social/Assistance, Ministry of Health and Welfare]. Engo gojûnenshi [Fifty-year history of assistance]. Gyôsei. 1997. pp. 524–525.Location names, listed originally in katakana-Japanese, have been transcribed into English using five maps published in the U.S.A., U.K., and USSR.A) Union of Soviet Socialist Republic. Compiled and drawn in the Cartographic Section of the National Geographic Society for the National Geographic Magazine. Grovesnor, Gilbert. Washington. U.S.A. 1944.B) U.S.S.R.and Adjacent Areas 1:8,000,000. Published by Department of Survey, Ministry of Defense, U.K. British Crown Copyright Reserved Series 5104. U.K. 1964.C) USSR Railways. J.R. Yonge. The Quail Map Company. Exeter. U. K. 1973.D) USSR Railways. J.R. Yonge. The Quail Map Company. Exeter. U.K. 1976.E) Soviet Union. Produced by the Cartographic Division. National Geographic Society. National Geographic Magazine. Grovesnor, Melville. Washington. U.S.A. 1976.F) Union of Soviet Socialist Republic. Moscow News Supplement. Main Administration of Geodesy and Cartography under the Council of Minister of the USSR. U.S.S.R. 1979. 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: 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. One of these critics is Haruo Minami who later became one of the most famous singers in Japan. Minami, because of his harsh experiences in the labor camp, became a well-known anti-communist. 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. 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 ==Japanese ex-internees today==

Various associations of former internees seek compensation for their wartime treatment and for pensions from the Japanese government. An appeal to the Commission on Human Rights says 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. Tetsuro Ahiko was the last remaining Japanese POW living in Kazakhstan prior to his death in 2020. ==Research in Russia==

Research into the history of the Japanese POWs has become possible in Russia only since the second half of the 1980s, with glasnost and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Until this time the only public information about any World War II POWs taken by the Soviet Union was some numbers of prisoners taken. After opening the secret Soviet archives the true scope of the POW labor in the Soviet Union has become known, A number of kandidat (PhD) dissertations had been presented about Soviet POW in various regions. In 2000 a fundamental collection of documents related to POWs in the USSR was published, which contained significant information about Japanese. About 2,000 memoirs of Japanese POWs in the Soviet Union have been published in Japan. At least one memoir of a Japanese POW in the Soviet Union has been published in English. == 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 Toyoko Yamasaki wrote the 1976 novel Fumō Chitai, about an Imperial Army staff officer captured in Manchuria, his captivity and return to Japan to become a businessman. This has been made into a film and two television dramas. A dramatisation of experiences as a Soviet POW form a portion of the latter part of the epic movie trilogy, The Human Condition, by Masaki Kobayashi. 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==