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[[File:Japanese Soldiers Returning from Siberia 1946.jpg|thumb|right|300 px|Repatriated Japanese soldiers returning from Siberia wait to disembark from a ship at Maizuru, Kyoto Prefecture, Japan, in 1946]]
By the end of [[:World War II]] there were from 560,000 to 760,000 Japanese personnel in the [[Soviet Union]] and [[Mongolia]] interned to work in [[Gulag|labor camps]] as [[POW]]s.<ref name="sankeishinbun">{{cite web|url=http://sankei.jp.msn.com/world/europe/090724/erp0907240115000-n1.htm |title=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 |accessdate=21 September 2009 |date=24 July 2009 |work=Sankeishinbun |deadurl=yes |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20090726100909/http://sankei.jp.msn.com/world/europe/090724/erp0907240115000-n1.htm |archivedate=26 July 2009 |df= }}</ref> Of them, about 10% died (50–60,000), mostly during the winter of 1945–46.<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/monitoring/63012.stm Japanese POW group says files on over 500,000 held in Moscow], ''[[BBC News]]'', 7 March 1998</ref><ref>[http://www.unhchr.ch/huricane/huricane.nsf/view01/8D22741F69F38DD3802568C40036B229?opendocument UN Press Release], [[Commission on Human Rights]], 56th session, 13 April 2000.</ref><ref name=zagor>[http://www.auditorium.ru/books/407/ POW in the USSR 1939–1956:Documents and Materials] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071102082712/http://www.auditorium.ru/books/407/ |date= 2 November 2007 }} Moscow ''[[Logos Publishers]] (2000)'' (Военнопленные в СССР. 1939–1956: Документы и материалы] Науч.-исслед. ин-т проблем экон. истории ХХ века и др.; Под ред. М.М. Загорулько. – М.: Логос, 2000. – 1118 с.: ил.) ISBN 5-88439-093-9</ref><ref name="Ann">[[Anne Applebaum]] ''Gulag: A History'', Doubleday, April 2003, ISBN 0-7679-0056-1; page 431.[http://www.anneapplebaum.com/gulag/intro.html Introduction online])</ref>

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<ref>Ulrich Straus. "[http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=118051176320560 The Anguish of Surrender: Japanese POWs of World War II]". Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2003. ISBN 978-0-295-98336-3.</ref> The Soviet Union held the Japanese POWs much longer and used them as a labor force.

==History==
The majority of Japanese who were held in the USSR did not consider themselves as "Prisoners of War" and referred to themselves as "internees", because they voluntarily laid down their arms after the official capitulation of Japan, i.e., after the end of the military conflict. The number of Japanese prisoners captured in combat was very small.<ref name=tatami>[http://www.dodi.ru/glossary/ru/v/v18/ Japanese POW in the USSR] {{ru icon}}</ref>

After the [[Soviet invasion of Manchuria|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.

Handling of Japanese POWs was, in line with the [[USSR State Defense Committee]] Decree no. 9898cc "About Receiving, Accommodation, and Labor Utilization of the Japanese Army Prisoners of War" ("О приеме, размещении, трудовом использовании военнопленных японской армии") dated by 23 August 1945.

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]] r/r station (Khabarovsk Krai), [[Krasnaya Zarya (rural locality)|Krasnaya Zarya]] ([[Chita Oblast]]), [[Taishet]], and [[Novo-Grishino]] ([[Irkutsk Oblast]]).<ref name=zagor/>

The repatriation of Japanese POWs started in 1946.

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! year
! number released
! notes
|-
| 1946
|align=right| 18,616
|
|-
| 1947
|align=right| 166,240
|
|-
| 1948
|align=right| 175,000
|
|-
| 1949
|align=right| 97,000
| 971 transferred to [[People's Republic of China|PRC]]
|-
| 1950
|align=right| 1,585
| leaving 2,988 remaining in USSR
|}

Those remaining after 1950 were detained having been convicted of various crimes. The release of these persons continued from 1953 under various amnesties, and the last major group of 1025 Japanese POWs was released on 23 December 1956.<ref name=zagor/>

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.<ref name=tatami/>

==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:

{{cquote|"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 [[Nazi]] atrocities in the Russian land, although initially the attitude of Russians was hostile, under the influence of Soviet propaganda. What is more, romantic relations between Japanese internees and Russian women were not uncommon. For example, in the city of [[Kansk]], [[Krasnoyarsk Krai]], about 50 Japanese married locals and stayed. Japanese noticed the overall poverty of the Russian population. They also met Soviet [[political prisoner]]s in the [[GULAG]] prison camps abundant in Siberia at the time, and acquired a good understanding of the [[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.<ref name=kuzn/>
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 brought 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.

==Japanese ex-internees today==
Various associations of former internees seek compensation for their wartime treatment and for pensions from the Japanese government.<ref>[http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0XPQ/is_1999_Feb_15/ai_53928150 Japanese, Korean, Dutch POWs to hold meeting in Tokyo] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071102101242/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0XPQ/is_1999_Feb_15/ai_53928150 |date= 2 November 2007 }}</ref> An appeal to the [[Commission on Human Rights]] says

{{quote|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.|[http://www.unhchr.ch/huridocda/huridoca.nsf/AllSymbols/252DFB6FB197D3C4802568DC0056A92C/$File/G0015686.doc?OpenElement 56th session record of the Economic and Social Council of the UN Commission on Human Rights] 13 April 2000}}

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 8 years of labor camps and after the release was ordered to stay in Siberia.<ref>[https://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30E14F638590C718DDDAD0894D0494D81&n=Top%2fNews%2fWorld%2fCountries%20and%20Territories%2fRussia "Japan's Blossoms Soothe a P.O.W. Lost in Siberia"], ''[[New York Times]]'', 12 April 1998</ref>

Tetsuro Ahiko is the last remaining Japanese POW living in Kazakhstan.<ref>{{cite news | first = Sarah | last = Noorbakhsh | title = The last Japanese man remaining in Kazakhstan: A Kafkian tale of the plight of a Japanese POW in the Soviet Union | date = 7 February 2011 | url = http://www.japansubculture.com/the-last-japanese-man-remaining-in-kazakhstan-a-kafkian-tale-of-the-plight-of-a-japanese-pow-in-the-soviet-union/ | work=Japan Subculture Research Center | accessdate =21 February 2011}}</ref>

==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 [[glastnost]] 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,<ref name=zagor/> and the topic has been discussed in the press.

Japanese POWs have become the subject of the historians of [[Siberia]] and the [[Russian Far East]], who gained access to local archives of [[NKVD]]/MVD and [[CPSU]]<ref>[http://mion.isu.ru/pub/sib-japan/3.htm Internment of Japanese in the USSR in Soviet and Russian historiography] {{ru icon}}</ref> 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.<ref name=zagor/>

In the 2000s, several books about Japanese POWs were published in Russia.<ref>[[Elena Kasatonova|Kasatonova E.L.]] (2003) "Japanese POW in the USSR: A Big Game of Great Powers" (''Yaponskiye voyennnoplennye v SSSR: Bolshaya igra velekikh derzhav'') ISBN 5-89282-218-4 {{ru icon}}</ref><ref>Bondarenko, E. Yu. (2002) "Foreign POWs in the Russian Far East, 1914–1956" ISBN 5-7444-1326-X {{ru icon}}</ref><ref>Kasatonova, E. L. (2005) "The Last Prisoners of the World War II: Little Known Pages of the Russia-Japan Relations" ISBN 5-89282-258-3 {{ru icon}}</ref>

About 2,000 memoirs of Japanese POWs in the Soviet Union have been published in Japan.<ref name=kuzn>[http://russia-japan.nm.ru/kuznetsov02.htm Russia in the Eyes of Japanese Internees] {{ru icon}}</ref>

== In fiction ==

The Japanese television drama Fumou Chitai (2009) is a fictional account of the experiences of a POW after returning to Japan.

A dramatisation of experiences as a Soviet POW form a portion of the latter part of the epic movie trilogy, [[The Human Condition (film trilogy)|The Human Condition]], by Masaki Kobayashi.

Kiuchi Nobuo reported his experiences about Soviet camps in his [http://kiuchi.jpn.org/en/nobindex.htm "The Notes of Japanese soldier in USSR"] online comic series.

The South Korean movie [[My Way (2011 film)|''My Way'' (2011)]] also shows the treatment of Japanese and Japanese-recruited Koreans in Soviet POW camps.

==See also==
*[[Japanese prisoners of war in World War II]]
*[[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==

{{reflist}}

==Further reading==
*"Japanese POW in [[Primorsky Krai|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. {{ru icon}}
**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.

==External links==
*[http://kiuchi.jpn.org/en/nobindex.htm The Notes of Japanese soldier in USSR]
*[http://www.ishiikazumasa.com/gwife.b/gwife/senryaku/hikiage_keiihyo.htm Historical time table of Japanese prisoners returning in 1945 – 1958] (in Japanese) (ソ連地域の引揚経緯表)
*[http://www.japansociety.org.uk/20530/japanese-pows-in-siberia-unfinished-tragedy Japanese POWs in Siberia]

{{World War II}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Japanese Prisoners Of War In The Soviet Union}}
[[Category:Japanese prisoners of war|*Soviet Union]]
[[Category:World War II prisoners of war held by the Soviet Union|*Japan]]
[[Category:Military history of Japan during World War II]]
[[Category:Mongolian People's Republic]]
[[Category:Military history of Kazakhstan]]
[[Category:Military history of Uzbekistan]]
[[Category:Unfree labor during World War II]]
[[Category:Unfree labor in the Soviet Union]]
[[Category:Japan–Soviet Union relations]]

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