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https://www.japansociety.org.uk/review?review=302

Japanese POWs in Siberia, Unfinished Tragedy [シベリア抑留 ― 未完の 悲劇]
Japanese POWs in Siberia, Unfinished Tragedy [シベリア抑留 ― 未完の 悲劇]
By Toshio Kurihara [栗原 俊雄], Iwanami Shinsho [岩波新書], 2009, 211 pages, 735 yen, ISBN-10: 4004312078

Review by Fumiko Halloran

On 9 August 1945, six days before Japan’s surrender to the Allied forces in World War II, the Soviet Army began a massive attack on Japan’s Kwantung Army [関東軍] in Manchuria [満州国] in northeast China. Some 1.6 million Soviet soldiers, 5000 tanks and 5000 planes attacked a Japanese army that had 700,000 soldiers, 200 tanks, and 200 airplanes. In Manchuria, governed by Japan, were 1.5 million Japanese civilians who had migrated there. The Soviet attacks and the ensuing collapse of the Kwantung Army resulted in chaos. The Soviets killed and raped civilians and looted their homes and shops while Japanese soldiers were imprisoned and put into hard labour, mostly in Siberia. The number of POWs was initially estimated at 600,000 but recent disclosures from Soviet archives have kept revising the number upward. While this experience is often summarized as “the POWs in Siberia,” as majority of camps were in Siberia, but in reality there were 2,000 hard labour camps for Japanese POWs spread all over the Soviet Union.

I use the term “prisoners of war” or “POW” but the Japanese word is usually “抑留者” or “detainees.” The Japanese themselves refused to be called prisoners, reflecting the Japanese Imperial Army’s disdain for being captured. The army indoctrinated soldiers to choose death in honour, not shame as captives, and gave them no training on how to act as prisoners.