After World War II, the war between the Soviet Union and Japan ended in a victory on the part of the Soviet Union. In this war, the Soviet Union quickly defeated the Japanese Kwantung Army with a thunderbolt, capturing more than 600,000 Japanese soldiers.
However, these Japanese prisoners of war, who once dominated Northeast China, did not receive the expected preferential treatment in the Soviet Union, and were sent directly to Siberia in harsh conditions for hard labor.
Hard years in Siberia
Siberia, a vast and cold land, is known for its extreme natural environment. For the newly captured Japanese soldiers, this is undoubtedly synonymous with hell. With temperatures as low as minus 68 degrees Celsius, cold winds, and snow cover, every moment is a test of life and death.
The Soviet side treated these Japanese prisoners of war extremely harshly. They were required to spend long winters in improvised huts, still dressed in the meager summer clothes of August in the Northeast, with no warm stoves, adequate food and even basic sanitation.
In order to prevent someone from falling asleep due to the cold, the POWs had to shout loudly every once in a while to remind each other.
Under such conditions, hunger and cold became the worst enemies of the Japanese prisoners of war. The Soviet logistics management provided only one-third of the number of people, and many Japanese prisoners of war were emaciated by hunger, and there was even a tragedy of cannibalism. According to the recollections of prisoner of war Mitsuzo Okamoto, in order to satisfy their hunger, they had to gnaw on tree bark and eat wild vegetables, but even so, groups of people still collapsed from hunger and cold.
The struggle between life and death
After the first winter, according to official statistics, 55,000 Japanese prisoners of war died of cold and hunger. In a prisoner-of-war camp in Siberia, 500 of the 1,500 Japanese lost their lives in a single winter. Such tragedies are common throughout Siberia, where about 200,000 Japanese prisoners of war are buried.
For these Japanese prisoners of war, survival became the greatest luxury. They longed to be able to escape the land of death and return to their homeland. However, the Soviet side did not give them such an opportunity.
Instead, they are forced to perform all kinds of heavy physical labor, such as digging coal, building railways, and building hydropower stations. During these labors, the Japanese POWs displayed astonishing discipline and industriousness, greatly surpassing those of Germany and other countries.
3. Reform through Labor and Socialist Ideology
While using Japanese prisoners of war for labor reform, the Soviet Union also paid attention to instilling in them the superiority of socialism. The ideas of Marxism and Leninism became compulsory courses for prisoners of war. Through their studies, many Japanese POWs began to shift their worldview and values, establishing close relationships with the Soviets.
It is worth mentioning that due to the continuous war, the proportion of men in the Soviet Union declined, and some of the outstanding Japanese prisoners of war were selected to marry Soviet women. These transnational marriages relieved the demographic pressure of the Soviet Union to a certain extent, and also provided a way for Japanese prisoners of war to survive.
However, for these Japanese POWs, their marriages to Soviet female soldiers were not all happy, and their marriages faced great challenges due to issues such as cultural differences and language barriers.
Regression and legacy
Beginning in 1950, the Soviet Union returned some Japanese prisoners of war. However, this figure is far from the statistics of the Japanese side. Many of the archives of Japanese prisoners of war in the Soviet Union were not properly kept or returned to Japan, leaving a huge gap in the understanding of this period of history on the part of the Japanese side.
epilogue
The Soviet Union's treatment of Japanese prisoners of war also attracted widespread attention from the international community. Many considered the Soviet Union's practices to be too cruel and inhumane and violated international law and humanitarian principles. However, there are also those who believe that this is an inevitable consequence of the war, and that the Soviet Union is simply using these prisoners of war to make up for the shortage of domestic labor and promote economic development.
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