MOSCOW. (Anatoly Koshkin for RIA Novosti). -- Who was it that suggested using Japanese prisoners of war (POWs) to restore the Soviet economy after World War II?
Incredible though it may seem, it was the court of the Japanese emperor that came up with the idea.
The entry of the Soviet Union into the war against Japan can be seen as the Soviet government meeting its obligations to the Allies. However, Japan still claims that it was a treacherous act that contravened the Soviet-Japanese neutrality pact signed in April 1941. Japan also accuses the Soviet Union of illegally interning the men and officers of the Kwantung Army, which was routed by Soviet troops in August 1945.
This version of events has been included in "revised" Japanese history textbooks; evidently their authors want to convince the younger generation that militarist Japan was not an aggressor, but in fact "a liberator" who brought "civilization" to Asian nations. The authors of these books blame other countries for the war, saying that they failed to understand Japan's "peace-loving" nature. They say that one such country was the Soviet Union, which ostensibly posed a "permanent threat" to Japan. It is against this background that the "internment problem" is misrepresented.
The notion of internment was introduced so as to present Japanese men and officers not as POWs who had surrendered to the winning side, but as people who had laid down their arms on the orders of the emperor.
In international law, internment means the forcible detention by a belligerent of the citizens (but not armed forces) of another belligerent, or the detention by a neutral state of belligerent armed forces.
During WWII the Soviet authorities interned the crews of American bombers that made forced landings in the Soviet Union. Since the United States was an ally in the war against Nazi Germany, the internee status of the American pilots was a legal formality. Of course, the Americans were quickly sent home.
When the Soviet government proclaimed war on Japan on August 8, 1945, the Japanese servicemen became "belligerent armed forces." Therefore, following the end of hostilities, they were regarded not as internees but as prisoners of war. This was in compliance with international law, and was also how Japan itself saw the issue.
Upholding the "internment" version of events, Yasuzo Aoki, executive president of the Japanese National Association of the Forcibly Interned, claims, "We should not be called prisoners of war, but internees, as we were sent to Siberia temporarily. We toiled without payment there and now we would like to get what is our due."
According to this version, the men and officers of the Kwantung Army, who had capitulated, should not be regarded as servicemen taken prisoner while fighting the Red Army. Instead, they should be seen in the same light as the Soviet civilians, mostly young girls, who were sent to forced labor camps in Germany. It is extremely hard to accept this warped logic.
Nevertheless, in the 1990s, the Russian authorities almost accepted the Japanese version of the fate of the POWs. Before visiting Japan in November 1993, Russian President Boris Yeltsin said, "To us Russians, the crimes of Stalin are a giant black hole into which history was thrown. The Japanese are almost as deeply upset about the Siberian camps... as they are about the tragedy of Hiroshima. The Americans asked for the forgiveness of the Japanese long ago. But we have not asked them..."
When Yeltsin went to Tokyo and asked that his country be forgiven for keeping Japanese POWs in labor camps, he evidently did not know that the U.S. government had never officially asked forgiveness for incinerating hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He did not know that the idea of using POWs to restore the war-ravaged Soviet economy had been advanced not by Stalin, but by the Japanese emperor's inner circle.
In summer 1945, the Japanese leadership decided to send Prince Konoe Fumimaro, three times Japanese premier, to Moscow as a special imperial envoy. Japan had come up with a plan to "voluntarily" return South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands to the Soviet Union (both of which were former Russian territories). In return, it wanted the Soviet Union to remain neutral and not enter the war in the Far East on the side of Great Britain and the U.S.
Before going to Moscow, Prince Fumimaro and his adviser, Lieutenant General Koji Sakai, compiled The Principles of Holding Peace Talks. The document enumerated the concessions Japan could make in return for a promise by Moscow not to enter the war. "We will demobilize the armed forces deployed abroad and take measures to withdraw them home. If this proves impossible, we will agree to keep the personnel in the places of their current deployment," the Principles said. "Their use as labor force can be offered by way of reparations."
We can assume that the Soviet government received this proposal and took it into account when it decided to use Japanese POWs as a labor force in the Soviet Union.
American researcher Herbert P. Bix, who included the document in his book "Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan," writes that the idea of interning Japanese POWs and using them as a labor force to restore the Soviet economy (at Siberian camps) was originated not in Moscow, but by the inner circle of the Japanese emperor.
In view of the above, President Yeltsin's supplication during his audience with Hirohito's son, Emperor Akihito, that Japan forgive Russia seems odd, at the very least.
While accusing the Soviet Union of keeping POWs in labor camps, the Japanese propaganda machine makes scant mention of the internment of 112,000 ethnic Japanese in the U.S., 78,000 of whom were American citizens.
In February 1942, the following instructions appeared throughout the U.S. West Coast: "Instructions to all persons of Japanese ancestry. ...All persons of Japanese ancestry, both alien and non-alien, will be evacuated. ...The size and number of packages is limited to that which can be carried by the individual or family group."
By an act of Congress passed in 1942, the people to be deported were defined as anyone with at least "one-sixteenth of Japanese blood."
Escorted by troops, all Japanese, including children, were evacuated to 13 relocation camps. The camps were in remote areas where the climate was harsh. It was only in 1986 that the U.S. Court of Appeals admitted that the Japanese who lived in these camps until the end of the war had not represented a danger to national security.
Those who are still outraged by the use of Japanese POWs as a labor force in the Soviet Union, should recall the 700,000 Koreans who were forced to work in Japanese mines. And these people were not even servicemen - they were civilians.
Russian lobbyists for the Japanese Association of the Forcibly Interned demand that the problem of Japanese POWs be settled. This is ridiculous. The problem was solved by the Japan-Soviet Joint Declaration of 1956, which re-established normal diplomatic relations between the two countries. Clause 6 of the declaration reads, "The U.S.S.R. and Japan shall mutually abandon all claims on the part of the state, its organizations and citizens that have arisen as a result of the war since August 9, 1945."
Furthermore, when signing the agreement ending the state of war, the Soviet Union generously declined from demanding reparations or making any other material claims against Japan. This means that the Japanese do not have a legal right to demand any "compensation".
It is to be hoped that 60 years after the end of the war, Japan will at long last admit the futility of its policy of endlessly making claims against Russia. Otherwise, we will remain prisoners of mutual accusations and resentment, never approaching the era of good-neighborliness which both nations need.
Anatoly Koshkin is a Doctor of History and a professor at the Oriental University
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and may not necessarily represent the opinions of the editorial board.
