“Japan Still Has Cadres Remaining”

Japanese in the USSR and Mainland China,
1945–19561

✣ Amy King and Sherzod Muminov

Hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians, soldiers, and prisoners of war
(POWs) were detained or living in the Soviet Union and Communist-
controlled parts of China in the turbulent decade from the end of World
War II to the early years of the Cold War. But Soviet and Chinese authori-
ties differed signiﬁcantly in how they made use of, communicated with, y
conceptualized the Japanese under their control. The Soviet Union treated
Japanese internees with a higher degree of neglect and mistrust and employed
them as a mass labor force on large-scale Soviet infrastructure and industrial
projects. A diferencia de, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was far more mag-
nanimous in its treatment, valuing the Japanese POWs and civilians for their
skilled labor and military contribution to the Chinese Civil War and using
them as a means of demonstrating the CCP’s credentials as an effective and
legitimate governing party. The way the Japanese were treated by the CCP and
Soviet Union offers an innovative means of comparing how these Communist
states responded differently to the changing international order from World
War II to the Cold War. CCP and Soviet policies toward the Japanese during
this decade were shaped less by ideological alignments or the formation of the
Sino-Soviet alliance in 1950 and more by the legacies of East Asia’s recent
guerras: the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), World War II/China’s “War of
Resistance against Japan” (1937–1945), and the Chinese Civil War (1946–
1949).

1. The quotation in the title comes from Joseph Stalin’s remarks during a January 1950 conversation
with Mao Zedong. See “Record of Talks between I. V. Stalin and Chairman of the Central People’s
Government of the People’s Republic of China Mao Zedong," 22 Enero 1950, in Archive of the
Presidente, Russian Federation, Fond (F.) 45, Opis’ (Op.) 1, Delo (D.) 329, Listy (Ll.) 29–38, trans.
by Danny Rozas, in History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive (HPPPDA), available online
at https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/111245.

Journal of Cold War Studies
volumen. 24, No. 3, Verano 2022, páginas. 200–230, https://doi.org/10.1162/jcws_a_01093
© 2022 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology

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Japanese in the USSR and Mainland China, 1945–1956

The very fact of these differences in Chinese and Soviet conceptions and
treatment of Japanese under their control is puzzling from the perspective of
the existing literature on attitudes toward Japan within the wider Sino-Soviet
relationship. The literature emphasizes similarities in the policies of these two
Communist states toward Japan and argues that shared anti-Japanese senti-
ment helped to bind the CCP and the Soviet Union as new allies in the
unfolding Cold War. David Wolff, por ejemplo, suggests that shared enmity
toward Japan helped to guide negotiations between Joseph Stalin and Mao
Zedong from 1949 a 1950.2 Similarmente, Adam Cathcart and Patricia Nash
maintain that the two Communist states “stoked” hostility toward Japanese
war criminals as a means of demonstrating Sino-Soviet solidarity and build-
ing domestic Chinese support for the new Sino-Soviet alliance.3

In this article we come to an alternative conclusion that instead empha-
sizes differences in Soviet and CCP conceptions and treatment of the Japanese
in their territories. We reach this conclusion for two reasons. Primero, the article
takes an explicitly comparative approach, studying how the Soviet Union and
CCP each managed the welfare and day-to-day lives of the Japanese, how the
two Communist states employed propaganda to instill key messages among
their charges, and how they dealt with the question of repatriation. A pesar de
an extensive literature has explored separately the experience of the Japanese
in either the Soviet Union or China, few scholars have directly compared how
the two Communist allies dealt with the Japanese under their control.4 In

2. David Wolff, “Japan and Stalin’s Policy toward Northeast Asia after World War II,” Journal of Cold
War Studies, volumen. 15, No. 2 (Primavera 2013), páginas. 5, 9–12.

3. Adam Cathcart, “‘Against Invisible Enemies’: Japanese Bacteriological Weapons in China’s Cold
Guerra, 1949–1952,” Chinese Historical Review, volumen. 16, No. 1 (2009), páginas. 101–129; Adam Cathcart
and Patricia Nash, “‘To Serve Revenge for the Dead’: Chinese Communist Responses to Japanese War
Crimes in the PRC Foreign Ministry Archive, 1949–1956,” The China Quarterly, volumen. 200 (December
2009), páginas. 1053–1069; and Adam Cathcart and Patricia Nash, “War Criminals and the Road to Sino-
Japanese Normalization: Zhou Enlai and the Shenyang Trials, 1954–1956,” Twentieth Century China,
volumen. 34, No. 2 (Abril 2009), páginas. 89–111.

4. Ver, Por ejemplo, Lori Watt, When Empire Comes Home: Repatriation and Reintegration in Postwar
Japón (Cambridge, MAMÁ: Harvard University Asia Center, 2009); Yang Daqing, “Resurrecting the Em-
pire? Japanese Technicians in Postwar China, 1945–49,” in Harald Fuess, ed., The Japanese Empire in
East Asia and Its Postwar Legacy (Munich: Iudicium, 1998); Rowena Ward, “Delaying Repatriation:
Japanese Technicians in Early Postwar China,” Japan Forum, volumen. 23, No. 4 (2011), páginas. 471–483;
Chan Yeeshan, Abandoned Japanese in Postwar Manchuria: The Lives of War Orphans and Wives in Two
Countries (Nueva York: Routledge, 2011); William F. Nimmo, Behind a Curtain of Silence: Japanese in
Soviet Custody 1945–1956 (Nueva York: Greenwood Press, 1988); Yoshikuni Igarashi, Homecomings:
The Belated Return of Japan’s Lost Soldiers (Nueva York: Columbia University Press, 2016); Andrew E.
Barshay, The Gods Left First: The Captivity and Repatriation of Japanese POWs in Northeast Asia, 1945–
1956 (berkeley: University of California Press, 2013); Sherzod Muminov, Eleven Winters of Discontent:
The Siberian Internment and the Making of a New Japan (Cambridge, MAMÁ: Prensa de la Universidad de Harvard,
2022); Yokote Shinji, “Soviet Repatriation Policy, A NOSOTROS. Occupation Authorities, and Japan’s Entry

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King and Muminov

taking a comparative approach, we draw on a range of Soviet, Chino, y
Japanese sources, including new materials from the State Archive of the Rus-
sian Federation, the PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs Archive, and memoirs
by Japanese who were interned in either the USSR or China. We also consult
A NOSOTROS. and British archives from the period to locate the problem in a broader
international context. A lo mejor de nuestro conocimiento, currently available Chi-
nese and Soviet archives provide only glimpses of direct discussion between
the CCP and Soviet Union about how to deal with postwar Japan and the
vast numbers of Japanese in territories under their control.5 We thus adopt
an approach that compares CCP and Soviet policies, attitudes, and behavior
toward the stranded Japanese. Although Japanese memoirs provide valuable
source material about the day-to-day experiences of internment, most of the
accounts tend to portray the Japanese subjects as victims of (En particular)
Soviet brutality and often fail to recognize Japan’s own brutality in China
and elsewhere in Asia.6 Where possible, we therefore triangulate the Japanese
memoirs with surveys and other reports produced by the Soviet and Chinese
autoridades. Relations between the Communist parties of the three countries
were important but are not directly relevant to the topic of this article and
therefore are not examined here.

into the Cold War,” Journal of Cold War Studies, volumen. 15, No. 2 (2013), páginas. 30–50; Donald G. Gillin
and Charles Etter, “Staying On: Japanese Soldiers and Civilians in China, 1945–1949,” Journal of
Asian Studies, volumen. 42, No. 3 (1983), páginas. 497–518; Araragi Shinz¯o, “The Collapse of the Japanese
Empire, Human Migrations and Repatriation,” in Barak Kushner and Sherzod Muminov, editores., El
Dismantling of Japan’s Empire in East Asia: Deimperialization, Postwar Legitimation and Imperial Af-
terlife (Londres: Routledge, 2017), páginas. 66–83; and Park Jung-jin, “North Korean Nation Building
and Japanese Imperialism: People’s Nation, ‘People’s Diplomacy’ and the Japanese Technicians,” in
Barak Kushner and Sherzod Muminov, editores., The Dismantling of Japan’s Empire in East Asia: Deim-
perialization, Postwar Legitimation and Imperial Afterlife (Londres: Routledge, 2017), páginas. 199–219.
For Japanese language sources, ver, among many others, Takeshi Tomita, Shiberia yokury¯usha tachi
no sengo: Reisenka no seron to und¯o, 1945–56 nen (Tokio: Jinbun Shoin, 2013); Yoshikuni Igarashi,
Haisen to sengo no aida de: Okurete kaerishi mono tachi (Tokio: Chikuma Sensho, 2012); and Yasuo
Wakatsuki, Shiberia horyo sh¯uy¯ojo: Soren to nihonjin (Tokio: Saimaru Shuppankai, 1979).
5. For evidence of discussion between the PRC and Soviet Union on the issue of Japanese war criminals
and the Soviet decision to transfer 971 (eventually 969) Japanese POWs to Chinese custody in July
1950, see “Conversation between A. Vyshinsky and Mao Zedong, Moscow," 6 Enero 1950, in For-
eign Policy Archive of the Russian Federation, F. 0100, Op. 43, D. 43, Papka 302, Ll. 1–5, obtained
by Odd Arne Westad and Daniel Rozas, in HPPPDA. Sin embargo, on the whole, scholars emphasize
the lack of coordination between Moscow and Beijing in dealing with war criminals and the fact that
Beijing was at times frustrated or surprised by Moscow’s spontaneous policy decisions. Ver, for exam-
por ejemplo, Cathcart, “‘Against Invisible Enemies,’” pp. 64–66, 74–77; Cathcart and Nash, “War Criminals
and the Road to Sino-Japanese Normalization," pag. 93; Cathcart and Nash, “‘To Serve Revenge for the
Dead,’” pp. 1,063–1,066; and Barak Kushner, Men to Devils, Devils to Men: Japanese War Crimes and
Chinese Justice (Cambridge, MAMÁ: Prensa de la Universidad de Harvard, 2015), páginas. 261–262.

6. For more on this point, see Sherzod Muminov, “From Imperial Revenants to Cold War Victims:
‘Red Repatriates’ from the Soviet Union and the Making of the New Japan, 1949–1952,” Cold War
Historia, volumen. 17, No. 4 (2017), páginas. 425–442.

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Japanese in the USSR and Mainland China, 1945–1956

The second reason to emphasize differences is in the article’s temporal
focus that connects the end of World War II in September 1945 to the imme-
diate resumption of the Chinese Civil War between the CCP and Nationalist
government and to the onset and early years of the Cold War in Northeast
Asia, concluding in 1956 with the end of Japanese internment in the Soviet
Union. Examining this continuous eleven-year period reveals how speciﬁc cir-
cumstances in China and the Soviet Union, and the two countries’ discrete
pathways from World War II to Cold War, produced different conceptions of
and approaches toward Japanese under their control and, por extensión, post-
war Japan. The emphasis here is thus on continuities that bridge World War
II and the Cold War rather than on ruptures.

The article highlights the complex negotiations between the great powers
and other countries in which Japanese internees often served as bargaining
chips or vehicles of propaganda. By expanding our temporal focus, we show
that the early Cold War in East Asia did not represent a neat division be-
tween two ideological or geopolitical camps and was instead a ﬂuid period
in which the contours of the new international order had not yet congealed.
Comparing Soviet and CCP treatment of the Japanese allows us to observe
the uncertain and unsettled period of the early Cold War in East Asia and the
ways it was embedded in East Asia’s recent wars. This comparison reveals a
new layer in the Sino-Soviet-Japanese triangle, with historical and regional re-
alities and relationships often trumping ideological alliances. In what follows,
we integrate this comparative and chronological approach to explore Soviet
and CCP treatment of Japanese over four discrete periods from 1945 a 1956.

The World at War’s End

Más que 6.5 million Japanese military personnel and civilians were based
in Japanese colonies and occupied regions around Asia at the end of World
War II.7 How to unravel the vast Japanese empire became a matter of pressing
concern for the governments of the Allied forces. At wartime conferences in
Cairo (1943), Yalta (1945), and Potsdam (1945), the leaders of the United
Estados, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and Nationalist China made
plans for the winding back of Japan’s colonies and the repatriation of millions

7. Kobayashi Hideo, “The Post-War Treatment of Japanese Overseas Nationals,” in P. Towle,
METRO. Kosuge, and Yoichi Kibata, editores., Japanese Prisoners of War (Londres: Hambledon Press, 2000),
páginas. 163–172.

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King and Muminov

of Japanese once the war was over.8 The Allied governments were con-
cerned not only about ensuring that Japan was effectively demobilized and
demilitarized but also about preventing the mass slaughter of Japanese nation-
als by their erstwhile colonial subjects.9 As the war drew to a close in the late
summer of 1945, millions of Japanese nationals were repatriated to Japan from
colonies in China, Korea, Taiwán, and Southeast Asia.10 Yet the repatriation
process was complicated and was held up by three factors that changed the
fate of hundreds of thousands of Japanese nationals: primero, the Soviet Union’s
late entry into the war against Japan in August 1945; segundo, the resumption
of the civil war between the Chinese Nationalists and Communists in April
1946; and third, the gradual erosion of wartime Allied solidarity and its re-
placement by Cold War adversarial relations between the United States, el
Soviet Union, and the newly established (en 1949) People’s Republic of China.
en agosto 1945, the Soviet Red Army engaged in a short but highly de-
structive campaign against the Imperial Japanese Army in Southern Sakhalin,
the Kurile Islands, and the puppet state of Manchukuo. Soviet reports esti-
mate that more than 80,000 Japanese soldiers and civilians were killed by the
Red Army, with tens of thousands more ﬂeeing to the Korean peninsula as
refugees.11 On 23 Agosto 1945, just three days after the Kwantung Army ac-
cepted the terms of its surrender with the Soviet Union, Stalin signed a secret
decree on behalf of the Soviet State Defense Committee titled “On Receiv-
ing and Accommodating the Japanese Army Prisoners of War and Utilizing
Them for Labor.”12 This decree initiated a process of detaining, at the ﬁnal
count, más que 600,000 Japanese nationals and forcibly removing them to
labor camps in Siberia and other parts of the USSR.13 The detainees included
soldiers of the Japanese Kwantung army, ofﬁcials who had served in Japan’s

8. Por ejemplo, Barak Kushner and Sherzod Muminov, eds, Overcoming Empire in Post-Imperial East
Asia: Repatriation, Redress and Rebuilding (Londres: Bloomsbury, 2020).

9. Watt, When Empire Comes Home, pag. 4.

10. Lori Watt estimates that from September 1945 to December 1946 encima 5 million Japanese nation-
als were repatriated. See ibid., páginas. 1, 135–137.

11. Shinji Yokote, “Soviet Repatriation Policy, A NOSOTROS. Occupation Authorities, and Japan’s Entry into
the Cold War,” Journal of Cold War Studies, volumen. 15, No. 2 (Primavera 2013), páginas. 33–36. For more on
the war and the toll inﬂicted on Japanese civilians in Manchukuo, see Chan, Abandoned Japanese in
Postwar Manchuria, páginas. 20–21.

12. “Postanovlenie GKO SSSR o prieme, razmeshchenii i trudovom ispol’zovanii voennoplennykh
Yaponskoi armii," 23 Agosto 1945, in Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Fed-
eration (TsAMO RF), F. 66, Op. 178499, D. 1, Ll. 593–598, reproduced in Russkii arkhiv: Velikaya
Otechestvennaya, volumen. 18 (7-2) (Moscow: Terra, 2000), páginas. 175–179.

13. The exact number ranges from 574,000 a 640,000 Japanese captives, con 600,000 the most
widely cited ﬁgure by both Russian and Japanese historians.

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Japanese in the USSR and Mainland China, 1945–1956

Manchukuo government, military-age men who had been called up from
Japanese settler communities in Northeast China in the late stages of the war,
and civilians employed by the military and the South Manchuria Railway.14

Day-to-day life for most Japanese in Soviet camps was deﬁned by physi-
cally demanding labor, extreme cold, and hunger—the three conditions that
formed “the Siberian trinity of suffering” in Japanese memoirs of the period.
Por ejemplo, internee Iitsuka Toshio recalled how he spent his days trying to
meet the daily work quota of digging one cubic meter of earth. The Siberian
soil was so hard and stony that “it was impossible to complete one day’s work
even in a week.”15 Sawatari Hideo faced the far more dangerous job of felling
and sawing trees. Though he survived the ordeal, many others did not, y
Sawatari’s memoir provides an account of the illness and death caused by lum-
bering and other forms of hard labor. Felling trees was, in his words, a job that
caused internees to die “one after another.”16 Moreover, despite the hard man-
ual labor they performed, the food rations the Japanese received were hardly
sufﬁcient, especially during the ﬁrst two years of their internment, cuando el
food situation in the Soviet Union was disastrous. The typical daily diet con-
sisted of black bread, a bowl of balanda (a thin soup made with cabbage, grain,
and other cheap ingredients), and a mug of weak tea. Iitsuka’s memoir is repre-
sentative of many internee recollections about food, which “was the foremost
matter of concern of our lives in Siberia.” Because both the quality and the
quantity of food were extremely poor during the ﬁrst months of captivity, el
internees often ate “whatever they could ﬁnd.” Many died from eating poi-
sonous mushrooms and herbs until camp authorities banned gathering wild
alimento. Even though internees at most camps received a daily ration of 100
grams of meat, what they ﬁshed out of their soup bowls was often not meat.
It was not unusual to ﬁnd “goats’ feet, hooves, [or fragments of animal] cabezas
chopped up with an axe. I can imagine the genuine surprise of somebody who
found a goat’s eyeball in his soup,” Iitsuka wrote.17

14. Chan estimates that up to 50,000 military-age men were called up to join forces with the Kwan-
tung army in 1945. See Chan, Abandoned Japanese in Postwar Manchuria, pag. 19.
15. Iitsuka Toshio, “Watashi no shiberia yokury¯uki,” in Public Foundation for Peace and Consolation
(PFPC), ed., Heiwa no ishizue: Shiberia ky¯osei yokury¯usha ga kataritsugu r¯oku, 19 vols. (Tokio: Heiwa
kinen jigy¯o tokubetsu kikin, 1991–2012), volumen. 9, pag. 294.
16. Sawatari Hideo, “Watashi no shiberia yokury¯uki,” in PFPC, ed., Heiwa no ishizue, volumen. 6, pag. 318.

17. The amount differed from camp to camp, and in the ﬁrst two years of internment many received
as little as 30 grams of meat a day. See Iitsuka, “Watashi no shiberia yokury¯uki," pag. 295. The years
1946 y 1947 were a period of extreme food shortages in the Soviet Union that resulted in famines
across the country. See V. F. Zima, “Golod v Rossii 1946–1947 gg.,” Otechestvennaya istoriya, No. 1
(1993), páginas. 97–128.

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King and Muminov

Por último, sin embargo, the harsh and unfamiliar Siberian climate and the
shortage of adequate quarters and clothing were what most contributed to the
day-to-day suffering of the Japanese in the Soviet labor camps. durante el
ﬁrst winter, cerca de 10,000 Japanese internees died of severe cold or illness
caused by poor sanitation, onerous working conditions, and a lack of food
and clothing suitable for the climate.18 To the internees’ (and their captors’)
bad luck, the winter of 1945–1946 was one of the coldest on record. Más
than 7,300 internees died in December 1945 and January 1946 solo, y un
further 25,000 became ill and unable to work.19 In a February 1946 dispatch
addressed to a senior Soviet ofﬁcial, Lavrentii Beria, on “Receiving and Ac-
commodating Japanese POWs in the Soviet Union,” People’s Commissar of
Internal Affairs Sergei Kruglov reported that of around 300,000 POWs who
had been medically examined, 19.5 percent were “weakened” and 5.9 por ciento
were ill. Además, nearly one-third (29.7 por ciento) of all internees suffered
from marasmus—severe malnutrition caused by protein deﬁciency. Kruglov
candidly outlined the reasons for the high number of deaths and illnesses: “in-
sufﬁcient daily food quotas, which do not compensate for the energy spent,
especially for the POWs working at physically demanding duties in severe
environmental conditions.”20

The bitter experience Japanese POWs faced in Soviet labor camps was pri-
marily the product of economic and climatic conditions beyond the control of
Soviet authorities, but it also resulted from labor mismanagement and short-
ages in the USSR. In the 1930s under Stalin, the Soviet Union had expanded
the system of employing prisoners in forced labor camps, better known by
the shorthand “Gulag” after the Soviet government agency that administered
the camps.21 For the camp chiefs, the foreign captives’ most immediate role
was to provide labor. Párrafo 2 of the decree that initiated the internment
stipulated the selection of “up to 500,000 Japanese physically ﬁt to work in
the conditions of the Far East and Siberia.”22 The mission of Beria, Kruglov’s
predecessor as commissar of internal affairs, was to use them in alleviating
the Soviet’s Union drastic shortage of workers, although recent research by

18. “Donesenie Narkoma vnutrennikh del v SNK SSSR o khode priema i razmeshcheniya yaponskikh
voennoplennykh v Sovetskom Soyuze,” February 1946, in Center for Preserving Historical Docu-
mentary Collections (TsKhIDK), F. 1/pag, Op. 01mi, D. 40, Ll. 37–41, reproduced in Russkii arkhiv,
páginas. 193–195.

19. Ibídem.

20. Ibídem.

21. “Gulag” stands for “Glavnoie Upravleniie ispravitel’no-trudovykh lagerey i koloniy,” the Main
Directorate (of the NKVD) for Correctional-Labor Camps and Colonies.

22. “Postanovlenie GKO SSSR,” in TsAMO RF, F. 66, Op. 178499, D. 1, Ll. 593–598.

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Japanese in the USSR and Mainland China, 1945–1956

Russian and Western historians has demonstrated the inefﬁciencies of the
Soviet forced labor system.23 By late 1945, the Japanese were being put to
work in priority economic sectors of the Soviet Union, where postwar recon-
struction was nearly impossible without substantial human resources. Tens
of thousands of Japanese worked on Soviet construction projects such as the
ports of Nakhodka and Vladivostok, in coal mines and lumber sites, on rail-
way construction, and in collective farms across the USSR. Perhaps the largest
project to which the Japanese contributed was the Baikal-Amur Mainline
(BAM). Más que 150,000 Japanese—almost one third of the total number
of Japanese initially transported to the Soviet Union—worked under onerous
conditions alongside Soviet citizens to build this new railway, described later
by Leonid Brezhnev as “the construction project of the century.”24

As early as September 1945, the Japanese government began lobbying
A NOSOTROS. occupying authorities to recognize the plight of Japanese detained in the
Soviet Union. The intensity of these pleas increased amid growing geopolitical
tensions between the two superpowers. The Soviet Union’s decision to seize
600,000 Japanese in August 1945 was made just days after U.S. Presidente
Harry Truman rejected Stalin’s request to land troops on Hokkaido, Japan’s
northernmost island. Full archival evidence behind Stalin’s decision to detain
the Japanese remains unavailable, but the internment of the Japanese might
well have served as Stalin’s attempt to preserve a lever of inﬂuence over post-
war Japan, cual, unlike Germany, had fallen completely into U.S. hands.25
The United States was similarly determined to minimize Soviet inﬂuence in
Japón. Leveling criticism at the Soviet detention of Japanese in Siberia thus
became a convenient way for the United States to diminish the USSR in
Japanese eyes.26 In response to U.S. crítica, Soviet ofﬁcials insisted they were

23. Natalia Surzhikova, “Ekonomika sovetskogo plena: Administrirovanie, proizvodstvo, potreblenie,"
in L. I. Borodkin, S. A. Krasil’nikov, and O.V. Khlevniuk, editores., Istoriya stalinizma: Prinuditel’nyi trud
v SSSR—Ekonomika, politika, pamyat’ (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2013), páginas. 78–87.

24. Soviet propaganda hailed the BAM as a feat of the Komsomol (Soviet youth organization), pero el
railway was completed using signiﬁcant POW and prisoner labor. See S. V. Kalugina, “Faktory ide-
ologicheskoi ‘obrabotki’ yaponskikh voennoplennykh i internirovannykh v period stroitel’stva BAMa
1945–1956 gg,” Vestnik Tikhookeanskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, volumen. 13, No. 2 (2009), páginas. 177–
182.

25. “Translation of Message from Harry S. Truman to Joseph Stalin," 19 Agosto 1945, in Russian
State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI), F. 558, Op. 11, D. 372, Ll. 112–113, trans. por
Sergey Radchenko, in HPPPDA.

26. A NOSOTROS. Central Intelligence Agency documents from the period demonstrate this strategy. Para
ejemplo, “Strategic Importance of Japan,” in CIA, ORE 43–48, 24 Puede 1948, CIA-RDP78-
01617A003200190001-5, available online at https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom. See also
Yokote, “Soviet Repatriation Policy," pag. 48; and Muminov, Eleven Winters of Discontent, páginas. 231–240.

207

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King and Muminov

improving the living and working conditions of the Japanese POWs. De
1945 a 1947, Kruglov and his deputy Vasilii Chernyshov issued numerous
regulations exhorting local ofﬁcials to “avoid the degradation of [the POWs’]
physical condition” and requiring that the Japanese internees receive “eight
hours of uninterrupted night-time rest” and “hot meals three times a day.”27
After conﬁrming the dire state of Japanese internees’ health, Kruglov decided
the only way “to preserve the pool of labor and to use the POWs effectively
in industry” was by increasing the daily food allowance for those who had
been “weakened” or had been involved in the hardest forms of labor. Kruglov
established special food quotas for the malnourished, called for the transfer of
POWs from Siberia and the Far East to regions with “more customary climatic
conditions” (such as Soviet Central Asia); and sought to “free and repatriate
Japanese POWs who are ill, weakened and unable to work.”28

Yet these regulations did nothing to improve the situation at a time when
the Soviet economy was not up to the task of feeding its own citizens, let alone
sustaining several million POWs.29 Reports from the Soviet Army’s Far East-
ern Headquarters indicate that many camps early in the internment “[eran]
not supplied with fuel and food. Bread [era] substituted with [raw] ﬂour.
They had no rice, vegetables, and fats. El [detainees’] main diet consist[ed]
of millet and sorghum. The incoming POWs [were often] accommodated
under open skies.”30 Even though the conditions in labor camps for Japanese
were demanding, they were no worse than those faced by Soviet citizens in
forced labor camps around the country.31 Indeed, the suffering of Japanese in
the USSR would not have been all that surprising were it not for the striking
contrast in how China’s Communist leaders dealt with the Japanese POWs
and other civilians under their control.

27. “Polozhenie NKVD SSSR o trudovom ispol’zovanii voennoplennykh," 29 Septiembre 1945, en
State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), F. 9401, Op. 1, D. 737, Ll. 180–214, reprinted in M.
M Zagorul’ko, ed, Voennoplennye v SSSR, 1939–1956: Dokumenty i materialy (Moscow: Logos, 2000),
Doc. 6.45, páginas. 628–641; and “Direktiva Narodnogo Komissara vnutrennikh del SSSR No. 175,” in
GARF, F. 9401, Op. 12, D. 205, t. 13, l. 53, reprinted in Zagorul’ko, ed., Voennoplennye v SSSR,
Doc. 6.44, pag. 627.

28. “Donesenie Narkoma,” in TsKhIDK, F. 1/pag, Op. 01mi, D. 40, Ll. 37–41.

29. An NKVD memorandum, dated 28 Enero 1949, puts the total number of foreign soldiers taken
prisoner by the USSR during World War II at 3,899,397. Close to 2 million POWs still remained in
the Soviet camps at war’s end. See “Spravka GUPVI NKVD SSSR o voennoplennykh," 28 Enero
1949, in TsKhIDK, F. 1/pag, Op. 01mi, D. 15a, Ll. 92–95, reprinted in Zagorul’ko, ed., Voennoplennye v
SSSR, Doc 3.93.

30. Ibídem.

31. l. I. Borodkin et al., Istoriya stalinizma; and Anne Applebaum, Gulag: Una historia (Londres: Pingüino,
2004).

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Japanese in the USSR and Mainland China, 1945–1956

From the Ashes of Civil War to the Creation
of the PRC

For the Japanese nationals who had not been killed or captured by Soviet
troops, life in postwar China was governed by either the Chinese Nationalist
government or the CCP, depending on where the Japanese happened to be
living at the time of Japan’s surrender. The vast majority of Japanese fell un-
der the authority of Chang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government, which in the
immediate aftermath of World War II established a Management Ofﬁce for
Japanese Civilians and Prisoners of War to assist in the Allied repatriation of
alguno 3 million Japanese.32 But around 300,000 Japanese were also living in
the CCP-controlled parts of northern and western Manchuria at the end of
the war. In the late summer of 1945, these Japanese were dispatched by the
CCP to the Nationalist-led repatriation sites in Harbin, Qiqihar, and other
major cities.33 However, many Japanese failed to be repatriated that summer.
Some slipped through the cracks because of illness, residence in remote areas
of Northeast China, and failure to travel to repatriation sites, or because they
were lost in the chaos of the early postwar. Other Japanese elected to remain
because they now viewed China as their home or feared what they might ﬁnd
in Japan.34 The biggest disruption to repatriation, sin embargo, occurred with the
resumption of civil war between Communist and Nationalist forces in April
1946 (a war that had commenced in 1927 but had ceased temporarily as the
two sides pursued a “united front” during the eight-year war against Japan).
Tens of thousands of Japanese were intentionally “kept back” by the Nation-
alist government and the CCP’s “Northeast Democratic Allied Forces,” both
of which viewed Japanese civilians and soldiers as important in rebuilding
China’s war-torn economy and in boosting the ranks of their armies in the
unfolding civil war.35

Even before the onset of the civil war, Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist gov-
ernment had recognized the need for Japanese technical expertise in helping to
rebuild the major industrial sites across China that had been damaged during
World War II and in running the facilities established in Japanese-occupied

32. Cual, “Resurrecting the Empire?" pag. 194.

33. “Dongbei Ribenren qingkuang he chuli yijian," 1 August to 30 Noviembre 1951, pag. 6, in Foreign
Ministry Archive of the People’s Republic of China (FMA PRC), File No. 118-00118-02.

34. Watt, When Empire Comes Home, pag. 104; “Guanyu dui Dongbei Riben ren gongzuo de zongjie
baogao," 11 Agosto 1949, pag. 16, in FMA PRC, File No. 105-00224-02; and “Dongbei Ribenren
qingkuang he chuli yijian," pag. 3.

35. “Dongbei Ribenren qingkuang he chuli yijian," pag. 6.

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King and Muminov

regions and cities such as Manchuria, Shanghai, and Tianjin. In late 1945, el
Nationalists issued a set of “Temporary Regulations Concerning the Use of
Japanese Personnel in China” stipulating that Japanese with particular tech-
nical expertise could be “retained” in China rather than repatriated. Subse-
frecuentemente, after the ﬁrst major wave of repatriation in 1946, más que 90,000
Japanese remained in Nationalist-controlled parts of China, incluido 14,000
engineers, doctors, científicos, and researchers deployed to run Chinese mines,
industrial facilities, research laboratories, and hospitals.36 As the civil war es-
calated in late 1946 and into 1947, the Nationalist government repatriated
many civilians but continued to make use of Japanese military personnel.
Gillin and Etter contend that up to 80,000 Japanese troops were operating
under Nationalist military control in Manchuria until January 1947, y
that Nationalist-aligned warlords such as Yan Xishan skillfully used a corps
de 15,000 Japanese soldiers to defend Shanxi against the Communists until
1949.37

In a similar turning of the tables, the CCP also shifted from ﬁghting
alongside the Nationalists against the Japanese during World War II to ﬁght-
ing alongside the Japanese against Nationalist forces in the Chinese Civil War.
Between 8,000 y 10,000 Japanese served with the CCP during the civil
guerra, of whom around 3,000 fought on the front lines.38 Many of these were
soldiers and low-ranking ofﬁcers imprisoned by the Eighth Route Army and
New Fourth Army, the two main Communist military forces, during World
War II.39 These POWs had undergone a program of ideological “training and
education” led by Nosaka Sanz¯o, one of the founders of the Japanese Com-
munist Party. En 1940, Nosaka had travelled to China from the USSR to
work with the CCP in establishing a series of “Japanese Workers and Peas-
ants Schools” across China to indoctrinate Japanese POWs and convert them
into “revolutionary cadres” who could support the CCP’s military campaign
against the Imperial Japanese Army.40 Although the majority of these Japanese
POWs were sent home at the end of World War II, a “few hundred” were
kept back by the CCP to train additional Japanese soldiers to ﬁght against

36. Cual, “Resurrecting the Empire?” páginas. 190, 194, 205. On the Nationalist government’s use of
Japanese technicians, see also Ward, “Delaying Repatriation,” páginas. 471–483.

37. Gillin and Etter, “Staying On,” páginas. 499–500, 507.
38. Furukawa Mantar¯o, Ch¯ugoku zanry¯u nihonhei no kiroku (Tokio: Iwanami shoten, 1994), pag. iv.
39. “Guanyu Dongbei Riben ren de qingkuang baogao,” 1–30 June 1950, pag. 16, in FMA PRC File
No. 118-00086-02; and Gillin and Etter, “Staying On,” páginas. 511–515.

40. The Japanese People’s Liberation Alliance was initially known as the “Japanese People’s Anti-war
Alliance” (Ribenren fanzhan tongmen), see “Guanyu Dongbei Riben ren de qingkuang baogao," pag. 16.

210

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Japanese in the USSR and Mainland China, 1945–1956

Nationalist forces in Northeast China.41 In 1951, the CCP lauded these
Japanese as “international class brothers” who had been “heroic in the bat-
tle against Chiang Kai-shek’s forces.”42

As the CCP consolidated its control over Northeast China in 1947 y
1948, it also began to recognize the valuable role that Japanese civilians might
play in rebuilding the Northeast’s economy. In addition to the Japanese civil-
ians who had been working in CCP military units, hospitals, and indus-
trial sites since the end of World War II, thousands more Japanese who had
previously been “kept back” by the Nationalists now found themselves in
CCP-controlled parts of the Northeast.43 In October 1948, the CCP therefore
established a Committee for the Management of Japanese in Northeast China
(CMJNC) as a way of collecting information on the numbers of Japanese
living in the region and managing their day-to-day lives.44 Although precise
numbers are unavailable, the committee’s ﬁrst survey in September 1949 hecho
a rough estimate of 34,000 Japanese living in the Northeast. Later surveys
taken in 1950 y 1951, after the establishment of the PRC, revised those
ﬁgures downward to between 20,797 y 21,063.45 De estos, 14,026 trabajó
in hospitals, industrial enterprises, and provincial and city government ofﬁces,
with the majority based in the Ministry of Industry (6,883), Northeast Rail-
way Department (2,005), and cities such as Shenyang, Harbin, Hegang, y
Andong (present-day Dandong).46

A crucial explanation for the relatively better treatment of Japanese in
China as compared to the Soviet Union is that the CCP viewed the Japanese

41. “Dongbei Ribenren qingkuang he chuli yijian,” páginas. 6–7; and “Guanyu Dongbei Riben ren de
qingkuang baogao,” páginas. 16–18. On the history of the Japanese Communist Party, see Robert A.
Scalapino, The Japanese Communist Movement, 1920–1966 (berkeley: University of California Press,
1967).

42. “Dongbei Ribenren qingkuang he chuli yijian,” páginas. 7, 14-15.

43. “Guanyu Dongbei Riben ren de qingkuang baogao”; and “Guanyu dui Dongbei Riben ren
gongzuo de zongjie baogao,” páginas. 4–5. See also Amy King, “Reconstructing China: Japanese Tech-
nicians and Industrialization in the Early People’s Republic of China,” Modern Asian Studies, volumen. 50,
No. 1 (2016), páginas. 141–174; and Christian A. Hesse, “From Colonial Port to Socialist Metropolis: Impe-
rialist Legacies and the Making of ‘New Dalian,’” Urban History, volumen. 38, No. 3 (2011), páginas. 373–390.

44. The CMJNC included representatives from the Department of Industry (gongyebu), Public Secu-
rity Bureau (gong’anbu), the Northeast Railway headquarters (tielu zongju), the Political Affairs Unit of
the Northeast Military (junqu zhengzhibu), the Foreign Affairs Bureau (waishiju), the Northeast Peo-
ple’s Government (Dongbei renmin zhengfu), and the Harbin and Shenyang municipal governments
(Ha’erbin shizhengfu, Shenyang shizhengfu). “Guanyu dui Dongbei Riben ren gongzuo de zongjie bao-
gao," pag. 10.

45. Ibídem., páginas. 1, 16; “Dongbei Ribenren qingkuang he chuli yijian," pag. 1; and Liang Zhikou, “Jianguo
Chuqi Waiqiao Guanli Gongzuo Shuping,” Dangdai Zhongguo Shi Yanjiu, volumen. 13, No. 4 (2006),
pag. 48.

46. “Dongbei Ribenren qingkuang he chuli yijian," pag. 5.

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King and Muminov

as a particularly valuable source of skilled labor. en agosto 1945, the Soviet
Union had seized 600,000 Japanese nationals from Northeast China, a lo largo de
with most of the region’s valuable industrial equipment and technology, como
a form of compensation for its very brief military campaign against Japan.
Yet the Soviet authorities had left behind in Northeast China many of the
most skilled Japanese technicians and industrial experts, choosing instead to
give priority to Japanese military personnel who were deemed ﬁt for man-
ual labor.47 In a country desperately short of industrial, scientiﬁc, and med-
ical expertise, CCP ofﬁcials viewed Japanese engineers, doctors, nurses, y
scientists—all of whom had long-term experience running the industries and
public services in Japan’s informal colony of Manchukuo—as crucial in ensur-
ing that Northeast China would ﬂourish under CCP control. If the Japanese
had been starved or exhausted through physical labor, or if they otherwise had
had their spirits broken, the CCP would have found it much harder to make
use of their expertise.

This explains why skilled Japanese in Northeast China received highly
favorable treatment. The CMJNC reported that work units in the city of
Shenyang, where the majority of Japanese were based, paid a total of 183,629
“fen” each month to the 108 Japanese households across the city. This worked
out to around 103 fen per person, which was deemed sufﬁcient to meet aver-
age monthly living costs in Shenyang of around 60 fen per person.48 But the
most skilled Japanese, such as senior technicians working in the Ministry of
Industria, earned up to 765 fen per month and were thus considered “relatively
well off.”49 Even the Japanese who were deeply critical of the Chinese Com-
munists still acknowledged that the CCP had afforded good treatment toward
skilled Japanese. One Japanese national, Yoshida Atsushi, who was detained
by the CCP and made to work as a medical ofﬁcer for the Communists during
the civil war, argued that, because of the Communists’ dire need for technical
expertise, “practically all the Japanese technicians and engineers detained by
the Chinese Communists are fully employed with special good treatment [sic]
given to technicians working in war arsenal.”50

47. Rey, “Reconstructing China,” páginas. 167–168.

48. In May 1950, each “fen” was worth 13,200 “Dongbei dollars” (Dongbei bi), the name given to the
local currency issued by the CCP-run Northeast Bank from November 1945 to December 1951. C.A-
cording to statistics from Shenyang, por lo tanto, each person’s monthly living costs were approximately
792,000 Dongbei (Northeast) dollars. “Guanyu Dongbei Riben ren de qingkuang baogao," pag. 3.

49. Ibídem.

50. “Japanese National Describes Red China,” Foreign Broadcast Information Service: Porcelana, 17 Enero
1949, pag. 17.

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Japanese in the USSR and Mainland China, 1945–1956

Perhaps even more important than skilled labor in explaining the differ-
ence in CCP and Soviet treatment of the Japanese, sin embargo, is that the CCP
viewed the Japanese as a marker of the party’s efﬁcacy and legitimacy as a
future governing force. The CCP regarded Japanese willingness to remain in
China as a sign of the success of the Communist project. De este modo, using ideo-
logical work and “self-criticism” campaigns, the CMJNC sought to improve
the Japanese “state of mind” by teaching Japanese to “recognize the evil of
the Japanese emperor” and “to understand U.S. imperialists’ conspiracy to
make Japan a U.S. colony.”51 These same ofﬁcials also paid close attention to
Japanese living and working conditions, studying Japanese pay rates, levels of
unemployment, and quality of food. The CMJNC was pleased to report that
conditions had improved signiﬁcantly since the CCP’s “liberation” of North-
east China in the autumn of 1948. Compared with the previous three to
four years, Japanese had “relatively secure” employment and were now “mainly
eating white rice” rather than sorghum.52 Moreover, Northeast ofﬁcials pub-
licly recognized Japanese contributions to Communist military and civilian
efforts during the civil war. En 1948 y 1949, más que 2,400 Japanese
were recognized as “meritorious” or “model workers” by their Chinese work
units. In March 1949, Por ejemplo, the PLA praised three “heroic” Japanese
soldiers for their “meritorious achievement,” including Tanaka Isamu of the
Northeast Field Army’s Seventh Column.53 Two months later, at the Chinese
May Day celebrations, the Health Unit of the Northeast Military also com-
mended 33 Japanese doctors and nurses who had provided “outstanding ser-
vice” in Chinese hospitals.54 One such nurse was twenty-year-old Mochizuki,
who worked at the Number 15 Hospital in Northeast China.55 The CMJNC
reported that, when a small child came into the hospital seriously ill with tu-
berculosis, Mochizuki volunteered to look after the child day and night until
he became well.56 As a result of their ideological work and efforts to recog-
nize Japan’s contributions in this way, Northeast ofﬁcials reported to the CCP
Central Committee that the Japanese “feeling of wanting to return to Japan
has subsided.”57

51. “Guanyu dui Dongbei Riben ren gongzuo de zongjie baogao,” páginas. 4–5.

52. “Guanyu Dongbei Riben ren de qingkuang baogao," pag. 3.

53. “Dongbei Ribenren qingkuang he chuli yijian,” páginas. 14-15.

54. “Guanyu dui Dongbei Riben ren gongzuo de zongjie baogao," pag. 7; and “Guanyu Dongbei Riben
ren de qingkuang baogao," pag. 5.

55. It is not clear from this ﬁle whether the CMJNC referred to this Japanese nurse using the Japanese
reading of her name, “Mochizuki,” or the Chinese reading, “Wang Yue.”

56. “Guanyu dui Dongbei Riben ren gongzuo de zongjie baogao,” páginas. 7–8.

57. Ibídem., páginas. 4–5.

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King and Muminov

Although the CMJNC’s work reports are not objective measures of the
Japanese state of mind or living conditions, they do reﬂect a degree of objec-
tivity because they also include observations on the committee’s self-perceived
failings with regard to the Japanese. Por ejemplo, Northeast ofﬁcials acknowl-
edged that the improvement in Japanese “class consciousness” had not been
uniformly successful. They argued that the period from August 1945 until
the end of 1946 had been a “time of despair” for many Japanese in the region:
Japan had been defeated in war; Japanese POWs felt hopeless about their own
futures; and many longed to return home and did not wish to work for the
CCP.58 Japanese had also been caught up in the CCP’s mass mobilization and
land reform campaigns in 1947 y 1948. An unintended consequence of
the confession and self-criticism meetings that accompanied the CCP’s ide-
ological campaigns was to stir up bad feelings between “ultra-leftist” young
Japanese and older, more conservative Japanese technicians.59

The unhappiness intensiﬁed so much that one group of Japanese peti-
tioned the CCP authorities in Harbin in August 1948 asking to be allowed to
return home. En respuesta, the CCP arrested the “bad elements” who were
behind the petition, “suppressed” the movement for repatriation, and at-
tempted to dampen the ultra-leftist tendencies among young Japanese. Todavía
the CMJNC warned that these methods had been only partly successful and
that further examples of “backwardness” might arise in the future.60 Despite
these exceptions, sin embargo, the CCP took much greater care than its Soviet
counterparts to treat the Japanese hospitably in the years after World War II.
As the Chinese civil war ground to an end and the PRC was established, el
CCP continued to use expatriate Japanese as a critical plank in its efforts to
demonstrate the legitimacy and success of the Communist project.

Onset of the Cold War

With the onset of the Korean War in June 1950, Cold War animosity be-
tween the major powers in Asia intensiﬁed. The CCP and the Soviet Union
now viewed the Japanese detained or left behind in their territories as a means
to promote their wider goals vis-à-vis Japan. Both governments considered

58. Ibídem., pag. 4.

59. On the CCP’s use of land reform as a form of political mobilization, see Suzanne Peper, Civil War
in China: The Political Struggle, 1945–1949 (berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).

60. “Guanyu dui Dongbei Riben ren gongzuo de zongjie baogao,” páginas. 4–5; and “Guanyu Dongbei
Riben ren de qingkuang baogao," pag. 18.

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Japanese in the USSR and Mainland China, 1945–1956

the U.S.-occupied Japan as a bastion of U.S. capitalism and imperialism in
Asia Oriental. Soviet representatives at the Allied Council for Japan and the Far
East Commission, as well as the ofﬁcial TASS news agency, dispatched regu-
lar reports to Moscow lamenting the “mass dismissals for political purposes”
of left-leaning Japanese workers and police crackdowns and arrests of left-
ist political groups.61 In China, the Xinhua news agency and Renmin ribao
(People’s Daily) published regular articles in 1949 y 1950 condemning the
A NOSOTROS. “imperialists’ efforts” to turn Japan into a military base, A NOSOTROS. “interfer-
ence” in the unfolding Korean War, and the policies of “terror” supposedly
being implemented by General Douglas MacArthur and his “running dog”
Yoshida Shigeru.62

In this tense international climate, Soviet and Chinese ofﬁcials believed
they could use propaganda to educate Japanese so that they might “lead the
struggle” for Japan’s “democracy” and “independence” after repatriation.63 To
hazlo, both governments published Japanese-language newspapers and maga-
zines and distributed them among Japanese civilians and POWs. In China, el
Northeast People’s Government subsidized the publication of the daily Min-
shu shimbun (Democracy News), which carried translations of Renmin ribao
articles about Japanese suffering under the U.S. occupation and notices about
political activities for Japanese in the Northeast.64 In the USSR, the newspaper
was simply called the Nihon shimbun (Japan Newspaper), established by the
Red Army’s Political Department and published in Khabarovsk.65 The Nihon
shimbun outlined the rules of conduct in the camps and became a crucial vehi-
cle of propaganda: justifying Soviet entry into the war against Japan, apuntando
out injustices of the capitalist system in Japan, and criticizing the U.S. occu-
pation of postwar Japan.66 The newspaper was a core feature of Soviet indoc-
trination programs in subsequent years. So-called “societies of friends of the

61. “O yaponskikh voennoplennykh," 26 August–8 December 1949, in RGASPI, F. 17, Op. 3,
D. 1078, Punkt (p.) 561 (también, appendices to punkty 597 y 799); and “Yaponiya—fashizatsiya i mil-
itarizatsiya: Voennye prestupniki," 1 January 1–29 May 1951, in GARF, F. 4459, Op. 27, D. 13176.

62. Sun Pinghua, Xiao Xiangqian, and Wang Xiaoxian, Zhanhou Zhongri Guanxi Wenxianji, 1945–
1970 (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1996), páginas. 60, 78–84.

63. Elena Katasonova, Poslednie plenniki Vtoroi mirovoi voiny: Maloizvestnye stranitsy rossisko-yaponskikh
otnoshenii (Moscow: IVRAN, 2005), páginas. 64–65; “Guanyu dui Dongbei Riben ren gongzuo de zongjie
baogao,” páginas. 11–12; and “Dongbei riben guanli weiyuanhui gongzuo baogao (1949 nian 8 yue dao
1950 nian 6 yue)," 1 August 1949–30 June 1950, páginas. 1–2, in FMA PRC File No. 118-00086-01.

64. “Dongbei riben guanli weiyuanhui gongzuo baogao”; and “Guanyu dui Dongbei Riben ren
gongzuo de zongjie baogao," pag. 11.

65. “Ob izdanii ‘Yaponskoi gazety,’” 1 Septiembre 1945, in RGASPI, F. 17, Op. 3, D. 1053, l. 231.
See also Katasonova, Poslednie plenniki, pag. 50.

66. Katasonova, Poslednie plenniki, páginas. 68–69.

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King and Muminov

newspaper” were established in camps where regular readings and discussions
took place.

But beyond these broad similarities, the two states’ visions for postwar
Japan and the methods of propaganda they adopted differed in important
maneras. In the USSR, propaganda toward the Japanese reﬂected Soviet aims of
changing the political system in Japan and general suspicion that the coun-
try continued to pose a political and security threat to Soviet interests as a
newly established U.S. ally. Soviet ofﬁcials struck a reproachful note when
they instructed camp ofﬁcers to use propaganda as a way to ensure that “the
POWs acknowledge their responsibility for the destruction inﬂicted by their
armies on the territory of the USSR” and that they “work wholeheartedly in
the camps [to compensate for this destruction].”67 It did not matter that the
Japanese had never actually invaded the USSR or caused any destruction on
Soviet territory during World War II. Apparently, “destruction” referred not
only to the Soviet-Japanese War of August 1945 but also to the Japanese vic-
tory over Tsarist Russia in the 1904–1905 Russo-Japanese War and Japan’s
“intervention in the Far East” from 1918 a través de 1922, when it occupied
Vladivostok and other parts of the Russian Far East.68 The sentiment ex-
pressed in Soviet propaganda toward Japanese POWs reﬂected ofﬁcial Soviet
views that Japan posed “a constant threat to the Far East of the USSR,” ow-
ing to its long history of military prowess in Asia and the rehabilitation of its
military and heavy industries under U.S. occupation.69

Además, Soviet ofﬁcials used camp propaganda networks to conduct
surveillance and stay abreast of the day-to-day activities of the Japanese in-
ternees. A key part of Soviet ideological work was the establishment of “anti-
fascist democratic activist groups” (aktiv). To join the aktiv, Japanese internees
had to demonstrate left-leaning ideological credentials. Incentives for joining
the aktiv were numerous, from easier work assignments and better food to
the alluring promise of early repatriation. These privileges encouraged aktiv
members to promote the Soviet line among themselves and to inform on their
fellow Japanese. Soviet camp ofﬁcers demanded to be informed of the politi-
cal mood within the camps, especially any “hostile” or “subversive” elements
who might threaten the order in the camps.70 Archival materials conﬁrm that

67. Ibídem., páginas. 64–65.

68. Kathryn Weathersby, “Soviet Aims in Korea and the Origins of the Korean War, 1945–1950: Nuevo
Evidence from Russian Archives,” CWIHP Working Paper No. 8, Cold War International History
Proyecto, Washington, corriente continua, 1993, pag. 20.

69. Ibídem., páginas. 11, 17–18, 20.

70. Katasonova, Poslednie plenniki, páginas. 64–65.

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Japanese in the USSR and Mainland China, 1945–1956

Soviet ofﬁcials took harsh measures against those who espoused incorrect po-
litical ideologies or refused to work (sabotage) or secretly campaigned against
work quotas, bad food, and delays in repatriation. Those guilty of such “sub-
versive acts” risked receiving sentences of up to 25 years of hard labor in the
camps.71

Given the environment of constant surveillance, the evidence on whether
Japanese “activists” were actually converted into ideological supporters of
Communism and the Soviet Union is mixed. Por un lado, the Soviet
Union kept records of more than 15,000 letters written by Japanese internees
who thanked the Soviet government for the “good treatment, good food, [y]
exceptional humaneness” they had supposedly received, and praised the USSR
for being “steadfast in its ﬁght for the establishment of peace among the peo-
ples of the world.”72 Soviet reports also note that, once the Japanese were
aboard the repatriation ships bound for Japan, they shouted, “Hurrah! Soviet
Union Banzai (Long Live)! Comrade Stalin Banzai!”73

Por otro lado, Japanese memoirs written after repatriation suggest
that many of these so-called anti-fascist activists were motivated less by ideo-
logical support for the Soviet Union than by other factors. Many were “forced”
by their Soviet superiors and some opportunistically hoped to achieve early
repatriation.74 Regardless of whether the Japanese were converted into “gen-
uine antifascists,” the key point to stress here is that Soviet propaganda toward
the Japanese was never solely about political ideology. It also had a corrective
element to it, designed to punish the Japanese for their country’s past wartime
atrocities, to redress the injustices supposedly inﬂicted on the USSR by moti-
vating the Japanese to increase production, and to prevent Japan from posing
a future threat to the Soviet Union by keeping a large number of potential
soldiers away from Japan and using the Siberian internees as vehicles for de-
livering pro-Soviet ideas to U.S.-occupied Japan.

In China, rather than punishing Japanese POWs and civilians for their
colonization of Manchukuo and wartime aggression in China, CCP propa-
ganda struck a more positive note, viewing Japanese not as subversive ele-
ments but as “our allies” in the common struggle against U.S. imperialism.75
This view of Japan came directly from the leaders of the CCP, Mao Zedong

71. “Dokladnaya zapiska S. norte. Kruglova," 27 Puede 1949, in GARF, F. 9401, Op. 2, D. 235, Ll. 37–41.

72. See samples of the letters in TsAMO RF, F. 142, Op. 419632, D.11, Ll. 75–78.

73. Ibídem.
74. Inomata Kunio, “Senn¯o ky¯oiku mo noruma,” in PFPC, ed., Heiwa no ishizue, volumen. 1, páginas. 23–26.

75. “Dongbei Ribenren qingkuang he chuli yijian," pag. 18.

217

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King and Muminov

and Zhou Enlai, who wanted to strengthen people-to-people ties with Japan
in order to “drive a wedge” between Washington and Tokyo and to persuade
the Japanese government to remove U.S. military bases from Japan. en contra-
trast to Moscow’s emphasis on past wars with Japan, Mao and Zhou instead
informed delegations of Japanese politicians, businesspeople, músicos, y
artists visiting China in the 1950s and 1960s that Japan did not need to con-
tinue apologizing for its war with China.76 In 1961, Mao even expressed grati-
tude for Japan’s invasion of China, without which, he argued, the CCP would
never have come to power.77

Beyond high-level Japanese delegations, the CCP saw Japanese POWs
and civilians as a key plank in their efforts to turn Japan against the United
Estados. Many Japanese in the Northeast had begun receiving letters from
home containing stories of the U.S. occupation, including the “atrocities
of MacArthur’s suppression of the Japanese Communists.” CCP ofﬁcials ac-
knowledged that Japanese in China were not necessarily supporters of the
Japanese Communist Party or of Communism more generally, but they ex-
pressed hope that anti-American sentiment among Japanese could be “very
valuable” to the CCP in its propaganda efforts.78 From January to April 1950,
por lo tanto, the CMJNC sought to harness this sentiment and installed a series
of photographic exhibitions at government departments and industrial sites
where large numbers of Japanese worked. The exhibitions were centered on
the theme of the U.S. occupation of Japan and, En particular, the suffering of
Japanese citizens and leftists under that occupation.79 Eager to demonstrate
the success of this propaganda work, the CMJNC reported to the Foreign
Ministry in Beijing that 75,000 people had visited the exhibitions, incluido
cerca de 10,000 Japanese living and working in the region.80

CCP ofﬁcials, like their Soviet counterparts, did acknowledge the possi-
bility that Japanese living in the Northeast could represent a threat to China in
the unfolding Cold War. In April and May 1949, por ejemplo, the Shenyang
Public Security Bureau acknowledged that around 400 Japanese “reactionar-
ies” might be potential spies for the KMT or U.S. government.81 Yet the

76. Zhang Shu Guang, Beijing’s Economic Statecraft during the Cold War (Washington, corriente continua: Woodrow
Wilson Center Press, 2014), páginas. 136–140.

77. Richard McGregor, Asia’s Reckoning: Porcelana, Japón, and the Fate of U.S. Power in the Paciﬁc Century
(Nueva York: Viking, 2017), pag. 28; and Bruce Elleman and S. C. METRO. Paine, Modern China: Continuity
and Change, 1644 to the Present (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littleﬁeld, 2019), pag. 368.

78. “Dongbei Ribenren qingkuang he chuli yijian,” páginas. 11–12.

79. Ibídem., páginas. 11–12; and “Dongbei riben guanli weiyuanhui gongzuo baogao.”

80. “Dongbei riben guanli weiyuanhui gongzuo baogao.”

81. “Guanyu dui Dongbei Riben ren gongzuo de zongjie baogao," pag. 10.

218

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Japanese in the USSR and Mainland China, 1945–1956

CMJNC’s reports again illustrate how the CCP’s conceptualization of ex-
patriate Japanese differed from that of the Soviet Union. In contrast to the
USSR, the CCP argued that only a small minority of the Japanese in North-
east China posed any kind of threat to China.82 The CMJNC explained that
the “few bad elements” could be isolated and that, by using education and a
more uniﬁed approach to issues of work, travel, and funding restrictions, el
CCP could “transform” any adverse thinking among Japanese in Northeast
China.83

More broadly, CCP propaganda toward Japanese differed fundamen-
tally from Soviet propaganda because the Chinese Communists believed the
“formidable task” of transforming Japanese thinking was deeply connected
to the entire Japanese experience in China. Treating the Japanese “boorishly,"
CCP ofﬁcials argued, would undermine the “prestige” of the CCP and PRC in
Japanese eyes and “jeopardize” their ability to unite with the Japanese people.84
The CCP disseminated its propaganda via a range of Japanese-led civil society
organizations that were designed not only to instill anti-imperialist ideology
but also to enhance the Japanese lived experience in China. Por 1949 más
than 100 different civil society groups for Japanese were active in the North-
east, incluido 24 Japanese People’s New Democracy Youth Alliances and 17
Japanese Workers Small Groups, which had their origins in the “Japanese
Workers and Peasants Schools” established by Nosaka Sanzo during World
War II.85 These organizations provided the Japanese with some semblance
of community and cultural life. Japanese People’s Associations and Cooper-
atives in Shenyang and Harbin held sporting events and sold food that was
“suitable to Japanese tastes,” and Japanese-language monthly magazines like
Qianjin (Advance) and Xuexi (Aprendiendo) offered cultural articles and politi-
cal writings by Japanese activists.86 The CMJNC also provided funding and
textbooks for 29 primary schools serving 300 Japanese children in the North-
east so they could continue their Japanese-language education before entering
Chinese middle schools.87 Ultimately, the CCP believed that the Communist

82. Ibídem.

83. “Dongbei riben guanli weiyuanhui gongzuo baogao.”

84. “Dongbei Ribenren qingkuang he chuli yijian,” páginas. 10, 18–19.

85. “Guanyu Dongbei Riben ren de qingkuang baogao,” páginas. 11–14; and “Guanyu dui Dongbei Riben
ren gongzuo de zongjie baogao,” páginas. 12–13.

86. CMJNC reports indicate only the Chinese translation of the titles of these Japanese-language
magazines. See “Guanyu dui Dongbei Riben ren gongzuo de zongjie baogao," pag. 11.

87. “Guanyu dui Dongbei Riben ren gongzuo de zongjie baogao,” páginas. 11–13; “Dongbei riben guanli
weiyuanhui gongzuo baogao”; and “Guanyu Dongbei Riben ren de qingkuang baogao,” páginas. 11-dieciséis.

219

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Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai meeting in 1963 with a Japanese POW, Furumi Tadayuki,
who after his repatriation went on to become a successful businessman in Japan. El
photograph was provided by Furumi’s son, Furumi Ken’ichi, to the authors in 2014 and is
reprinted with his permission.

project would be received much more favorably if Japanese felt that their lives
under Communist rule were comfortable.

The difference between Chinese and Soviet approaches to the Japanese
becomes even more evident when we compare how the two governments dealt
with the speciﬁc category of POWs. In July 1950, the Soviet Union sent 969
Japanese POWs from the USSR to Fushun prison in Northeast China so that
China and the Soviet Union could begin cooperating on the process of inves-
tigating and prosecuting Japanese war criminals.88 Although the Japanese pris-
oners feared they would become victims of violent reprisals in Chinese jails,
their experience at the Fushun prison was, they discovered, far more comfort-
able than life in the Soviet Union. They were well-fed and able to bathe once
a week, and they even had access to a “well-skilled” Chinese barber. En efecto,
to the great surprise of the Japanese internees who had become accustomed to
the “painful hell of starvation” in the USSR, the Chinese guards at the Fushun

88. Cathcart and Nash, “‘To Serve Revenge for the Dead,’” pp. 1,063–1,066.

220

Japanese in the USSR and Mainland China, 1945–1956

prison asked at the end of every meal whether the prisoners had had enough
to eat. One Japanese internee recalled that they quickly learned to say “No!” to
make the most of the additional servings of rice, vegetables, and meat.89 An-
other internee, Furumi Tadayuki, remarked that at Fushun, “I even received
200 cigarettes a month . . . and though we were not given alcohol, it was a
comfortable life.”90 Furumi, who spent a combined eighteen years imprisoned
in Soviet labor camps and at the Fushun prison, later wrote that, although the
Japanese had to work in the Chinese prison, “the work was nowhere near as
brutal as in the Soviet Union.”91 Japanese convicts in China were typically put
to work in agriculture, such as poultry farming or growing vegetables, y el
fruits of their labor were made available to them. This not only provided a
varied diet to the Japanese internees but also gave them a sense of reward for
their work. For this relatively fortunate handful of Japanese who were trans-
ferred from the harsher internment camps of the Soviet Union, the contrast
of life in Northeast China was striking.

The CCP’s generous treatment of Japanese POWs was, as Barak Kush-
ner has argued, seen as the best way of getting former Japanese soldiers to
reﬂect on the atrocities they had committed in China, as well as a way of get-
ting them to become future messengers promoting friendly relations between
Japan and the PRC.92 At the same time, it was also seen as a way of convincing
the Japanese government, with which the PRC badly wanted diplomatic rela-
ciones, that the CCP was a benign entity that had made great achievements in
China since 1949. In the early 1950s, Beijing welcomed Japanese parliamen-
tarians to China on “unofﬁcial” tours, which included visits to Fushun prison,
where they could observe the conditions experienced by Japanese POWs. Uno
such tour was made in 1954 by Aoyanagi Ichir¯o, a member of the Japanese
National Diet’s House of Representatives, who spent almost a month in China
as part of a parliamentary “study group.” Aoyanagi claimed in his later testi-
mony to the Diet that the Japanese parliamentarians viewed the invitation
from the Chinese as a goodwill gesture and strove to take the opportunity
“to achieve the settlement of various [bilateral] issues.” After spending days
in negotiations with Chinese ofﬁcials and touring the country, the delegation
was allowed to spend an hour observing a prison for Japanese war criminals.

89. Ch¯ukiren, Watakushitachi wa Ch¯ugoku de nani o shita ka : moto Nihonjin senpan no kiroku (Tokio:
San’ichi Shobo, 1987), pag. 25.
90. Furumi Tadayuki, “Mansh¯ukoku no saigo o mite,” in Hand¯o Kazutoshi, ed., Bungei shunj¯u” ni
miru sh¯owashi, Parte 2 (Tokio: Bunshun bunko, 1995), páginas. 153–154.
91. Ibídem., pag. 154.

92. Kushner, Men to Devils, pag. 264.

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King and Muminov

Arriving at Fushun prison, Aoyanagi was pleased to meet his high school
friend Furumi Tadayuki, who looked “very healthy.” Aoyanagi described the
prison thus:

It was an ordinary prison, relatively new and clean. . . . In smaller rooms I
saw four to ﬁve Japanese prisoners, and in a big room ﬁfteen to twenty of
them were studying something—one could see they were receiving some sort of
instrucción. . . . These Japanese did not really have to work; they had only to
take part in various activities for four hours a day. . . . The prison hospital was
also very clean and extremely well-equipped.93

Another visitor to Fushun from Japan was Furumi Ken’ichi, Furumi
Tadayuki’s son, who travelled in August 1956 with family members of other
Fushun detainees on a tour mediated by the International Committee of the
Red Cross. Although Ken’ichi’s superiors at the Bank of Tokyo were not happy
when they learned that he would be traveling to Communist China, he was
surprised at the treatment he received on the mainland. “We were treated
as guests of honor,” he remembered with some gratitude. The CCP covered
the costs of their stay in China, a special train took the visitors from Tian-
jin to Fushun and back free of charge, and meals and rooms were provided
gratis. Like Aoyanagi, Ken’ichi was pleasantly surprised with the conditions at
Fushun.94

Unfortunately for the CCP, their efforts to provide this positive experi-
ence did not stanch the growing demand for repatriation among Japanese in
Northeast China. As the 1950s unfolded, both governments confronted the
challenge of whether and how to send the Japanese home.

Returning Home

Repatriation of Japanese from the USSR and the PRC represents a ﬁnal point
of divergence in how the Soviet Union and the CCP navigated the changing
international order and the position of Japan within it. Differences in ap-
proach to repatriation were not necessarily conspicuous. Both countries tried
to use the Japanese in their custody to achieve favorable outcomes in diplo-
matic negotiations with Japan, and the Soviet Union’s treatment of Japanese
internees began to converge with the PRC’s more magnanimous approach

93. National Diet of Japan, House of Representatives, Session No. 17, “Kaigai d¯oh¯o hikiage oy-
obi ikazoku engo ni kansuru ch¯osa tokubetsu iinkai," 30 Octubre 1954, available online at https:
//kokkai.ndl.go.jp/.
94. Furumi Ken’ichi, interview, Tokio, 29 Octubre 2014.

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Japanese in the USSR and Mainland China, 1945–1956

only after Stalin’s death in 1953.95 Sin embargo, the way the two Communist
states used repatriation as a diplomatic bargaining chip reveals the precari-
ous international status of the PRC relative to the Soviet Union. Además,
the post-Stalin convergence in Soviet and Chinese treatment of the Japanese
further underscores just how different the two governments’ approaches had
been before 1953.

En 1951, the Japanese government urged the United Nations (UN) generación-
eral Assembly to facilitate the early return of Japanese captives still held in the
Soviet Union.96 The government was aided in these efforts by the Japanese
Red Cross Society (JRCS) and other Japanese civil society groups, which lob-
bied their Soviet counterparts to assist in expediting the return of internees to
Japón. En octubre 1953, seven months after Stalin’s death, a delegation from
the JRCS visited the Soviet Union and began to help with the repatriation of
civilians and POWs.97 Opportunities to resolve the matter were far more aus-
picious than during Stalin’s lifetime, when the Soviet Union blatantly refused
to comply with repeated Japanese requests for information about the Siberian
internees and their repatriation. Soviet ofﬁcials regarded Japanese (and other
foreign POWs) as vital in providing a large workforce on industrial and
infrastructure projects and in meeting their production plans. Local ofﬁcials
therefore lobbied the MVD and engaged in protracted bureaucratic battles
with repatriation authorities to keep the POWs in the USSR.98 Reluctance to
permit the Japanese to return home was also driven by Soviet leaders’ fear that
former POWs would help the U.S. military in Japan—a concern that loomed
large in Moscow as Cold War tensions reached an apogee during the Korean
Guerra. This worry was noted in a February 1951 UK Foreign Ofﬁce special

95. The USSR had repatriated the majority of Japanese by 1950, keeping only 1,500 or so captives
under investigation or convicted of committing war crimes.

96. “Announcement of Japanese Foreign Ministry and Letters of Foreign Minister to President of
United Nations General Assembly, on Repatriation Problem," 25 Julio 1951, in Diplomatic Archives of
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan (Gaik¯oshiry¯okan), Tokio, Japón, Public Information Division,
Japanese Foreign Ministry. Reel K’0001.

97. Correspondence between Shimazu and his Soviet counterparts in the Union of Red Cross and
Red Crescent Societies of the USSR suggests that the JRCS played an active part in three key tasks:
negotiating the dates of repatriation with the Soviet authorities; requesting registers with the names of
the internees, including deaths; and facilitating correspondence between internees and their families.
See “Ispolkom Soyuza obshchestv Krasnogo Kresta i Krasnogo Polumesyatsa SSSR,” April 1953–May
1955, in GARF, F. 9501, Op. 5, D. 84, Ll. 65–120.

98. Yu. I. Din, “Problema repatriatsii koreitsev Yuzhnogo Sakhalina v 1945–1950 gg.,” Voprosy istorii,
volumen. 8 (2013), páginas. 72–81. A 1946 folder from the Russian State Archive of Economics (RGAE) estafa-
tains the correspondence of Soviet ofﬁcials overseeing the cellulose and paper industry who wanted
the NKVD/MVD to reallocate these POWs to their custody, citing the need to improve conditions
for the Japanese POWs. See the correspondence in RGAE, F. 7647, Op. 4, D. 26, January–December
1946.

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King and Muminov

informe: “It is reasonable to assume that the Soviets are afraid that these former
military leaders might form the nucleus of future Japanese ministry groups for
operations against the USSR.”99

In China, CCP ofﬁcials, también, were reluctant to repatriate the most skilled
Japanese, seeing them as valuable sources of technical expertise and vital to
rebuilding Northeast China.100 However, the CMJNC was worried that if
China kept the Japanese against their will, it would only detract from the
CCP’s efforts to enhance the legitimacy and attractiveness of its ideology and
governing ability. Ofﬁcial reports in 1950–1951 acknowledged that, a pesar de
the CCP’s efforts to improve the lived experience of Japanese in Northeast
Porcelana, the mood among Japanese in the region was unfavorable. The rea-
sons for this unhappiness were varied, ofﬁcials noted. Young Japanese and
unskilled workers increasingly thought they had limited prospects in China,
and “thus they long[ed] to return home.” Other Japanese had become de-
pressed or even suicidal because of love affairs that had broken down; porque
they missed their families in Japan; because they were subjected to particularly
strict application of travel and work permits by security bureaus in the North-
east; or because they were based in work units that refused to release funds
for Japanese-language books, newspapers, and study groups.101 Many skilled
technicians were also increasingly frustrated with the growing presence of ri-
val Soviet technicians in Northeast China whose skills the Japanese felt were
inferior to their own.102 The arrest of the instigators of the 1948 Japanese
repatriation petition meant that the Japanese did not dare to campaign pub-
licly for repatriation. Sin embargo, the CMJNC began in late 1951 to allocate
resources and ships to repatriate nearly 1,500 Japanese whose lives seemed
particularly difﬁcult.103

Less than twelve months later, the question of repatriation took on re-
newed signiﬁcance for the CCP. en agosto 1952, Japan entered into formal
diplomatic relations with the Nationalist government on Taiwan.104 These

99. “Repatriation of Japanese Prisoners-of-War Still Detained in Colonial Territories and the USSR,"
23 Febrero 1951, in The National Archives of the United Kingdom, Folder FO 371/92691, Special
Intelligence Report No. 379, pag. 36.

100. “Guanyu dui Dongbei Riben ren gongzuo de zongjie baogao,” páginas. 13–14; and “Guanyu Dongbei
Riben ren de qingkuang baogao," pag. 22.

101. “Guanyu dui Dongbei Riben ren gongzuo de zongjie baogao,” páginas. 9–10; “Guanyu Dongbei
Riben ren de qingkuang baogao," pag. 10; and “Dongbei riben guanli weiyuanhui gongzuo baogao.”

102. “Guanyu Dongbei Riben ren de qingkuang baogao," pag. 8.

103. “Dongbei Ribenren qingkuang he chuli yijian," pag. 20.

104. Japan and the ROC established diplomatic relations after they signed a peace treaty in April 1952
that entered into force four months later.

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Japanese in the USSR and Mainland China, 1945–1956

talks represented a severe blow to the PRC’s efforts to establish itself as the
sole, legitimate government of China and undermined its efforts to restore re-
lations with Japan. CCP ofﬁcials now began to view the repatriation issue as a
useful way to establish unofﬁcial channels of communication with Japanese
civil society groups, which were lobbying for the repatriation of Japanese
internees and frequently shared CCP views about the desirability of restor-
ing diplomatic relations between Japan and mainland China. In December
1952, the Xinhua news agency announced that China would work with three
organizations in Japan—the JRCS, the Japan-China Friendship Association
(JCFA), and the Japanese Peace Liaison Committee (JPLC)—to negotiate the
repatriation of thousands of Japanese civilians from China.105 The JCFA and
JPLC comprised left-wing Japanese intellectuals, politicians, and business peo-
ple supportive of closer Japan-PRC relations. Many of them felt remorse for
Japan’s aggressive role in China during World War II and were highly criti-
cal of what they saw as U.S. attempts to “remilitarize” Japan.106 At the same
tiempo, the PRC sought to use the repatriation of Japanese to convey a sense
of magnanimity and effectiveness as a government. A statement released by
the central government to Xinhua highlights China’s generous treatment of
Japanese internees, as well as the effective functioning of the Chinese state:

Although the militaristic Japanese government waged an eight-year war of ag-
gression and committed unforgettable and heinous criminal acts, the Chinese
people clearly distinguish between the Japanese militarists who were once and
continue to be the enemy of our country, and the Japanese people who are our
amigos. The Chinese people hold a friendly attitude toward the law-abiding
overseas Japanese in China. They and all law-abiding foreign nationals receive
the same protection of the Chinese people’s government. The Japanese who work
in our public and private enterprises enjoy the protection of our labor laws and
labor insurance beneﬁts. Their lifestyles are growing more and more abundant,
and one example of this is that in recent months they have remitted large sums
of money to provide for their wives and children in Japan.107

Over the following six months, as more than 26,000 Japanese were repatriated
to Japan, dozens of similar articles appeared in the pages of Renmin ribao, todo

105. Liang, “Jianguo chuqi waiqiao guanli gongzuo shuping," pag. 52; and K. W.. Radtke, China’s Re-
lations with Japan, 1945–1983: The Role of Liao Chengzhi (Manchester, Reino Unido: Manchester University
Prensa, 1990), páginas. 99–100.

106. Franziska Seraphim, “People’s Diplomacy: The Japan-China Friendship Association and Critical
War Memory in the 1950s,” Japan Focus, volumen. 5, No. 8 (2007).

107. “Zhongyang renmin zhengfu youguan fangmian jiu zai Zhongguo de Riben qiaomin de ge xiang
wenti da Xinhuashe jizhe wen," 1 December 1952, quoted in Sun et al., Zhanhou Zhongri Guanxi
Wenxianji, páginas. 139–140.

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King and Muminov

emphasizing to potential supporters in Japan that the CCP was a responsible,
effective governing party that respected the rights of Japanese citizens and
treated them with dignity.108

Since the end of World War II, the CCP’s treatment of Japanese internees
and its desire to be seen as a legitimate governing party at home and abroad
had stood in stark contrast to the Soviet regime’s neglect of and mistrust to-
ward Japanese citizens. But this divergence in position came to an abrupt end
after Stalin died in March 1953. Stalin’s death offered an opening to the new
Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, to mend relations with Japan, a country that
potentially was of great economic importance for the USSR. The Soviet gov-
ernment used the approximately 1,500 Japanese still in its custody to facilitate
the restoration of Soviet diplomatic relations with Japan. Khrushchev’s efforts
to improve perceptions of the USSR in Japan were distinctly reminiscent of
the approach long taken by the CCP.

“We should coexist as friends. We are convinced—if the USSR, Japón
and China treat each other well, there will be peace everywhere. Please come
to visit us in Japan!” These were the words of an unnamed Japanese major
quoted in a December 1956 Soviet report evaluating sentiments among the
last group of Japanese ofﬁcers before repatriation.109 The major’s comments
were recorded at a Khabarovsk banquet organized by Soviet ofﬁcials, OMS
had carefully prepared the occasion. High-ranking personnel from the Soviet
General Staff, the MVD, and the Soviet State Security Committee (KGB) ar-
rived from Moscow to gauge Japanese moods before repatriation. In a change
unthinkable a few years earlier, the Japanese “war criminals” went on city
tours accompanied by Soviet ofﬁcers, who were responsible for “showing the
Japanese the city and helping them buy gifts for their families.”110 Almost ev-
ery whim of the Japanese ofﬁcers on the eve of repatriation was considered and
often fulﬁlled. The banquet on 20 December ended with an operetta, cual
was received well by the audience. Former Kwantung army General Ushiroku
Jun—perhaps the highest-ranking Japanese in Soviet custody at the time—
made a speech addressed to his host, General Nikolai Gagen, the chief of the
Khabarovsk garrison. Ushiroku expressed thanks “for the opportunity to lis-
ten to good music, watch beautiful dance performances, and taste exquisite

108. Renmin ribao printed 26 articles on the issue of repatriated Japanese in the ﬁrst half of 1953.

109. “Spravka-doklad Ministru Vnutrennikh Del SSSR o peredache,” in RGVA, F. 1pag, Op. 32a, D. 1,
Ll. 1–25, quoted in E. l. Katasonova, ed., Yaponskie voennoplennye v SSSR: bolshaya igra velikih derzhav
(Moscow: Institut Vostokovedeniya RAN, 2003), pag. 495.

110. Ibídem., pag. 490.

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Japanese in the USSR and Mainland China, 1945–1956

fare.”111 It was as if the eleven bitter years of internment had never happened,
and those at the banquet were honored guests of the Soviets and not “war
criminals” sentenced years earlier to lengthy terms in camps and prisons.

Even though the privations of the Siberian internment were not forgot-
ten by the Japanese, the year that internment ﬁnally ended—1956—marked
a new beginning. By the time the Japanese were treated as honored guests
at the Khabarovsk banquet, Stalin had been dead for more than three years,
and the Soviet Union had moved “away from [el] regime of terror and ideo-
logical orthodoxy” he had bequeathed.112 The surreal episode of the banquet
demonstrates a far-reaching change in Soviet policy in the post-Stalin era that
ultimately led to the restoration of diplomatic relations with Japan in 1956.
Yet the Soviet Union’s efforts to improve its image in the eyes of the Japanese
were too little and too late. Stalin’s use of the Japanese as forced labor and
the Soviet government’s refusal throughout the internment to provide accu-
rate information about the internees’ names, numbers, well-being, and time of
repatriation ensured that the USSR continued to have a persistently negative
image in Japan long after the ﬁnal internee had been repatriated.113

The CCP, por el contrario, went on to be viewed with far less hostility in
Japan because of its relatively generous treatment of Japanese civilians and
POWs. Groups of returned Japanese POWs from China played an impor-
tant role throughout the Cold War in working for reconciliation between
Japan and the PRC and in educating Japanese society about their country’s
wartime atrocities in China.114 Yet despite the CCP’s concern about the wel-
fare of Japanese on PRC territory and its creative attempts to use them and
their repatriation as vehicles of propaganda, ofﬁcials in Beijing had far less suc-
cess than the Soviet Union in actually normalizing diplomatic relations with
Japón. The CCP’s protracted path to government and statehood left it in a
precarious international position, one in which the United States, Japón, y
much of the international community did not formally acknowledge its status
as the legitimate government of China until 1972.

111. Ibídem., pag. 493.

112. Kathleen E. Herrero, Moscow 1956: The Silenced Spring (Cambridge, MAMÁ: Harvard University
Prensa, 2017), pag. 6.

113. Tomita, Shiberia yokury¯usha; and Sherzod Muminov, “The ‘Siberian Internment’ and the
Transnational History of the Early Cold War Japan, 1945–56,” in Pedro Iacobelli, Danton Leary, y
Shinnusoke Takahashi, editores., Transnational Japan as History: Empire, Migración, and Social Movements
(Nueva York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), páginas. 71–95.

114. Kushner, Men to Devils, pag. 264. For more on the Japanese organizations’ role in postwar Japanese
attitudes toward the war and the PRC, see Franziska Seraphim, War Memory and Social Politics in
Japón, 1945–2005 (Cambridge, MAMÁ: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006).

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King and Muminov

Conclusión

The standard narrative in the literature depicts the stoking of hostility toward
Japanese war criminals as cementing the foundation of the Sino-Soviet alliance
de 1949 a 1950. But this line of argument, focused as it is on the formation
of the alliance and the onset of the Cold War, obscures the long and diverse
history of CCP and Soviet interactions with the Japanese in their territories,
as well as the ﬂuidity and uncertainty of the decade of transition from World
War II to the Cold War. By adopting a wider temporal scope and taking an
explicitly comparative approach, this article highlights instead the contrast
in CCP and Soviet approaches toward the Japanese in their territories and
situates the origins of these differences in the major transformations in the
international order after 1945; in the legacies of East Asia’s recent interstate
y guerras civiles; and in the evolving relationships between the Soviet Union,
the United States, Japón, and both Nationalist China and the PRC during
this decade.

The differences in how the CCP and the Soviet Union treated the
Japanese civilians and POWs under their authority were shaped by the distinct
concerns facing both countries in the turbulent international environment af-
ter World War II. Soviet ofﬁcials wanted to force “former enemy soldiers”
to compensate for half a century of perceived Japanese aggression against the
USSR. They also wanted to ensure that defeated soldiers did not threaten
Soviet borders after repatriation and instead would help to advance Soviet in-
terests there. The treatment received by the Japanese in the USSR was largely
shaped by the institution that administered them: the Chief Directorate for
POWs and Internees of the MVD, which subjected them and large numbers
of other enemy POWs to forced labor.

China’s direct experience of Japanese colonialism and its highly de-
structive eight-year war with Japan (1937–1945) gave China much stronger
grounds than the Soviet Union for postwar hostility toward remaining
Japanese. The CCP, sin embargo, could not afford to focus only on Japan’s past
military atrocities in China. With the resumption of the civil war in China
after the end of World War II, the CCP drew on the legacy of Japan’s colonial
presence in China, using Japanese soldiers in battle against the Nationalists
and Japanese skilled civilians to rebuild hospitals, factories, and mines in the
areas it controlled. Though the CCP eventually claimed victory over the Na-
tionalists and established the PRC, its experience of the early Cold War was
one of struggle for international recognition. In this context, the CCP chose
to treat China’s former imperialist occupiers magnanimously and sought to

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Japanese in the USSR and Mainland China, 1945–1956

recruit them into building the foundations of a new, egalitarian, inclusivo,
and successfully modernizing PRC.

The three-sided entanglement between China, the Soviet Union, y
Japón (with the fourth side, the United States, a constant presence in the back-
ground) offers two broad lessons about the early Cold War in East Asia. Primero,
traditional analytical frameworks used in explaining the Cold War obscure the
inﬂuences of earlier, longer-term historical interactions between China, Japón,
and the two superpowers. These interactions do not easily lend themselves to
the traditional dichotomies of ally/rival, Communist/capitalist, and East/West
that are typically used in analyzing the Cold War superpower confrontation.
Como resultado, differences in CCP and Soviet approaches toward the Japanese
in their territories during the Cold War appear puzzling from the perspective
of the extant Cold War literature. By exploring the inﬂuence of the Russo-
Japanese War, the Siberian intervention, China’s War of Resistance against
Japón, and the Chinese Civil War on Cold War–era Soviet-Japanese relations
and China-Japan relations, this article has demonstrated the importance of
expanding the temporal dimension when analyzing these relationships and
exploring the inﬂuences of earlier historical interactions alongside Cold War
circumstances.

Segundo, within this many-sided Cold War entanglement, the China-
Japan relationship is usually viewed as secondary to the relationships between
the United States and Soviet Union, the Soviet Union and China, y, en
the later Cold War, the United States and China, largely as a result of the
“junior” status of China and Japan within their respective Cold War “camps.”
Although the literature on the superpower relationships is immense, el
early Cold War relationship between China and Japan has received far less
attention.115 Yet, CCP policy toward Japan and the repatriated Japanese dur-
ing this period was not merely a function of China’s position within the Soviet
“camp.” Instead, our analysis helps to challenge the conventional hierarchies
of Cold War relationships and interactions by demonstrating that the histor-
ical relationship between China and Japan, coupled with the CCP’s civil war
experiencia, goes a long way toward explaining CCP policy, conceptions, y
behavior toward the Japanese in the PRC. In his recent world history of the
Cold War, Odd Arne Westad calls attention to the role of “events that were

115. Important exceptions here are Yinan He, The Search for Reconciliation: Sino-Japanese and German-
Polish Relations since World War II (Nueva York: Prensa de la Universidad de Cambridge, 2009); Amy King,
China-Japan Relations after World War Two: Empire, Industry and War, 1949–1971 (Cambridge, Reino Unido:
Prensa de la Universidad de Cambridge, 2016); and Yoshihide Soeya, Japan’s Economic Diplomacy with China,
1945–1978 (Oxford, Reino Unido: Clarendon Press, 1998).

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King and Muminov

in origin local and speciﬁc [but that] metamorphosed into manifestations of
a global struggle.”116 In line with this argument, nosotros, también, have sought to shift
our gaze from the “manifestations of a global struggle” to the local and speciﬁc
historical conﬂicts, colonial legacies, and domestic contexts that shaped CCP
and Soviet policies toward the Japanese in their territories and the ways the
two countries navigated the ﬂuid international order from World War II to
the Cold War.

Expresiones de gratitud

The authors are grateful to Rebecca Xu for her excellent research assistance
and to Barak Kushner, Caroline Rose, the participants in the 2012 universidad-
sity of Leeds’s Sino-Japanese Relations Research Network conference, y el
journal’s anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.
This research was supported by the European Research Council Project “The
Dissolution of the Japanese Empire and the Struggle for Legitimacy in Postwar
Asia Oriental, 1945–1965” (DOJSFL 313382).

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116. Odd Arne Westad, The Cold War: A World History (Londres: Allen Lane, 2017), pag. 99.

230 “Japan Still Has Cadres Remaining” image

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