Japanese prisoners of war in the Soviet Union

By the end of World War II there were from 560,000 to 760,000 Japanese POWs in the Soviet Union and Mongolia interned to work in labor camps., BBC News, 7 March 1998, Commission on Human Rights, 56th session, 13 April 2000. Moscow Logos Publishers (2000) (Военнопленные в СССР. 1939–1956: Документы и материалы] Науч.-исслед. ин-т проблем экон. истории ХХ века и др.; Под ред. М.М. Загорулько. – М.: Логос, 2000. – 1118 с.: ил.) ISBN 5-88439-093-9Anne Applebaum Gulag: A History, Doubleday, April 2003, ISBN 0-7679-0056-1; page 431.)

The majority of the approximately 3.5 million Japanese armed forces outside Japan were disarmed by the United States and Kuomintang China and repatriated in 1946. Western Allies had taken 35,000 Japanese prisoners between December 1941 and 15 August 1945, i.e., before the Japanese capitulation The Soviet Union held the Japanese POWs much longer and used them as a labor force.

History

The majority of Japanese who were held in the USSR did not...
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