Abstract
The aim of this article is to investigate, on the basis of Soviet and American historical documents, the decisions made by Joseph Stalin concerning Siberian internment; in particular, the transportation of Japanese prisoners of war to Soviet territory during the fighting between Japanese and Soviet troops in northern Asia during the latter stages of World War II, and then verify the possibility that the United States had been informed about those movements, but did not take any countermeasures.
The use of POWs as forced labor was widely practiced in the Soviet Union throughout its history, and the practice was authorized at the state level. After the fighting on the German front, the Soviet Union developed a plan to use the captured Germans as labor, while full aware that the United States would oppose such actions. As a countermeasure, the Soviet Union decided to detain and intern Americans rescued by Soviet troops from German POW camps, in a move to control the number of American repatriates and thus restrain such US opposition.
In the 1945 Japan-Soviet War, Japanese POWs were treated according to the experience with German POWs. According to a military directive of August 16, Japanese POWs were to be placed in temporary camps at points of disarmament; then seven days later Stalin ordered them to be relocated to various regions in the Soviet Union and put to work. Although the order was expected to raise objections among the US leaders, who had been informed about the move in advance, they maintained silence and made no attempt to stop the relocation.
Instead, the United States requested the Soviet Union to cooperate in the release and speedy repatriation of Americans detained in the Japanese POW camps of Manchuria. The Soviet Union accepted the request, and repatriation proceeded smoothly. Such a quid pro quo raises the distinct possibility of the motive for the United States turning a blind eye to the relocation and use of Japanese POWs in Soviet territory, which is strengthened by the Soviet delay in releasing Americans from German POW camps until the relocation of the Japanese was completed.
The author concludes that the problem of the Japanese POWs interned in Soviet territory was not only a problem facing the Soviet Union and Japan, but also involved controversy between those two nations and the United States.
