New clues to Japanese interned in Siberia

MOSCOW--Previously unknown records uncovered in Russia could shed light on Japanese prisoners of war interned in Siberia and other parts of the former Soviet Union after World War II, officials say.

Records on about 700,000 Japanese combatants and civilians who were interned in the Soviet Union were found at a Russian state military archives building.

Japanese government officials are negotiating with their Russian counterparts on sharing the new information.

According to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, details provided by Russia until now include personal information on about 470,000 repatriated Japanese as well as rosters for about 41,000 who died while working as forced laborers, often in freezing conditions.

The newly discovered records consist of separate index cards for each internee. The cards detail the person's name, date of birth, record of transport between prisoner camps and death.

Moscow confirmed last year that 757 cardboard boxes, each containing about 1,000 cards, had been found in storage.

Japanese welfare ministry officials have estimated that 561,000 Japanese were interned in Siberia, of whom 53,000 died.

Ministry officials hope the new records will shed light on when the internees died and where they were buried.

A sample study was conducted on about 300 individuals whose names were not recorded in previous documents provided by Russia.

Russian officials were asked to find information on those individuals in the newly found records. Details on about 20 individuals were discovered.

The number of internees covered by the records is about 140,000 more than the number previously estimated by the health ministry.

However, there is a possibility that duplicate cards for the same individual are included in the records, leading ministry officials to stress the need for a thorough inspection of the new information.

The new records could put to rest debates on the number of Japanese interned in Siberia. Russian and American experts have long disputed the figure.

The internees were mainly soldiers and civilians based in northeastern China and the northern part of the Korean Peninsula during the closing stages of the war.

They were taken to Siberia and other parts of the Soviet Union, where they were forced to work in railway construction.(IHT/Asahi: July 25,2009)