Photo By Erin Thompson | Repatriated Japanese POWs returning from Siberia to Kyoto Prefecture, Japan, 1946... read more read more
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by Erin E. Thompson, USAICoE Staff Historian
441ST CIC DETACHMENT SCREENS REPATRIATED JAPANESE PRISONERS
In January 1948, the 441st Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) Detachment gained responsibility for screening Japanese prisoners of war (POWs) returning from Soviet POW camps. Through a series of surveys, the CIC was able to track the effects of political propaganda on long-held Japanese prisoners in communist Russia.
The Soviet Union declared war on Imperial Japan on Aug. 8, 1945, just weeks before Japan’s surrender. The next day, the Soviets invaded Japanese-occupied Manchuria and launched amphibious assaults on the Korean peninsula, Sakhalin Island, and the Kurile Islands. In those final weeks of the war, between 1.6–1.7 million Japanese soldiers surrendered, shocking Allied troops who had come to expect low enemy capitulation in the Pacific Theater. According to historian Dr. Jason Dawsey, these surrenders were likely spurred by “war weariness, overwhelming odds, and sheer self-preservation.” Almost half of these POWs, including Japanese, Korean, and Manchurian civilians, were taken by the Soviets and housed in camps across Siberia, where they were forced to work to help boost the Russian economy. Thousands of them died due to the cold climate, meager food rations, illnesses, forced labor, and brutal treatment by Soviet guards.
The vast majority of Allied-held POWs were repatriated in 1946, and the Soviets also began returning their prisoners late that year. The U.S. Eighth Army oversaw the interrogation and screening of these returnees with assistance from various CIC units. According to the History of the Counter Intelligence Corps, “those repatriates appearing to be of most counterintelligence value were interrogated by the CIC Area office nearest the eventual residence of the returnee.” However, the Soviets continued to hold hundreds of thousands of Japanese POWs, releasing them sporadically over the new decade, long after most of the other Allies had released theirs. The last large group of repatriates returned to Japan in 1956, though hundreds convicted of crimes or categorized as political prisoners remained in Soviet hands.
The anti-communist position of the U.S. in the early Cold War made identifying and neutralizing communist threats to occupied Japan a priority effort. In January 1948, the responsibility for screening select Japanese repatriates fell to the 441st CIC Detachment. Priority cases included “known or suspected Soviet agents; collaborators in Soviet-held areas; and potentially active Communist Party members.” The CIC determined that repatriated prisoners who returned to Japan later were more heavily radicalized by communist propaganda than those returned in 1946. Agents found prisoners returned between 1948–1949 “had been subjected to the most intense indoctrination program yet employed.” The CIC was already suspicious of the activities of the Japanese Communist Party (JCP) and feared these returned prisoners would further influence the party. A study of returnees in the fall of 1948 showed varying degrees of indoctrination, with 9-35 percent of repatriates “signifying an intent to join the JCP.” By mid-1949, these figures skyrocketed to 60-80 percent identifying with the communist party.
Despite such vast numbers of repatriated soldiers associating themselves with the communist party, CIC surveys in 1950 showed communist propaganda largely failed to produce lasting political allies. The 441st CIC Detachment reinterviewed one hundred “specially selected ‘Red repatriates’” who had returned in 1949 pledging to join the JCP. Of those, only eleven ultimately joined the organization, and another sixteen still held communist sympathies. The rest had largely disavowed communism. According to one interviewee who had since turned anti-communist: “It is like a nightmare, the days we danced to the melody of ‘soren-Bushi’ (Soviet music). I feel as though I returned to the society of justice and respect and I am no longer a menace to anyone.”
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| Date Taken: | 01.17.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 01.17.2025 14:46 |
| Story ID: | 489288 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 31 |
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