On 28 March 1946, Colonel-General Vasily Chernyshov, Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR, sent a letter to Marshal Alexander Vasilevsky, Chief of the General Staff of the USSR Armed Forces, in which he agreed to transfer the first group of 2,460 Japanese prisoners he had at his disposal and whom the military had requested. This was because of “the lack of premises in the Primorsky Krai suitable for keeping this number of prisoners and the impossibility of these prisoners’ transportation to the rear of the country owing to weather conditions in March”.

After the end of the war with Japan, more than 600,000 prisoners of war were on Soviet Union territory. Some of them were able to return home, but 500,000 were left in the Far Eastern Territory of the USSR. The number of POWs was unexpectedly large and there was a shortage of building materials, fuel or food. Adapted premises and even tents were used as camps. In the winter of 1945-46, many died from disease and harsh conditions.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs had camps throughout the Soviet Union, including Primorsky Krai, and its officers were much more experienced than the military in organising labour camps. Companies of workers were formed from the transferred Japanese prisoners; discipline was maintained by Japanese officers. The task of such units was to construct labour camps.

On 23 August 1945, the State Defence Committee of the USSR released the decree by which Japanese prisoners of war were sent to perform various tasks, mainly in the Far East. They worked in logging, constructed buildings and took part in establishing the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM) railway. However, the cost of organising the camps made the economic effect of their labour small.

The mass repatriation of Japanese POWs to their homeland occurred in October 1946. It was finished by April 1950. After that, only those Japanese prisoners who had been convicted of war crimes remained in the USSR to serve their sentence.

Source:

Letter from the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR V.V. Chernyshov to the Ministry of the Armed Forces of the USSR on the formation of three separate companies of workers consisting of Japanese prisoners of war, 28 March 1946

Central Archives of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation

TsAMO RF, F. 67, Series, 32174, Case. 223, Pg. 162