Kiuchi Nobuo's journey to the Soviet camps

World War II Japanese Military
#1

I’ve just found an amazing site where the one retired japanese Air corps recals about the time he spend in USSR.He was captured in august 1945 during the operation “august storm” launched against Kwantung army.
But he collected his memours in… self-made pictures.Very intersting and emotional…
I want you to look this site
The notes of Japanese in USSR
Links to the pictures on the right side.
Honestly . i’ve learned some things that i never heard about.For instance, that Japane POW might to have a friend among soviet officers.Also i was amazed by the next statements

http://kiuchi.jpn.org/en/nobindex.htm
Russian children are such naive and inartificial and they don’t pay any attention to racial differences. I was very lucky I could play with them. I have also learned many new russian words. I adore children!

It looks like the Japaneses pows still pay an attention at the racial defferences( or they expected to see the racial prejudices in USSr becouse they belonged to “yellow” race).

#2

Chevan, me old Russian mate, where have you been lately?

We miss you.

Then you suddenly turn up with a gem like this.

I trust that you’ll use the Russian winter when your Lada is frozen solid and you have to spend three months indoors :wink: :smiley: to give us some more jewels like Nobuo’s site.

#3

OK, more seriously, in some respects there is nothing all that unusual about Nobuo’s experience when we look at the experiences of POWs on all sides, albeit only for a small proportion of POWs.

I have read of a few British and American POWs who had quite pleasant times when assigned as farm labourers to German masters in Europe, and corresponding experiences for some Germans assigned as farm labourers in Britain.

Many Italian POWs who were used in Australia as assigned farm labourers impressed their masters favourably to the extent that the masters sponsored them after the war as migrants to Australia.

While it was much less common than Italian POWs’ generally soft experiences in Australia, there were still some great instances of Japanese civilians being, at risk to themselves, supportive of and generous to Australian POWs whom the Japanese authorities were happy to work to death, after transporting them to Japan after failing to work them to death on the Burma Railway.

The feature most common to these multi-national experiences was that the POWs lived with or worked closely with hard-working farming families or in other situations worked with their benefactors who respected the prisoners’ work ethic, knowledge and character. It was a personal connection built on learning to see each other as people, rather than nationalities.

It was for all sides a lesson in learning that, as Nobuo found, there were and are good people on all sides in a war.

#4

Thanks mate.
Me too miss all of you.
I was a bit busy on my work and had a some troubles with internet in my home.

I trust that you’ll use the Russian winter when your Lada is frozen solid and you have to spend three months indoors :wink: :smiley: to give us some more jewels like Nobuo’s site.

It sounds mate , like you know what the winter is:);)How much in year you see the snow in Australia?
I bought the Lada coz it might be easly thawed by bonfire , sttarted right under the bottom of oil-collector of engeen.:slight_smile: