ABSTRACT
The chapter deals with the situation with the cemeteries of Japanese prisoners of war (POWs) of the Soviet-Japanese war of 1945. After the end of the war, according to various estimates, about 500,000 Japanese soldiers and officers were interned on the territory of the USSR. Within a few years, about 60,000 of them had died due to diseases, accidents, hard work, and the unfamiliar climate. The dead were buried in special cemeteries, which were usually located in the vicinity of the prisoner of war camp. Their greatest number was concentrated in the regions of the Russian Far East and Eastern Siberia. The policy of the Soviet state regarding the preservation of cemeteries changed several times: after the end of the repatriation of the Japanese, the cemeteries were transferred under the supervision of local authorities. This actually meant that their preservation gradually ceased. The territories of the cemeteries were used for various economic activities and were no longer protected by the state. With the beginning of “perestroika,” efforts were made to restore cemeteries and collect information about them from various sources including archives and surveys of local residents or administration workers. In the late 1980s, work began to return the remains of POWs to Japan. This work was undertaken by the Ministry of Health of Japan with the assistance of the local Russian authorities. This led to the rise of new issues surrounding tasks such as determining the location and identification of cemeteries. To date, information about the cemeteries of the Japanese has been published in various sources both in Japan and Russia.
