DEATH AT DAWN IN ULAN BATOR
DEVERALL, RICHARD
Death at Dawn in Ulan Bator Russia's Jap Prisoners Perish in Mongolian Camp By RICHARD DEVERALL THE EXPLOITATION of slave labor by the Soviet Union and its friends took a mere dramatic turn...
...On March 29 the Civil Liberties Union of Japan formed a Special Investigation Committee to collect all of the facts about Yoshimura and Ulan Bator...
...Japanese Communists however spoke in glowing terms of conditions in POW camps, safd they were "better" than even the conditions enjoyed by the Russian people...
...In the winter, the ceremony of 'prayer at dawn' is carried out...
...Yet not a single man utters a curse against YSshimura...
...THE TOKYO Nippon Times on April 3 nqted that the "prayer at dawn" reports from Ulan Bator have been "substantiated by numerous men who either witnessed or underwent the inhuman torture...
...The eastern skies lighten...
...If the "prayer at dawn" story from Ulan Bator is true, and if the reports of mass deaths of Japanese POW's in the Soviet Union are true — and there is no reason to believe otherwise as I have myself seen in Japan the ashes of Japanese soldiers who died in Soviet POW camps — it would seem that the Soviet Union stands revealed as a mass slaughter house for Japanese prisoners of war...
...MacArthur set up repatriation centers to assist the Soviet, from time to time politely urged the Soviet to get busy with a repatriation program...
...With the Civil Liberties Union leading an investigation of the affair, Ikeda will be brought to trial in Japan permitting the Japanese to get the full story of the horror at Ulan Bator...
...According to the Japunese POW repatriate-written book, Border Teles, Yoshimura was able to make a deal with a 1st Lt...
...MUKDEN APTER THI SOVIETS CAME "Tne Russians Were in No Hurry" Richard Davarall was former chief of Labor Education on General MacArthur's staff In Japan...
...But prisoners of war enjoy a special international status...
...If the United States does not act through the UN at once to demand a sweeping investigation, of these mass murders and atrocities in the Far East, the democratic powers of the West are permitting the continued liquidation of POWs within the Soviet Union...
...Although the United States and other powers repatriated their POW's as rapidly * as possible, the Soviet was dilatory in even discussing the problem...
...Writes the Japanese repatriate: "Finally the end of a physical endurance is reached...
...It is now almost five years since the Soviet Union made off with its huge pool of Japanese slave labor...
...And for the past three year3 the Japan Communist Party has repeatedly told the Japanese that Japanese POW's within the Soviet territories enjoy more privileges than even the Russians...
...Corporal Yoshimura (Ikeda) was discovered by the Asahi to be living in seclusion on a "remote island near Nagasaki...
...They must undergo the rites of 'prayer at dawn.' "Stripped of all sense of shame, the victims grovel in the dirt, pleading for mercy...
...The treatment accorded citizens of the Soviet Union in slave labor camps is already well known...
...Meanwhile some large department stores in Japan ran exhibits on "Life of Japanese prisoners of war inside the Soviet Union" which let the Japanese people have a look at -the drawings made by returned POW's, showed actual samples of the tattered garments worn by Japanese inside the Soviet Union...
...ON MARCH 13 of this year the Japanese daily newspaper Asahi, in its weekly supplement (Shukan Asahi) published a dramatic story of atrocities and slave labor in a POW camp in Ulan Bator, capital of the Peoples' Republic of Outer Mongolia...
...Mochab, guaranteed to raise production of the POW camp if Mochab would split the bonus granted by the Soviets for high production...
...Slowly the fingers of both hands freeze, become waxen...
...The men, after an all-night struggle to keep alive, are exhausted...
...The Japanese priaoners of war who yet remain alive in Soviet camps should be questioned and permitted to tell their, story to the UN...
...Once the sentence is pronounced, the men are taken out into the bitter cold...
...The Russians were in no hurry...
...A full and naked exposure of the Soviet-sponsored atrocities in Asiatic prisoner of war camps will reveal to Asia and the world the terrible nature of Soviet Imperialism and its slave labor base...
...A Japanese military policeman by the .name of Shigeyoshi Ikeda changed his name to Corporal Yoshimura, became the slave master of several hundred Japanese POW's at Ulan Bator...
...the Russian ship Dvina drifted rudderless off northern Japan...
...t , , BORDER TALES supplies some of the details of Corporal Yoshimura's methods in disposing of Japanese POW slave labor when the men were no longer capable of working...
...In one SoViet-oontrolWd prison camp in Outer Mongolia it is reported that two thousand Japanese TOW** died as a resuKof brutal and inhuman treatment...
...Following the Asahi story, Mr...
...Japanese soldiers who were POW's under the Soviet Union have returned to Japan during the past year with tales of horror, murder, starvation, beatings, and tortures which rival the "best" stories from Bataan or Java...
...Ikeda (Corporal Yoshimura) declared he was innocent, later said that he had acted on orders "from Mongolian authorities...
...The coldest time comes just before the dawn...
...AT THE CLOSE of the Pacific Wat, the Soviet Union took over one million prisoners of war from the Japanese: the hard and well-trained units of the Kwantung Army, Japanese civilian technicians and workers throughout northern Manchuria and Mongolia, and the Japanese population of southern Sakhalin (about 195,000...
...Their tattered rags are stripped from them...
...Slowly death approaches...
...The members of this group of Japanese POW's were taken prisoner in October of 1945 in Manchuria...
...The reports from Japan have been so documented and are of such a frightful and bestial nature that it is imperative for the United States to Initiate action through UN bringing about a thorough-going investigation...
...The story of Corporal Yoshimura's "Prayer at Dawn" has particularly rocked Japan...
...The time to hit Soviet slave labor atrocities is now I And you can be sure that the 480,000 Japanese POW's who yet remain within the Soviet Union will be eternally grateful if America takes the lead in taking action today for freedom tomorrow...
...When the men are unable to fulfill their day's norm after working all night long they are made to disappear...
...But during the past year repatriates have not only talked and drawn sketches of POW camps, but some of them have been writing books...
...DURING THE WINTER of 1947-48...
...During the summer ihey are simply beaten to death...
...Death at Dawn in Ulan Bator Russia's Jap Prisoners Perish in Mongolian Camp By RICHARD DEVERALL THE EXPLOITATION of slave labor by the Soviet Union and its friends took a mere dramatic turn during the past month with word from Tokyo that Japanese priaoners of war have not only been used as slave labor under brutal and inhuman conditions, but have also been subjected to , atrocities typical of those perpetrated by Hie former Japanese militarists...
...Allied reporters noted that the decks were crowded with what appeared to be human beings...
...SCAP offered shipping, made every possible effort to assist the Soviet Union...
...Men are tied together in groups of ten at the end of the next day and are sentenced in a pompous ceremony by Yoshimura...
...In a last desperate effort to absorb the warmth of the rising sun, they stretch themselves towards the east as far as the ropes will allow...
...For In December of 1946 Pravda reported from Irkutsk that eight hundred thousand Japanese POW's were at work within the Soviet Union building railroads, factories, apartment houses, roads, as well as operating coal and gold mines for the Soviets, Continued prodding from SCAP brought the reply that ice-bound ports, lack of rail transportation, and lack of Shipping inhibited any rapid repatriation...
...Asahi told the story of the notorious "Yoshimura Corps...
...Not a flicker of reaction arises in the cold eyes of Yoshimura...
...And the loud-mouthed Communist daily, Red Flag (Akahata) declared that he had already been tried for the crime by a Peoples' Court' of Nahotka...
...The Asahi states that Yoshimura was anxious to serve in this capacity in order to avoid "incurring the wrath of the Soviet authorities specially reserved for members of military Japan's Gestapo...
...In the bitter sub-zero weather of Outer Mongolia they first *beeto to stamp about, in an effort to ward off the piercing cold...
...With arms raised, as if in prayer, to catch as much as possible, the men topple forward frozen to death, with a last 'prayer at dawn' on their lips...
...During the past month, the press of Japan has rooked the Japanese people back on their heels with the tales of atrocities and slave labor in territory under Soviet control and/or domina- - tion...
...The Dvina incident gave the lie to the Soviet claims of lack of transportation, ice, and other so-called "difficulties...
...A United Nations commission should be dispatched to make a frank and full Investigation of Soviet prisoner of war camps in Sakhalin, Siberia, Manchuria, Outer Mongolia, and other areas throughout the l*ar East under Soviet control and/or domination...
...The incident was so telling on the Japanese that later even the Japanese Communist Party visited the Russian Mission in Tokyo, demanded more rapid repatriation of Japanese from the Soviet Union...
...ghinkiebj Kaino, Chairman of the Civil Liberties Union of Japan (founded by Roger Baldwin when he was in . Japan) declared on March 30 of this year that "While other Japanese army corps showed an efficiency of only 15 percent in work, the Yoshimura Corps topped 80.5 percent as Corporal Yoshimura (Ikeda) forced his men to work until midnight without meals...
...A few days later, the House o£ Councillors of the Japanese Diet announced that its Special Reparation Committee was launching an overall investigation of the "prayer at dawn" case Meanwhile, the New York Times reported from Tokyo that "an estimated 210,000 Japanese died in Soviet camps up to October of last year...
...Making use of some gangster Japanese within the camp, Corporal Yoshimura became the master of a peculiar brand of Stakhanovism...
...Stark naked, they are tethered to a leafless tree in the center of the prison compound...
...Recent publications by POW repatriates include Struggling Prisoners of )V«r, Two Yeurs Without Spring, and Border Tales...
Vol. 32 • July 1949 • No. 31
