On Aug. 9, 1945, the Soviet Army started invading Manchukuo, a puppet state of the Japanese military in today's Northeast China, violating the Japan-Soviet Neutrality Pact. Many Japanese, both civilians and soldiers, perished there and the Soviet Union took many Japanese to labor camps in Siberia and other places of the Soviet Union. At least an estimated 55,000 Japanese died due to hard labor in wretched conditions.
Mr. Misao Naito, better known by his pen name Gosuke Uchimura, who died Jan. 30, was a Japanese whose fate was affected by the Soviet invasion and then Japan's surrender in World War II. Unlike most others, he was charged by the Soviet Union with political crimes and put in prison.
Mr. Uchimura spent most of his time in the dreaded Alexandrovsky Central Prison about 70 km northwest of Irkutsk. Experiencing absurd circumstances imposed by what he calls "criminal socialism," he spent some 11 years in Soviet detention facilities and prisons until his return to Japan in December 1956.