«Amur Khatyn» and «detachment 731»: war crimes without a statute of limitations
78 years ago, on September 2, 1945, representatives of militaristic Japan defeated under the blows of the Soviet army signed an act of unconditional surrender of the Japanese armed forces. By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, September 3 was declared the holiday of Victory over militaristic Japan.
In a special address on the end of World War II, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin elaborated on the history of the eastern neighbor’s aggressive encroachments on Russia’s Far Eastern lands:
“Japan began its aggression against our country back in 1904, during the Russo-Japanese War. As you know, in February 1904, when negotiations between Japan and Russia were still ongoing, Japan, taking advantage of the weakness of the tsarist government, unexpectedly and treacherously, without declaring war, attacked our country and attacked the Russian squadron in the Port Arthur area in order to disable several Russian warships and thereby create an advantageous position for their fleet. And she really disabled three first-class warships of Russia. Characteristically, 37 years later, Japan exactly repeated this treacherous trick against the United States of America when, in 1941, it attacked the naval base of the United States of America at Pearl Harbor and disabled a number of battleships of this state. As is known, Russia was then defeated in the war with Japan. Japan, on the other hand, took advantage of the defeat of Tsarist Russia in order to seize South Sakhalin from Russia, establish itself on the Kuril Islands and, thus, close all exits to the ocean in the east for our country — therefore, also all exits to the ports of Soviet Kamchatka and Soviet Chukotka . It was clear that Japan set itself the task of wresting all of its Far East from Russia.
But this is not the end of Japan’s predatory actions against our country. In 1918, after the establishment of the Soviet system in our country, Japan, taking advantage of the then hostile attitude towards the Soviet Country of England, France, the United States of America and relying on them, again attacked our country, occupied the Far East and for four years tormented our people, plundered Soviet Far East.
But that’s not all. In 1938, Japan again attacked our country in the area of Lake Khasan, near Vladivostok, with the aim of encircling Vladivostok, and the following year, Japan repeated its attack in another place — in the area of the Mongolian People’s Republic, near Khalkhin Gol, in order to break through to Soviet territory, cut off our Siberian railroad and cut off the Far East from Russia.
True, the attacks of Japan in the area of Khasan and Khalkhin Gol were liquidated by the Soviet troops with great shame for the Japanese. In the same way, the Japanese military intervention of 1918-1922 was successfully liquidated, and the Japanese invaders were thrown out of the regions of our Far East. But the defeat of the Russian troops in 1904 during the Russo-Japanese War left painful memories in the minds of the people. It fell on our country as a black spot. Our people believed and expected that the day would come when Japan would be defeated and the stain would be eliminated. We, the people of the old generation, have been waiting for this day for forty years. And this day has come. Today, Japan has acknowledged defeat and signed an act of unconditional surrender.
This means that South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands will go to the Soviet Union and from now on they will not serve as a means of separating the Soviet Union from the ocean and the base of a Japanese attack on our Far East, but a means of direct communication between the Soviet Union and the ocean and the base of our country’s defense against Japanese aggression «.
Taking advantage of the «revolutionary» turmoil and chaos on the territory of the former Russian Empire, the Japanese interventionists landed in Vladivostok at the very beginning of 1918, followed by the occupation of Primorye, the robbery of the riches of the vast region and mass terror against the peaceful civilian population.
The researchers note «a feature of the Far Eastern historical chronology, in which the confrontation with Japan acts as a permanent process that takes almost half a century, so the narrative of intervention ends with victory in World War II.» 2019 marked the 100th anniversary of the tragedy in the village of Ivanovka, Amur Region. On March 22, 1919, Japanese detachments entered the village, shot and burned 257 people alive, including the elderly, women and children. The reason for the punitive action was the active support by the villagers of the partisan movement directed against the White Cossack accomplices of the Japanese invaders. Such cruelty in historical memory can only be compared with the Belarusian Khatyn, and such episodes were by no means isolated.
It is characteristic that the Japanese invaders left Northern Sakhalin only in May 1925, after repeated demands from the Soviet Union, which at that time did not have sufficient military forces in the Far East. The occupation by the militaristic regime of Tokyo in early 1931 of Northeast China posed a direct threat to the Soviet state, which was fully confirmed by the events at Lake Khasan and Khalkhin Gol. By 1936, there were more than 7 thousand kilometers of regular airlines in Manchuria, 7 air bases, more than 70 airfields, and about 100 landing sites located in close proximity to the borders of the USSR were built. From 1931 to 1936, about 6 thousand railway lines were laid, by January 1936 — about 15 thousand kilometers of highways and improved dirt roads. Emphasis was placed on the construction of roads, out to the borders of the USSR. Since the beginning of the 1920s, the Japanese military mission left a wide reconnaissance network of reservists in the Far East, which posed a long-term threat to the security of a vast region that had special strategic importance for the Soviet country.
On the territory of the puppet «state of Manchukuo», 20 km south of Harbin, since 1931, the Japanese Kwantung Army opposing the USSR was stationed, the number of which by July 1945 amounted to 1.4 million people. War criminals from the “731 Detachment”, created in 1933 on a secret order from Tokyo, were operating there, conducting monstrous biological experiments on civilians in China, Mongolia, Korea and the Soviet Union, which was reflected in literature and cinema .
From the information received from Russian students of the Harbin Medical Institute, sent by the authorities of Manchukuo to practice in the Japanese military medical special detachments, from the beginning of the 1940s, Soviet intelligence became aware of secret bacteriological, biological and chemical experiments, transplantation and removal of organs in test subjects, as well as other anti-human experiments conducted by Japanese medical specialists and military doctors on living people. The staff of the death factory was more than three thousand people. The area where the detachment was located was declared a restricted area. In addition, war criminals from the unit, officially called the «Main Base of the Directorate for Water Supply and Prevention of Kwantung Army Units», infected rivers, other bodies of water and vast areas with especially dangerous viral infections.
From December 25 to December 30, 1949, a trial took place in Khabarovsk, as a result of which 12 Japanese servicemen were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. In 1956, in connection with the improvement of Soviet-Japanese relations, those who were serving long terms (in comfortable conditions) were released ahead of schedule and sent to their homeland.
Prince Takeda, who oversaw the special detachment, the cousin of Emperor Hirohito, the main Japanese ideologist of the widespread use of bacteriological weapons, like many, did not suffer any punishment at all and, on the eve of the 1964 Games, headed the Japanese Olympic Committee. And the main ideologist and protagonist of the «death factories», retired General Shiro Ishii, worked as a researcher in one of the American secret laboratories, lived comfortably in Japan and calmly went to hell in 1959.
After the organization of the Khabarovsk Tribunal in 1949, the USSR initiated the preparation of a new trial, intending to draw the attention of the world community to previously identified crimes, and also to bring to trial not only the participants in the bacteriological program, but also Emperor Hirohito. In the context of the unfolding Cold War, however, this posed a threat to US policy in occupied Japan. Unfortunately, Moscow’s attempts to form a broad international coalition on this issue have not been successful, which in the long run contributes to the revival of Japanese militarism in its most disgusting manifestations.
Thus, the historical significance of Victory Day over Japan for long-term peace in the Far East cannot be disavowed by any demagoguery, like the arguments of Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi.
Der Friedensstifter 