Photo/Illutration Shoji Niizeki, a former detainee in Siberia, shows his accordion skills on May 30 in Yokohama. He played the instrument in Siberia as a member of an orchestra. (Tomoe Ishikawa)

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made it difficult for the Japanese government to collect the remains of Japanese detainees who died in Siberia after World War II.

Around 54,000 Japanese lost their lives in what was then the Soviet Union as well as Mongolia during wartime. The remains of about 32,000 of these war dead are still uncollected.

The government has so far collected war dead remains in former Soviet republics and from battlegrounds south of Japan, including in Myanmar and the Mariana Islands.

However, around 1.12 million Japanese war dead remain uncollected overseas.

In 2016, the Diet enacted a law to accelerate the government’s project to collect the remains. The law requires the government to “intensively” search for and collect the bones for the period to fiscal 2024.

However, the COVID-19 pandemic suspended the project in 2020.

In January this year, when the pandemic was showing signs of abating, Japan resumed the project by researching and collecting remains in areas south of Japan, including Saipan.

But Russia’s invasion and its subsequent frayed ties with Japan have made it difficult to resume the project in the former Soviet Union.

Shoji Niizeki, a 96-year-old former detainee in Siberia, recalled his days there while chopping potatoes in his kitchen in Yokohama.

Niizeki says he endured forced labor in Siberia for around four years at a coal mine among other places. He staved off hunger in the frigid temperatures by eating potatoes.

Japanese detainees were forced to live in unhygienic conditions, and deaths from malnutrition or typhus occurred almost every day.

Niizeki was ordered to bury their bodies, but the only place where he could do so was in a nearby open field.

“Some of them are still there, but nothing can be done (to collect their bones) under the current situation,” he said.

Niizeki has been a member of a group called “Siberia Yokuryu Sha Shien Kiroku Center” (center for supporting former detainees in Siberia and recording their experiences).

He feels the center’s activities could become even more difficult because the Russia-Ukraine conflict has been prolonged.

“(The center’s activities) sometimes require Russian cooperation, but we can’t even seek its cooperation under the current circumstances.

“All we can do at the moment is to continue talking about our experiences to let young people know about the detention, and to pray from here in Japan.”

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