15. Japanese Deportees And Prisoners Of War In Siberia, 1904–05

Abstract

Some questions concerning the history of the Russo-Japanese War have, to this very day, not only not been studied, but have also failed to attract sufficient attention from scholars and society. One of these questions concerns the Japanese deported to Siberia from the Far East or who were captured in the course of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. According to official Japanese statistics, the total number of Japanese prisoners of war during the conflict came to 2,104. The main body of Japanese in Russia lived in the Far East, and were rarely to be seen in Siberia itself, apart from in the Baikal region. The history of the Japanese deportees and POWs living in Siberia in 1904-1905 had not had a noticeable effect on Russian-Japanese relations, and this is down to the fact that it did not have tragic consequences and was not used as a 'political football'. Keywords: Japanese deportees; prisoners of war; Russo-Japanese War; Siberia