Kiuchi Nobuo was a member of the Japanese Army Air Service, who, like most Japanese military personnel captured by Soviet forces at the end of World War II, was taken to the USSR for forced labor as a POW, where he had to work for several years before being allowed to return home, to Japan.
He was transferred all across the USSR, from North Korea, to Siberia, to as far west as Hungary (see above map), working with his fellow Japanese troops, as well as German Wehrmacht PoWs, as a slave, desperately fighting to survive the inhumane conditions of communist forced labor camps and stalags to return home.
Eventually, in 1948, his suffering was ended when he and his fellow prisoners were shipped across the Soviet Union to the Pacific, where they then sailed home to the Port of Maizuru. From there he returned to Tokyo (first photo), where he was embraced by his brother and father, who had thought him to be dead.
“We all harbor feelings of cheer and of grief, no matter if they belong to Japanese or Russian. I wish to deliver a message to all the people of the world – that we all belong to one big family, we are all one, all of our wars are meaningless and we must stop them so that none must suffer again.”
Kiuchi’s son, Masato, has created a multi-lingual website devoted to displaying his father’s many drawings that vividly depict his experience as a POW (many of which I will be posting at a later time).
I encourage you to look through the 5 chapters of drawings on the website and read Kiuchi’s story.
Oh wow, the artwork and story is amazing. They should be published into a book.
Hungary was calling Vangria in Russian. Very cheerful, vivacious people.
They work scampy(for they hate Soviet Union). They call themselves
“japanophiles” and they know more about Japan than ourselves.
Mooncustafer 