Truthful and kind drawings about the USSR of a Japanese soldier who spent 3 years in Soviet captivity

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

At first glance, Kiuchi Nobuo's drawings look simple and unpretentious - just watercolor pictures, more like comics. However, leafing through them, you gradually realize that in front of you is a real chronicle of a small era. The drawings cover the period from 1945 to 1948. Japanese prisoners of war lived sometimes hard, and sometimes even merrily; there are still more positive stories in the sketches. Perhaps surprising in them is the complete absence of resentment towards the victorious country and overflowing optimism, which helped Kiuchi even in the most difficult situations.

Nobuo Kiuchi served in Manchuria and was taken prisoner by the Soviets at the end of World War II. More than half a million Japanese prisoners of war lived in Soviet camps. They performed a variety of jobs: rebuilding destroyed cities, laying roads, working in the fields. A few years later, most of these people returned to their families, including Nobuo.

Arriving home, the Japanese worked first as a worker in a factory, then as a jeweler, and in his free time he painted. More than 50 sketches about the years of his captivity he made "hot on the heels", until the memories lost their vividness. This is probably why simple pictures look so authentic.

Now Nobuo Kiuchi is 98 years old. His collection of drawings became widely known thanks to the artist's son. Masato Kiuchi created a website where he posted his father's work. Despite his advanced age and impending illness, the former Japanese soldier does not lose his optimism and continues to draw his good comics.

Drawings about the first days of captivity are full of understandable bitterness. Nobuo, along with his compatriots, got used to life behind barbed wire, but at the same time took the situation calmly - such is the fate of the losers.

The Japanese often mentions in his "chronicle" night blindness - a disease that overtook his comrades due to the lack of vegetables and vitamins. However, even in this difficult period, he finds a reason for being positive:

It was hard for the Japanese to move across all of Russia. Prisoners of war were transported along the Trans-Siberian railway, 40 people each in an 18-ton freight car, behind tightly closed doors. A machine gunner was assigned to every second carriage.

A month later, a train packed with people arrived in the small Ukrainian town of Slavyansk. Here the prisoners were to spend the next three years. The first impression of the Japanese in the new place was a small Russian dzemochka (girl) with bare feet, who drove the kids in front of her:

In general, Russian women and children have become a special topic for Nobuo Kiuchi. For the Japanese living in the "good old patriarchy," gender equality was an amazing discovery. The military women were especially struck:

In general, Nobuo's relationship with the fair sex was good. He received from one girl a valuable lesson in handling a scythe, and from another a gift - a potato.

However, the work was not always as pleasant as on the collective farm. In winter, the prisoners had to work in frost and snowstorms.

The "cultural exchange" was also interesting, which still happens, even despite the difficulties, when representatives of different cultures live nearby. The Japanese admired the musical talents of the Russians and, in turn, introduced them to the game of sumo.

In 1947, the Japanese began to be sent in batches through Siberia back to the east. During the captivity, everyone managed to make friends not only with Russian girls and children, but even with captured Germans - neighbors in the camp. The farewell was unexpectedly touching:

And now, finally, the long-awaited return home and meeting with relatives.

I must say that not only the Japanese talked about the normal attitude of Russians towards them in the first years after the war: What German prisoners of war recalled about the years spent in the USSR