It seems that the Soviet army already had a plan to capture the Japanese army in order to make them work in Soviet territory. The Soviets lost approximately 20,000,000 soldiers during the World War II. As a result, they were lacking young males, and they planned to replenish the situation with Japanese soldiers for a while.
As I have mentioned before, among us, the internees, there is a strong speculation that some kind of communication must have occurred between the leaders of the Soviet Union and the Japanese army in order to transfer 600,000 Japanese soldiers in to Soviet territory. Colonel Sejima in the Kwantung Army who was directly responsible for that particular matter kept his mouth shut until the end. Therefore, our suspicions do not disappear. Now that he and all of other people who were responsible have passed away, there is no way for us to find out the truth.
I understand that the Soviet was considering the organization of 5,000 Japanese soldiers as one group. Since the number of military officers like myself who were taken to Yelabuga numbered approximately 10,000, 5000 officers were grouped to go into A and B gulag. There were actually more military officers in the Kwantung army, so I think they were sent to other gulags as lower ranking officers or leaders of each gulag.
Among the 5000 in gulag A, except for a few numbers of lower ranking officers, all of the officers were cadets and officials. Major general Sugino was an exception, however. I heard that the was the son of the warrant officer Sugino , whom Colonel Hirose had to look for on the ship three times during the Siege of Port Arthur during the Russo-Japanese War. Colonel Hirose was shot to death by the enemy because he had to do the search. The story became famous as it became a song for elementary school children before WWII.
As I understand, Colonel Hirose was very well known as a man with a great mind while he was working in Moscow as a military officer at the Russian embassy. Even a Russian noble lady was deeply in love with him, I hear. How sad it is that such a man had to die, killed by a Russian bullet during the Russo-Japanese War.
By the way, 5,000 officers in Gulag A were organized into approximately sixty companies. Although we insisted that we were “internees” and not “captives,” we were clearly called “voyennoplennie (captives.) “ In addition to general companies, there were other companies in charge of salary, technology, mechanics (automobile), hospital. public bath (banya), and entertainment.
In Gulag A, there was a Japanese president as someone responsible on the side of the Japanese army, who was the leader of all of these companies. The regiment headquarter was underneath the president, taking care of the clerical work of the Gulag. There were such posts as the boss of the general affairs who were in charge of personnel, the boss of the salary in charge of allocation of salary, boss of clothing, and the boss of technology. This gulag for the military officers was said to be directly controlled by the Moscow administration. Colonel Konoe was appointed as the manager of the management station who was in charge of directing both Gulag A and B. All the bosses in charge were placed under his command.