Before End of March Russia to Pass POW Data to Japan
MOSCOW(RIA Novosti) - Information on the Japanese kept in the Siberian prisoner-of-war camps till the end of WWII will be passed to Japan before the end of March 2005.
RIA Novosti learnt this from Mr. Kirill Chernenkov, head of the international board at the Federal Archives Agency.
He said that in the 1980s-1990s part of the information on about 37,500 dead Japanese (surname, name, date and place of birth or registration, date, place and cause of death, as well as the burial place) had already been passed to the Japan on the basis of the interstate agreement.
The interviewee said: "The Russian State Military Archives keep information on about 500,000 Japanese who were kept in Soviet POW camps". "Except the Japanese Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry other Japanese organizations are showing interest", Mr. Chernenkov said.
"They are mostly organizations interested in such information for scientific ends", he specified.
"If they display initiative, we are ready to cooperate", said the military archivist.
Earlier, the Japanese embassy in Moscow said that the Japanese ambassador to Russia Issei Nomura and head of the Federal Archives Agency Vladimir Kozlov have signed a protocol on the transfer of information on the Japanese who died during internment to Siberia.
In signing the protocol, microfilmed copies of information on over 11,000 Japanese were passed.
© 2004 RIA Novosti