War Crimes
Many Japanese settlers committed mass suicide as the Soviet army approached. Mothers were forced to kill their own children before killing or being killed themselves. The Japanese army often took part in the killings of its civilians. The commander of the 5th Japanese Army, General Simidzu, commented that "each nation lives and dies by its own laws." Wounded Japanese soldiers who were incapable of moving on their own were often left to die as the army retreated.
The Soviets laid claim to Japanese enterprises in the region and took valuable materials and industrial equipment.
US and British reports indicate that the Soviet troops that occupied Manchuria (about 700,000) looted and terrorized the people of Mukden, and were not discouraged by Soviet authorities from "three days of rape and pillage". In Harbin, Chinese posted slogans such as "Down with Red Imperialism!" Soviet forces ignored protests from Chinese communist party leaders on the mass rape and looting.
Konstantin Asmolov of the Center for Korean Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences dismisses Western accounts of Soviet violence against civilians in the Far East as exaggeration and rumor and contends that accusations of mass crimes by the Soviet army inappropriately extrapolate isolated incidents regarding the nearly 2,000,000 Soviet troops in the Far East into mass crimes. According to him, such accusations are refuted by the documents of the time, from which it is clear that such crimes were far less of a problem than in Germany. Asmolov further deflects critics by pointing out that whereas the Soviets prosecuted their perpetrators, German and Japanese prosecution of "rapists and looters" was virtually unknown.
Read more about this topic: Soviet Invasion Of Manchuria
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