Title: The “Siberian Internment” and the Transnational History of the Early Cold War Japan, 1945–56
Abstract: It is one of the overlooked ironies of history that Japan’s imperial project both started and ended in northeast China. Another irony—or historical coincidence—lies in the fact that Japan’s quest for empire had both its beginning and end in confrontations with the same country. While its victory over the ailing Russian Empire in 1905 set Japan on the path to imperial expansion, it was Soviet Russia that delivered, at the end of World War II, the last blow to Japan’s empire. In a matter of four decades, the tables of history had turned Japan from the glorious victor in the Russo-Japanese War to a “defeated nation.”