Of the 45 Japanese who died from infectious diseases or other causes at the detention facility, 16 are also found to have been children aged 5 or younger.
The latest revelations show that the Japanese detainees saw both births and deaths amid the wretched conditions of the camp. Births at the camp were almost unknown to the public.
"Eleven children were born while the Japanese stayed at the camp. The newborns and their mothers were all healthy," a Soviet army surgeon is cited as stating in a November 1947 record regarding operations at the camp's medical division. According to another report written by the surgeon, 72 were born from October 1946, when the camp was set up, to December 1947.
A copy of a list of Japanese detainees who died at the camp — obtained by The Yomiuri Shimbun — indicates that 16 deaths, or 36 percent of all fatalities, were children aged 5 or under. Diphtheria reportedly appeared in the camp, so it is unknown whether those born at the camps survived.
When the Soviet Union advanced into South Sakhalin after the end of the war, more than 300,000 Japanese civilians are believed to have been living there. They were not allowed to return to Japan until December 1946. Men who could work as laborers were kept, while elderly people, women and children were assembled at the camp and given priority to return to Japan. As a result, old people and infants accounted for many of the dead.
Maoka girls' middle/high school was apparently used as a detention facility. A document dated June 27, 1946, and stored at the State Historic Archives in Sakhalin gives the facility's address as "Kholmsk women's junior high school, Chekhov St. 108."
An official of the city's archive office who is familiar with the history of this port city said, "The wooden school building, located in the place indicated by the address, was destroyed by fire in the 1960s." Kholmsk now has a population of 50,000.
