Thoughts on the German online database of Soviet WWII prisoners
German media reported recently that the world’s largest database of Soviet prisoners of war was made available to the public online. http://www.dokst.de/main/node/1117
The internet archive includes some 700,000 records of World War II prisoners, most of whom died after their capture by German soldiers.
A large-scale international research
project entitled, “Soviet and German prisoners of war and internees, --learning
about the World War II and postwar history issues” was initiated by “Saxon
memorials” Public Association (
Some 10,000 records of German citizens convicted in Soviet war tribunals were also made available online.
As for some 27,000 American POWs of the Japanese, no collaborative effort has been made by the US and the Japanese governments to create a similar database.
It was mostly through the works of volunteers that the records on American POWs of the Japanese have been made available online.
Mr. Roger Mansell,
Director of “Center
for Research, Allied POWS Under the Japanese,” has been researching on the
history of POWs of the Japanese in the past ten years. He said:
My first trip to NARA was in Sept
of 1999. Cameras were not permitted so I made a lot of notes and a few very
expensive Xerox copies. (Today, I use a camera on a tri-pod and shoot 6-8,000
pages in 2-3 days.)
Mr. Mansell
From time sheets and expense records, I have now spent over $280,000 of my own money and well over 18,000 hours on the project. What we post on the web site is just a small part of all the documentation we now have on the POWS. For this reason, I willingly give copies of every scanned document to other researches to assist their efforts. Personally, I think any researcher who refuses to share their work is foolish.
Roger has
been trying to compile a comprehensive roster for all the American POWs captured
by Japan. He informed us that the roster was 95% completed. “Although a
work in progress, we are always willing to share the data upon request. Much
more will have to be done to make it accessible on-line, " he said.
Mr. Wes Injerd, who lived in Fukuoka area in Japan for 26 years, has created a
website entitled, “Prisoner
of War Camp #1 Fukuoka, Japan” based on his many
years of research.
It contains a vast amount of information on POW camps in Japan, and visitors can
download spreadsheet type POW rosters.
Mr. Injerd
Meanwhile,
Mr. John Lewis, whose father died on a POW transporting hellship, wrote this
very helpful suggestion.
"Recommendations Concerning Searching for information about a POW of the Japanese." from his Japanese-pow Home page
John also
listed some of the rosters for particular groups
here.
Mr. Lewis
Today, one can search information on an individual American POW of the Japanese using NARA’s website. Here is how it became possible explained by John:
The database that we developed and donated to NARA on behalf of the ADBC started with the NARA World War II Prisoners of War Database. NARA had given me a copy for a starting point. The primary objective for this database was to record each POW's military unit information prior to the surrender or capture. Our only source of information in the beginning was the ADBC registration cards that were made out as former POWs joined the ADBC. I assembled a team of 20 DG volunteers to screen the ADBC registration cards. We used only the POWs of the Japanese and, with several exceptions, we deleted civilians since they would have no military unit.
About the time that work was completed, I decided to expand the project to take advantage of all known, reliable sources such as unit rosters. Then the remainder of the work was done by Jim Erickson and me. (Jim's website) The result was a database of 29,879 POWs and we obtained military unit information for about 73% of them. We had the formal donation ceremony at NARA on April 4, 2006. NARA got the database posted on their AAD (Access to the Archival Database) site on the internet about November 2006.
The URL for the "Fielded Search" page of the ADBC Database is: http://aad.archives.gov/aad/fielded-search.jsp?dt=2212&cat=WR26&tf=F&bc=sl
The URL for the "Fielded
Search" page of NARA's Database of World War II Prisoners of War is:
http://aad.archives.gov/aad/fielded-search.jsp?dt=466&cat=WR26&tf=F&bc=,sl
Roger Mansell also started with a copy of the NARA database of World War II Prisoners of War. He has kept the civilians and he has added POWs and Civilian Internees based on information received from families and others. So, his database includes many more people and more facts.
The Japanese government has not released information on POWs it captured during WWII. The death roster created by the POW Research Network Japan was largely based on documents produced by the US Occupation Forces after the war.
Last December the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare released, for the first time, documents on the POWs held at Fukuoka POW camp #26 when House of Councilors member Yukihisa Fujita asked about the POW forced labor at a coal mine owned by the family of Prime Minister Taro Aso. It is very likely that documents on other POW camps also exist. In addition to nearly 130 POW camps on mainland Japan, there were a dozen more major Japanese POW camps across Asia.
Dr. Lester Tenney, the last National Commander of the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor, has been asking the Japanese government to release all documents related to POWs to the public domain. It is hoped that such documents can be used to cross-check the records available in the US and to eventually create a database similar to what the German project created.
It is also hoped that the US and
the Japanese governments will work together to make information on the
approximately 14,000 US civilians who were interned by Japan during WWII
available to the public so that people in both countries can learn about their
experiences also.
(Kinue Tokudome)