JAPANESE FROM MUKDEN

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24816, 5 March 1946, Page 5

JAPANESE FROM MUKDEN

REMOVAL TO SIBERIA MUKDEN, March 3. The Soviet commander at Mukden, Major-General Stankevitcb, told American correspondents that the Russians were sending Japanese prisoners of war from the Mukden area to .Siberian camps instead of repatriating them. When the correspondents asked whether the Russians were using the Japanese as slave labour, Major-Gen-eral Stankevitch replied that he was surprised that such a question should be asked. He added that he did not know what was happening to the prisoners. A semi-official report from Changchun states that a Russian officer, who is believed to have newly arrived from Moscow, has taken over control of the Manchuria Electric Power Corporation, which controls all the Manchurian electric power supply. A correspondent of the Associated Press of America in Manchuria says that he and two other newspaper men • were forced to leave the Russian-occu-pied zone in Dairen. The Russians made it clear that if they stayed they would have to remain in their hotel rooms. The day before this instruction was received they had reported that the Russians were building up their forces in Dairen. Under the treaty with China Dairen was to be a free port. The correspondent adds that they were sent out in style, in a first-class railway compartment, but the point was that they did not wish to go.