RUSSIANS RETURN

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXV, Issue 226, 23 August 1945, Page 5

RUSSIANS RETURN

BACK TO PORT ARTHUR. AIRBORNE LANDINGS. (N.Z. Press Association.—Copyright.) (Rec. 11.25 a.m.) LONDON, Aug. 22. Moscow announces that Red Army airborne troops have landed at Port Arthur and at Dairen, a few miles to the north-east. Other airborne forces have landed in the Northern Kuriles, the island chain stretching north from Japan to the Kamchatka Peninsula. The Japanese Kwantung army has formally surrendered at Harbin to Major-General Shelakliov. Agency correspondents in Moscow report that more than 250,000 Japanese have been taken prisoner in Mancliukuo and they are still coming m in thousands, liie Red Army is pushing on into the southern areas of the Saidialin Island and driving southward from the captured ports of Korea. Scattered remnants of the Japanese armies who refused to surrender or who are out of touch with the group headquarters in Mancliukuo are harassing Soviet communications and terrorising Chinese villagers. They are the counter-part of the Nazi “werewolves” and are called “steppewolves” by the Russians. Specially formed and highly mobile Soviet forces are engaged in hunting down these formations who are sometimes disguised as Chinese civilians or who put on Russian uniforms.

Manehukuan forces recruited by the Japanese for the Kwantung army have rebelled, says Reuter’s Moscow correspondent. The Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese forces in Mancliukuo, after the surrender negotiations at Harbin, told a Soviet correspondent: “The creation of Manchukuoan units was our biggest mistake.” The correspondent said the Manchukuoan’s fear of the Japanese has now disappeared and many Japanese troops and officials with their wives are fleeing t.n Harbin in an attempt to save themselves from the fury of .the Manchukuoan people. Harbin is now a city of jubilation. Red banners hang on all the main buildings and the populace halt trucks filled with Red Army troops and shower them with flowers.

Port Arthur, or Lushun, is on the south-western end of the Liao-Tung Peninsula, Man cliukuo. It is a terminus of the ’Siberian railway and has an ice-free barb our. The fortress was captured twice by the Japanese easily in 1594 from China, and from the Russians in January, 1905, after a siege of seven months. By the Treaty of Portsmouth, 1905, the lease of Port Arthur which the Russians held from China was ceded to Japan and in 1915 the Chinese extended Rio lease for a further 99 years.