Japan Times, January 15, 2002 was a Japanese war criminal turned peace activist. Tominaga served in Manchuria during the

Second Sino-Japanese War The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) or War of Resistance (Chinese term) was a military conflict that was primarily waged between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. The war made up the Chinese theater of the wider Pacific Th ...

. In that time, he participated in many war crimes. He served with the 39th Division, based in

Hiroshima is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 1,199,391. The gross domestic product (GDP) in Greater Hiroshima, Hiroshima Urban Employment Area, was US$61.3 billion as of 2010. Kazumi Matsui h ...

, and from July 1941 onward served in Central China. Tominaga was captured during the

Soviet invasion of Manchuria The Soviet invasion of Manchuria, formally known as the Manchurian strategic offensive operation (russian: Манчжурская стратегическая наступательная операция, Manchzhurskaya Strategicheskaya Nastu ...

in 1945. As with many other

Japanese prisoners of war in the Soviet Union After :World War II there were from 560,000 to 760,000 Japanese personnel in the Soviet Union and Mongolia interned to work in labor camps as POWs. Of them, it is estimated that between 60,000 and 347,000 died in captivity.

, he was interred in a harsh POW camp in Siberia. In 1950, he was handed over to

People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. Tominaga was released in 1957 and returned to Japan. That same year, he co-founded a peace activist group In 2001, shortly prior to his death, he participated in the Japanese documentary film ''Japanese Devils'' (Riben guizi).Data at IMDB
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