Last Japanese Gulag Survivor in Kazakhstan Dies at 89

Ahiko Tetsuro was a teenager when Soviet forces captured him after World War Two. He was one of hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers and civilians sent to Soviet labor camps, known as gulags. He was eventually freed. However, a special government designation barred him from returning to Japan. He remained in Kazakhstan for the rest of his life. When he died in 2020 at age 89, he was the last Japanese person living in Kazakhstan from that group. His lifelong struggle is now the subject of a new film.