One thousand days in Siberia
Subtitle: the Odyssey of a Japanese-American POW
By: Iwao Peter Sano.
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Lincoln
Language: eng
Number of pages: 210
Subjects: Sano, Iwao Peter, 1924-; World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Japanese; World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, American; World War, 1939-1945 -- Japanese Americans; Prisoners of war -- Russia (Federation) -- Siberia -- Biography
Other titles: 1,000 days in Siberia
Description: Iwao Peter Sano, a California Nisei, sailed to Japan in 1939 to become an adopted son to his childless aunt and uncle. He was fifteen and knew no Japanese. In the spring of 1945, loyal to his new country, Sano was drafted in the last levy raised in the war. Sent through Korea to join the Kwantung Army in Manchuria, Sano arrived in Hailar; one hundred miles from the Soviet border, as the war was coming to a close.

In the confusion that resulted when the war ended, Sano had the bad luck to be in a unit that surrendered to the Russians. It would be nearly three years before he was released to return to Japan.

Sano's account of life in the POW and labor camps of Siberia is the story of a little-known part of the great conflagration that was World War II. It is also the poignant memoir of a man who was always an outsider, both as an American youth of Japanese ancestry and then as a young Japanese man whose loyalties were suspect to his new compatriots.