Something I bet you didn't know

I spy no temples in Kyoto | The Japan Times Online

This story in the travel section of the Japan Times is pretty fascinating:

Maizuru is more than another beautiful seaside town; it's home to the closest Japanese Navy base to North Korea. There's a slight film-noir feel to this place. Until about seven years ago, the police box in front of Higashi Maizuru Station had a poster up asking people to report sightings of strange men in rubber rafts landing on the beach in the dead of night.... Even today, fisherman occasionally report seeing strange lights along the beaches or boats without lights at night running into the many coves around Maizuru harbor.

That's a part of Japan where they probably really take locking the front door seriously, for fear of ending up in North Korea.

But the main historical thing I didn't realise, and which I bet few Westerners know too, is this:

During World War II, about 570,000 Japanese soldiers were sent to the Soviet Union, of whom about 472,000 ended up in Siberian POW camps by the end of the war. Getting the soldiers back home would prove to be a lengthy undertaking.

The first repatriation ship arrived in Maizuru on Oct. 7, 1945, just two months after Japan's surrender, and the last one docked on Sept. 7, 1958. After 1950, Maizuru become the only port in Japan to receive repatriated soldiers, many of whom were physically and spiritually broken. Between 1945 and 1958, more than 664,000 soldiers who had been stranded in the Soviet Union and China, including most of the POWs in Siberia, arrived home via Maizuru.

It took 13 years for all the POWs to be returned from Siberia! What were Russia and China doing: trying to age all the soldiers out of fighting again? Fascinating.