Gosuke Uchimura, a renowned scholar of Russian literature who wrote about his experience in a Siberian prison, died of heart failure Friday in a hospital in Tokyo, family members said. He was 88.
A native of Tochigi Prefecture, Uchimura, whose real name was Misao Naito, was recruited as a civilian worker for in the Kwantung Army — a unit of the former Imperial Japanese Army — after graduating from Harbin Gakuin, a Russian studies school, in 1943 in Harbin, northeastern China.
Captured by the Soviet army after Japan's surrender in World War II in 1945, Uchimura was held as a political prisoner in prison until 1956.