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 was fought between the Republic of China (1912–1949), Republic of China and the Empire of Japan between 1937 and 1945, following a period of war localized to Manchuria that started in 1931. It is considered part ...

. 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 has b ...

, 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 or simply the Manchurian Operation () and sometimes Operation August Storm, began on 9 August 1945 with the Soviet Union, Soviet invasion of the Emp ...

in 1945. As with many other Japanese prisoners of war in the Soviet Union, he was interned 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. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

. 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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1910s births 2002 deaths {{Japan-bio-stub Nanjing Massacre perpetrators Siberian internees Imperial Japanese Army personnel of World War II Foreign nationals imprisoned in the People's Republic of China