The following report is a summary of information obtained by the U.S. Russia Joint
Commission on POW/MIAs, and by analysts of the Defense POW/Missing Personnel
Office.
The information, referred to as the "Memoirs," was provided to the analysts through an
interview with a source who had been living in internal exile m the former Soviet Union.
Our analysts translated the interview with the source, and passed it to the Russian side of
the Commission during the Commission's plenary meeting in Moscow in late 1999 In
addition, U.S. analysts stationed full-time in Moscow are using this report to investigate
leads and examine archives m Russia which may shed some light on the information in
the "Memoirs."
It should be noted that the information in the "Memoirs" relates to the 1940s and 1950s,
and most of it is collated from second, third or fourth hand reports.
A relatively small portion of the "Memoirs" is excerpted from the original as the
information does not relate to the POW/MIA issue, or the information would tend to
reveal the identify of the source.
In the spring of 1954, a new worker, who had previously served as a radio operator
aboard fishing vessels belonging to the Far Eastern Flotilla, arrived at the Leningrad Gold-
prospecting Brigade in Partizanskit (Udereslu District, Krasnoyarskii Region). He recounted
that, in n when he was fishing some forty miles from the Island of Okusiri in the
Sea of Japan, he "forced his way into" discussions about a certain aircraft that had crashed
Within a few minutes, a "radio message" arrived from the base of the Trawler Fleet, stating that
all vessels belonging to the flotilla were to commence at once a search for the crewmembers.
Immediately thereafter, an encoded message arrived from the base's deputy political officer
directing that the "enemy spy pilots," or their corpses, if they were found, be brought at once
"under the strictest secrecy" to the coast guard ships belonging to the Border Patrol Just one
point was not clear From whom was this "strictest of secrets" being kept? From the fishermen
of an enormous flotilla scattered across the oceans and seas-who were supposed to be the ones
searching for those involved in the crash? For days, it seemed that the entire communications
network was saturated with transmissions by crews of the search aircraft Then, suddenly,
everything went silent
A week later, we radio operators were informed in the Port of Ol'ga that an American
military spy plane had been downed over our territorial waters by air defense (PVO) units, had
fallen into the sea and that the entire crew had perished Why were they so incredibly quick to
bury the Americans, who, unlike our pilots and sailors, had top-quality personal rescue gear? .
Two months later, the captain of the fishing vessel on which the worker served served, returned
from Khabarovsk (He had been visiting with his sister there ) He told the radio operator that not
all the crew members of the "American" [aircraft) had, in fact, died "back then" (in June) and that
ten of those people were now in pre-trial solitary confinement in a prison in the city of
Svobodnyi, near Blagoveshchensk To keep them away from curiosity seekers, they were
transferred there immediately from the internal prison of the Khabarovsk MGB [i e , Ministry of
State Security, predecessor organization of the KGB, trans ] The worker added that his captain
was unfazed by this and that he knows the truth -- His sister was married to "just about the most
prominent figure in the Khabarovsk Regional Committee" [of the Communist Party, trans] In
reply to the worker's question, "What happens now"," the captain answered.
"They will be squeezed for what is required And, of course, they will finish them off
They'll be worked to the bone and shipped off to Zeya and not for the first time
Svoboduyi is where they have their principal drowning base In echelons, straight from the
trains, they had been drowning people for thirty years like nothing And that's all They
definitely will be counted in all the docunents as having drowned See, even TASS made the
announcement: They fell, as it were, into the sea"
The report alarmed me a great deal
In the very beginning of 1953, a courier from the Udereiskii Regional KGB
summoned me to the Nizhne-Angarskoe Geological Reconnaissance Directorate in Motygino
I was informed that, at the direction of the senior geologist, Ivanchenko, I was being sent to handle an emergency situation at the Northern mining enterprise On that same day, with an
escort and two geologists, we flew off to Krasnoyarsk We were met there by representatives of
the director of the Regional GRU He reported that, together with other specialists, I was to fly to
the north, where a ChP (Extraordinary Event) took place at one of the enterprises constituting the
"integrated system" A crust of ice within the ground had burst apart and flooded the area of the
elevator Responding to my retort that I lacked the proper educational background, and, therefore,
the results of my expertise (or my suppositions) would be considered incorrect. He waved in
front of my face a thick folder with my "Personal File " the discussion, he
announced, "Around here what matters we not your diplomas but your actions! Don't get
gloomy, young man Go! You do your work and I'll worry about freeing you from exile. . ."
The following day - it was January 8th - along with two geologists from Motygine and
another three specialist from the "26th [Post Office] Box, (Krasnoyorsk), we flew out toward the
Island of Dikson. (approximately 2,000 kilometers to the north of Krasnoyarsk) Two or three
days later -- there was a blizzard and the airports were closed -- we flew for about three hours to
the village of Solnechnyi (?) on Bol'shevik (an island in the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago)
There we once again "sat" because of the weather Finally, after flying across the Vil'kitskn
Gulf, we landed in the tundra, some 160 kilometers from Chelyuskin Bay The site was called
"Rybak"
It was inmates who worked here at the mining enterprise since the camp was right next to
the mine The reason for the emergency situation -- an ignorance of elementary engineering --
could have been clarified without having to fly out to the site Its consequences could have been
eliminated as well by instruction from a competent engineer What was needed were experienced
pyrotechnic specialists and demolition experts And they sent us a demolition-qualified inmate
tall, exhausted by hunger and the Artic, with a very characteristic, slightly elongated artistic face
on which the unnatural protrusion of gray eyes in sockets sunken from emaciation revealed
someone ill with exophthalmos goiter In an accent clearly that of an English speaker, he also
only identified himself as a citizen of the United States of America, Allied Officer Dale His
statement did not appear to make any impression on my colleagues In fact, on the return trip,
already in Krasnoyarsk, one of them heard me say "Tell me, please An American! An ally
And also in the camp" He retorted "And they're not only in Rybak You have as many as
you want of them in Strelka! So much for our 'so-called allies'"
Somewhat later, after having returned to Udereya, I asked those who had escaped from
Strelka about our "allies" Yes, they knew about the Americans, but they had no contact with
them From the very moment of their arrival on the territory of the Enterprise, they were all kept
in isolation
I was unable to converse with the American prisoner Dale The camp guards
"monitored" me very closely Even before we entered his area, I and all the others were warned
that it was strictly forbidden to speak with anyone!
Six days later, we flew to Dikson Only then did I learn that we were in a uranium mine.
In Kranoyarsk I was compelled to sign a non-disclosure statement with regard to
everything that I had seen and heard in Rybak In Noril'sk, many years later, a colleague who
had worked with me in Udereya at the time in question, related that many of the Americans "who
had fallen into our hands in 1945 from the liberated Fascist camps" were held in Rybak and
probably perished there. "
My status as an exile did not permit me to clarify anything at all about those Americans
who were alive from the aircraft downed in the Far East This applied even in the case of those
Americans who were located much closer -- in Rybak or in Strelka But at least in the case
of Rybak I had a chance to see one of them with my very own eyes! I could also not but believe
those who fled from Strelka, who trusted me with their lives, and who understood perfectly the
price of such information
But then, in Udereya, my sad experience showed that the "flow" of Americans from
the prisoner of war camps in Germany and in the Far East, and now from Korea was proceeding
at a robust pace, filling in the bottomless hell of the GULag I first met these people in Peveka
There, in the region to which I was sent after the hospital (as a result of an accident in "Zemlya
Bunga") four Americans, specialists in automation systems, were being detained They were sent
there from the mining camps of the Northwestern Directorate of Sevvostlag to delve into the
functionality of mobile electric power stations that reached Chaunskaya Guba under the Lend-
Lease program . Later, at the very beginning of navigation in the Sea of Okhotsk, I met a still
another group of Americans in the summer of 1948, at the Magadan transfer point in the Bay of
Nagaev There were 14 of them and they had just been taken from the holds of a ship
transporting slaves: helpless, enfeebled by a week-and-a-half's worth of tossing on the seas,
hunger, exhaustion, and desperation I cannot single out anyone of them They all appeared
uniformly lifeless and faceless But I recall how many of them there were and the number of their brigade
"1014." I recall the name of their brigade leader Geldol'f He, too, was
indistinguishable from the others, except, perhaps, by his height He was tall and, for a tall
person, very round-shouldered. It is difficult for me to remember anyone's individual features,
anyone's eyes, because in enormous barracks with three levels of wooden cots it was dark and
hazy, as in a crypt What I also recall is the physical appearance and name of the American
doctor in the group of fourteen, a small but thick-boned fellow named Gertsige
And this is all that I can recall about the meeting in the Bay of Nagnev
Both the brigade leader and the doctor knew a bit of German. They said that they had
served with the navy somewhere out at sea There they were seized by the Japanese in 1943
They were detained in camps, first in the Philippines (?), then in Manchuria, outside of Harbin,
where they were duped by Soviet "liberators " There was very little opportunity to communicate
with them One night they were taken off to the depths of Kolyma, into the bottomless abyss
of its vastness We were incomparably better off A week later we were loaded into the hold of a
military transport heading into the Bay of Vanin, toward construction site "501" . .
Just to finish this point I did not have any direct contact with Americans in Peveka I
saw them several times as they were taken by convoy to and from the port But a doctor from
Leningrad told me about them on numerous occasions The doctor even provided the names of two of them Filipp (Pill') Etth and Frederkink (or Frederling). I might be in error here That is
all
During the latter half of the 1960s, I once again had occasion to hear about the fate of the
crewmembers aboard the American plane downed in the Far East in June(?)1952 I was called
upon to fly out to Komsomol'sk-na-Amure on a business trip with the deputy director of my
institute. "those" years this fellow was the director of DAL'STROL,
i e , from the viewpoint of the Nurenberg charge sheet, he was a war criminal of the first order
and then, in a moment of particularly "sincere closeness," I made my decision
He was not in the least surprised by my question He replied at once
"Yes, at first ten people were alive. Yes, first they were brought to Khabarovsk But, then, of
course, they were sent off to Svobodnyi They were to have been met by people
from the Ministry of Defense They were not met, though You see, there was some screw-up
in Moscow Well, I can tell you that they were not met What happened to them after that, I do
not know And I would advise you not to know as well Let the leadership worry itself about
it "
Later that very same year, in Murmansk, an acquaintance who was a friend and
erstwhile colleague of the Deputy Director "throughout the Far East," repeated almost word-for-
word the testimony of the former DAL'STROI director but went on to clarify "The guys from
within 'worked over' the Americans so badly that only eight were take .And
those had nowhere to go after all that. And so what? Do know what sort of arrogance they
had? They were Americans! You understand !!!"
"They probably drowned them," I offered as a supposition
"Well, well! And how did you find that out? He probably bared his soul to you,
right?"
In 1973, I had my birthday celebration, to which I invited only my closest friends The
group included the husband of my classmate He was a general with an outstanding service
record.
Much was said over 19 years of complete mutual trust and affection While
accompanying the general after an evening at our home, I decided to ask him whether he knew
anything about "those" Americans [His reply ]
"I know only that they did not come over our way If that had been the case, they would be alive
and healthy And, by now, they would have been back home for a long time, across the ocean. I
know that Zhukov was aware of the extraordinary event (ChP) that occurred in the summer of
1952. I know that Zbukov immediately contacted Stalin directly with a request that be involve
himself in the fate of the American pilots, who as he understood, were lusted from the very
beginning as having perished But neither Stalin nor his underlings responded to the disgraced
marshal. Lastly, I know that, as soon as he became deputy minister of defense in 1953, the marshal directed a search for people and documents. But Beria's archives, as it were, had neither
those people nor the documents about them Probably, 'nothing was there any longer.' "
In the 1980s, I once again was in the Far East, to which I was inextricably drawn by
the undisclosed secret regarding the loss of the American aircraft My companion on these trips was
a new acquaintance I became acquainted with him and convinced him to transfer over to my
institute, into the scientific field, I must say, all for the same reason his many years of
involvement in the geographical area of constant interest to me Before we met, he was for many
years a supervisory official in two agencies in the capital and directed energy-related and
hydromechanical construction in the Far East And, as an advisor to the minister, he had to have
been closely acquainted with those who could have and rr ive known the truth about the
Extraordinary Event (ChP) of thirty years before Two years of persistent searching by him, who
unquestionably was himself intrigued by the idea of revealing the crime, shed no new light on the
course of events of the summer of 1952 or related details But he did learn the names of two
crewmembers of that aircraft, BUSH and MOORE, who will forever remain in the soil of the
Khabarovsk Region And however blasphemous this thought may appear to the uninitiated, let
people take my word By their horrible fate they were spared the vastness of the GULag's
underworld a prison isolation cell with the proud name "Svobodnyi," which is in close
proximity to Blagoveshchensk! And many others
[signed]
August 1983
In the fall of 1951, a group of American - POWs (?) from Korea (7) arrived at the
Kirovskij mining camp, Uderejskij administrative district, Krasnoyarsk region
However, in the beginning of 1952, they disappeared without trace In any case, during
the liquidation of the prison camp during the winter of 1951 and into 1952, none of them
were among the frost bitten prisoners, who were marched in column to Motygmo (in the
south part of the region) and offered medical assistance
A worker from Kirovskij, a deportee, witnessed how "late at night, on Russian
Christmas, a group of approximately 20 persons, maybe slightly more, were led from
the camp along the Venisminovkij road [note the road connecting the town of Kirovsk and
Venisminevskij] "
The deportee's daughter and her friend, a Cossack, witnessed that during the last
days of December 1951 "more than 20 prisoners, wearing bare threads and half frozen,
were moved along the road to Veniaminovkij "
The daughter of the manager of Veniaminovkij, stated that "on Christmas we
were given a present; frost bitten prisoners being led and driven like cattle by the NKVD
They did not speak Russian They only said "American, American" and "eat, eat" They
wanted food Then, in the morning, around 6o'clock, they were marched away to
somewhere further However, further lies only a wasteland, mountainous, desolate and
uninhabited, the taiga a dead-end
A driver and hunter from village of Chinuel, observed from his car, prisoners of
some sort that were speaking, but not in Russian, coming at him and being marched
passed his car along the road The guards were trying to prevent the prisoners from
talking This was early in the morning, on Christmas He could not understand why
prisoners were being marched on a holiday(?) Why to the north? There is nothing
there, there is no work for them to do
That evening, when he returned to his home in Chinuel, the column was passing
the mouth of the Ishimbi River it seemed, towards him, to Chinuel itself
The next day, around 7am he was going back to Kirovsk when he again encountered the
same column of prisoners, having t h i n n e d o u t It was approaching the
town of Kameaka, nearing the river.
Yet another witness He worked as a dredge operator at the Kirovskij mine
In February 1952, while hunting in the lower reaches of the Parenda, where it empties into
the Kwnenka river, he happened upon small clearing already slightly covered with snow
For some reason it had been covered over with beams of logs The dogs immediately
were aroused. They dragged out some type of boot - worn out at the heel , slippers and
even a shoe, resembling American shoes by the - copper nails Forcing him to put on his
glasses, in disbelief as to what they had in their teeth
He had heard rumors and became quite nervous. Especially disturbing to him was
the behavior of his dogs They were nervous, whimpering, scratching at the snow and
barking in a manner unlike any that they had before on the hunt. He tried to dig up the
ground - covered in a half meter of snow Suddenly, the snow was up to his waist But
beneath, the ground was already frozen although, clearly the ground had been turned-up
and filled back in It was obvious that someone had been buried here and the dogs began
to back up and howl like near a corpse...
He stopped tempting fate, - left The hunt was over
A week later, he met with his friend, who worked for the militia. His friend
recommended he keep quiet for God's sake...
In July 1952, my friend and I, based on this information, tried to locate that
clearing However, the swamp had flooded over.
In the fall, we again began to search But, we had been "sold-out" We were
questioned by the police and held for ten days in detention
In the 1960s, I again tried to locate this burial site However, the taiga had
completely grown over it I was assisted by very kind people. Again, someone did not
like my search Just like the incident of the shooting of the Americans in Bodajbo, in
Moscow, again to the, prosecutor's office, USSR (local Government District Attorney's
office) the official car arrived . .
Then, in August 1964, I officially requested from Krasnoyarsk . . "as to the fate of
American prisoners of war at the Krovskij mining camp " But of course I did not receive
a reply So, I then submitted a letter to the USSR prosecutor's office itself However, the
reply was not from Pushkinskij, but from Kuovskij - from the military prosecutor's
office In the reply, on a carbon copy, it stated "...regarding the fates of citizens of the
USA, held at the Kirovskij Springtime camp, the Prosecutor of the Krasnoyarsk region
has no information "
The Prosecutor, USSR, through the military forced the regional Krasnoyarsk, to
reply That reply stated there were such persons, however, we do not know where they
were taken.
A list was compiled by a woman containing 22 names of citizens of the USA
imprisoned in the Kirovskij camp during the winter of 1951 to 1952. When this person
arrived at Kirovskij, she worked as a sanitation worker Part of her duties included
cleaning toilets at the camp She put the list together over a months time It is not
complete, since she was not able to ask anyone for help
During ten years of repression even she herself had forgotten about this Because
she is alone, in an exile brought about from working in the zone of the camp
By 1951, this once slim figured, fan-haired, gray-eyed beauty had turned into an
old woman But, to this "old woman" I devoted to my investigative work She was able
to recall and "Shed light on everything" She was able to record only 22 names
of Americans, as she was being carefully watched She was not even able to get their first
names One day, she managed to sneak a pencil in, broke it into pieces and handed them
out to the Americans so they could record their names and addresses on pieces of
newspaper Several days later, she smuggled them out, covered in filth, in a canvas bag
She cleaned them, dried them, placed them in a empty fruit jar, and buried them
During Christmas of that year, when the Americans were being marched to north
toward Veniaminovkij, she disappeared without a trace, just like the Americans And I
remain, still hopeful of finding this glass jar
[script]
2 Sep 1979
Moscow