20, Yakassarai Street in Tashkent is an address mentioned in all reference books on Central Asia published in Japan. This is a museum dedicated to the presence of Japanese POWs in Uzbekistan in the wake of World War II.

Documents, photos, household goods on the display give a fair impression of the life of 23,000 soldiers and officers of the former Quantun Army in the Asian republic. Brought to Uzbekistan in 1945, they were scattered among various regions including Tashkent, Angren, Bekabad, Kokand, and Kagan. The Japanese army had never participated in demolition of Soviet cities and villages (it had only fought in the environs of Lake Hasan), but the Japanese POWs were involved as labor force at construction sites throughout Uzbekistan. They built administrative buildings, tenements, factories, and roads, they constructed dams, and so on.

The Japanese impressed the locals as a hardworking and friendly lot. "They could go about it in a slipshod manner but never did. They were great as workers," Uzbeks used to say. Earnest respect thus won, Japanese prisoners of war could count on the locals' sympathy.

To a greater or lesser extent, the Japanese participated in the majority of large post-war construction projects. They built the Navoi Theater and Mukini Theater, textile factory, Central Telegraph, and building of the Ministry of Culture in Tashkent, and factories in Chirchik. The Japanese built the electric main from Bekabad to Tashkent. The Farhad Hydroelectric Power Plant in Bekabad was then known as the Komsomol Construction Project named after Oleg Koshevoi. As a matter of fact, it was 3,000 Japanese POWs who played the role of "Komsomol activists".

"Studying archives for data on Japanese POWs, I noticed that they have their backs to cameras on most photos," founder of the museum Jalil Sultanov said. "Officially, all these objects including the dam across the Syrdarja and others were constructed by local personnel and the Japanese were not supposed to be there."

The idea to establish a museum took some years to occur. Sultanov read historical novels in his spare time and eventually got to thinking about contacts between Central Asia and Japan the Great Silk Road had once reached. Sultanov grew interested in the Japanese POWs, the first large contingent of the Japanese to find itself in Central Asia. He began compiling materials, he talked to the people who had worked with the Japanese then, he visited libraries and archives. Sultanov collected so much data that he decided that a museum was needed. The museum at his own home was opened in 1998.

The museum takes two rooms, one part of the display dedicated to the objects the Japanese POWs built and the other to their burial sites. Eight hundred and seventeen Japanese died in Uzbekistan. They were interred in separate cemeteries. In the 1950's, the order was given to eradicate the Japanese cemeteries quietly and only staff shuffles in the republican government prevented it. The cemeteries remained in an extremely lamentable condition until the early 1990's when their restoration began (the process was over by 2002).

Even ex-POWs themselves come to visit the museum every now and then. They are not young anymore. Back in the middle of the 1940's, they were 20 to 30 years. Some of them even learned the Russian language in captivity that lasted from 1945 to 1949 (or even 1950). "I made this spoon from a piece of metal," a plaque near one of the exhibits reads. The spoon in question is a gift to Sultanov from a former POW.

The thick guest book is full of hieroglyphs and inscriptions in other languages. Some of them are followed by a translation, others do not need any.

"We are happy there is such a museum here. August 31, 2001. Akiko Kondo"

"This is my fifth visit to Tashkent but the first to the museum. I was a prisoner of war here. Kotoki Tetsyo, 76. October 24, 1998"

"I pray for the Japanese interred here. June 11, 1999. Kodga Yumiko"

Abundance of data led Sultanov to the idea to make a documentary. The Hiiragi, a 50-minute documentary in the Uzbek and Japanese languages, was first presented to general public in 2003.

"The hiiragi is an evergreen," Sultanov said. "By the Japanese etiquette, a hiiragi flower accompanies all gifts. This is a documentary on how the Japanese lived and worked here after the war."

Working on the documentary, Sultanov perused a lot of archives. In fact, he scanned all available materials dated the 1940's.

Sultanov hopes to take his documentary to Japan one fine day. He is already working on another, the one titled Bricks For Tashkent. Sultanov already has all materials he needs. It will be a documentary on the Japanese who worked at brick-making factories. The Uzbek variant of the documentary will be titled Traces In Buildings.

...There is a Japanese cemetery only a short walk from the museum. To be more exact, this is a land plot in the midst of a Moslem cemetery. Seventy-nine Japanese POWs were interred here.