Genealogy / Surname Szarałło/Szarało? [3]

Thanks. That's interesting about your friend. I agree the 'Sz' could be Polonisation, it's somewhat similar to Lithuanian sound 'Š', and like you said some non-Polish people from the Commonwealth did take Polish sounding versions of their names. That side of my family mostly speaks Belarusian (or rather mixed Polish-Belarusian dialect) so that might be the case that the surname just took a Polish spelling because of living next to the Polish speaking territories.

History / Looking for info on wartime Polish community in Manchuria [22]

Jon, do you have a source for that? I've never heard of Polish people in Asia being interned by the Japanese, unless they were citizens of enemy nations like US or Britain.

History / Looking for info on wartime Polish community in Manchuria [22]

Do you mean the Oyama Inn in Kumamoto? (seen near the bottom of this page) mansell.com/pow_resources/camplists/fukuoka/fuk_01_fukuoka/fukuoka_01/CivCamps.html

There were Poles there (a total of 48 from that source I linked, and labeled as mostly clergy/nuns). I'm not sure if the Oyama Inn was meant as a permanent internment place or a deportation point like for example the Manpei Hotel in Nagano which held Axis and neutral citizens (for example the Oyama Inn where Poles were held also had citizens of Axis nations, like Germans and Italians, and neutral citizens like Spaniards). In any case, I've definitely never read of Poles being placed in any kind of prisoner camps like enemy citizens (e.g. Brits, Americans, Dutch, etc.) during the war.

As for wikipedia as a source, I haven't yet been able to verify from a book or such, but it claims in its list of declarations of war ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declarations_of_war_during_World_War_II ) that Japan rejected Poland's declaration in 1941, which would seem to mean (if it's true) that they did not regard Poles as enemies, unless they were holding some citizenship of another nation which was considered an enemy of Japan...

History / Looking for info on wartime Polish community in Manchuria [22]

Ah, well I haven't seen anything like that. It would be helpful if you could provide a source for it. Regarding Poles outside the home islands, this source (ipgs.us/iwonad/artdirectory/polcolmanchuria.html) says that in 1942 there was a registration taken by a Polish organisation in Manchukuo to see who wanted to leave for Poland, and that 80% of Poles there elected to do so (however they were unable to until after the Chinese civil war). I haven't seen much evidence that Poles were interned in Manchukuo though, unless it was right near the end of the war. For example the wikipedia page about the Henryk Sienkiewicz gymnazium in Harbin says that the Japanese only closed it in 1944, so the Polish community had been allowed to operate it up to that point:

pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimnazjum_im._Henryka_Sienkiewicza_w_Harbinie

History / Looking for info on wartime Polish community in Manchuria [22]

I have been trying to find info, that's why I started this topic. :)
So far, I haven't seen any Poles listed as interned by Japan, either in Japan itself or other parts of the empire, with the exception of those held at the Oyama Inn. I'd be thankful if anyone knew otherwise, though, and had some sources on the topic. All sources I've found so far (such as the ones on Manchukuo I mentioned above) seem to indicate that for most of the war Polish communities still existed in Japanese territory and ran their schools and whatnot as before, albeit with some wartime restrictions on things like rationing and freedom of travel.

In the book Między Warszawą A Tokio. Polsko-Japońska Współpraca Wywiadowcza 1904-1944 by Kuromiya Hiroaki and Andrzej Pepłoński and the book From Information to Intrigue. Studies in Secret Service Based on the Swedish Experience, 1939-1945 by C.G McKay, it seems that despite Poland's declaration of war, Polish and Japanese intelligence agents continued to cooperate in Europe, and that Japanese authorities actually protected Polish agents from falling in to German hands (e.g. Michał Rybikowski was allowed out to operate out of the Japanese intelligence station in Stockholm.) Some agents (like Rybikowski) were even issued with Manchukuo passes under aliases to disguise them from German authorities.

I don't know though how any of that cooperation in Europe translated over to Japanese treatment of Poles in Asia. That's what I'm trying to figure out, and again from what I've read so far I've been seeing mixed views (on the one hand, Poles being allowed to operate schools and community organisations in Manchukuo until 1944, and on the other hand Poles interned at an inn in Japan alongside neutral and Axis citizens).

History / Looking for info on wartime Polish community in Manchuria [22]

I found this link about internees in the Philippines. It has a few Polish names (e.g. Czeslaw J. Wolf or Willy J. Wawrzkiewicz) but they appear to be merely American citizens of Polish descent or Poles who took Filipino citizenship, rather than just Polish citizens. We need to be careful when checking lists of internees, because many Americans (who would definitely be considered enemy citizens by Japan) can have Polish names.

click on 'civilians' at the bottom:
battlingbastardsbataan.com/bob1.htm

History / Looking for info on wartime Polish community in Manchuria [22]

Also, one thing I just noticed about the Poles interned at Oyama Inn is that they (along with the Germans, Italians, etc.) are only listed as being interned right at the end of the war, sometime between January to August 1945. There is no mention of Poles being interned there earlier. I know that Axis citizens (as well as stateless or neutrals like Jewish refugees) were allowed to reside in Japan for most of the war, so the fact that there were still at least 48 Polish nationals in Japan by 1945 to be interned (and the fact that they were held alongside former Axis and neutrals) leads me to suspect that, prior to this date, they had also been allowed to live in Japan without imprisonment.

History / Looking for info on wartime Polish community in Manchuria [22]

Thanks Leliwa, that's very interesting information you've shared!
Can I ask, did your family stay in Manchukuo up to 1945? If so, would you mind sharing what happened to them after the Japanese left? I heard that when Soviets invaded it was a dangerous time for people like Poles still living there, so I was wondering, if your family was still there, how did they get out of Manchuria and did they go to Poland or somewhere else?

History / Looking for info on wartime Polish community in Manchuria [22]

Thanks again Leliwa. It's a very interesting and perhaps not widely known history I think, definitely full of hardship but also a tale of survival and perseverance from those Poles.

I've been wondering, were there any Poles from Manchuria who were left stateless after the war ended? For example those who never got passports from the Second Polish Republic before 1945 and then didn't go back to Communist Poland to get citizenship? I thought I heard that some were offered citizenship in places like Canada or America if they went there, but I can't verify that. I don't know if any Poles during the 1930s or 1940s got nationality papers of Manchukuo? But if they did I guess they obviously would have been useless after 1945.

History / Looking for info on wartime Polish community in Manchuria [22]

Interesting, thanks again. So ethnic Poles could get passports from the Polish consul while living abroad in places like Manchuria? I didn't know that, I thought at that time the Polish nationality law required people to be resident on the territory of Second Polish Republic to apply for citizenship.

History / Question about the Polish exiles in Siberia 19th century? [3]

That's very interesting, I never heard of Mr. Bieniowski. What a story that is!