Belgorod occupied Belgorod from 25 October 1941 to 9 February 1943. The Germans re-captured it on 18 March 1943 in the final move of the Third Battle of Kharkov. On 12 July 1943, during the Battle of Kursk, the largest tank battle in world history took place near Prokhorovka, and Red Army definitively retook the city on 5/6 August 1943. The Belgorod Diorama is one of the World War II monuments commemorating the event. In 1954 the city became the administrative center of Belgorod Oblast. From this time the rapid development of the city as a regional center began. Belgorod is
Japanese prisoners of war in World War II where they were. Due to the shame associated with surrendering, few Japanese POWs wrote memoirs after the war. Gilmore provides the following numbers of Japanese POWs taken in the SWPA during each year of the war; 1942: 1,167, 1943: 1,064, 1944: 5,122, 1945: 12,194 Japanese prisoners of war in World War II During World War II, it has been estimated that between 19,500 and 50,000 members of the Imperial Japanese military surrendered to Western Allied combatants prior to the end of the Pacific War in August 1945. Soviet troops seized and imprisoned more than half a million Japanese troops and