There was a difference

Seems a Japanese veteran of World War Two is going home to see his relatives, those still alive, in Japan.
Not a totally unusual story, until you discover that he's been living in Russia for the last 61 years.
He was captured on Sakhalin when the war ended in 1945 (the Soviet Union having declared war on Japan about a week before we dropped The Bomb), and was reported there as late as 1958. After moving to the Ukraine in 1965, he married and had three children. It's unclear when his status changed from being a prisoner to being merely a captive.

The Russians didn't let go of their prisoners of war, especially the Germans; most they worked to death in camps in Siberia. Estimates range as high as 90% of captured Germans dying behind barbed wire, some as late as the 1970s, with total numbers of the dead running into the millions.
While no one begrudges the Russians a peeve or two about the Germans after the way the Germans acted during the invasion in 1941, the Russians didn't really play by the rules when the war ended. The Americans, on the other hand, were only too happy to get rid of our POWs; the last German and Japanese soldiers were sent home by 1946 or so.

Remember that when you hear people whine about the couple of hundred 'enemy combatants' being held at Guantanamo...