Japanese orphans in China

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Japanese orphans in China consist primarily of children left behind by Japanese families repatriating from Northeast China (then Manchukuo) to Japan in the aftermath of World War II. For the most part, they were taken in by Chinese families and raised with no knowledge of their Japanese ancestry.

[edit] The role of the Japanese government

• Effort were only made to evacuate Japanese men who were 18 years or older.
• Women, children, and the aged were uninformed about the evacuation plan.
• The Kwantung Army made plans to concentrate the Japanese in one place in China for the purpose of reestablishing the Japanese Empire.

In 1981, nine years after the normalization of Sino-Japanese relations and more than three decades after Japan's surrender at the end of WWII, the Japanese government began an assistance programme aimed at reuniting the orphans with their biological parents in Japan; however, as the orphans had spent almost their entire lives in China and many had little memory of their Japanese family, they experienced difficulty integrating into Japanese society.