Take in war orphans and write an announcement

Sitting in his home in Tokyo, 73-year-old Nakajima Yuhachi couldn’t help but shed tears as he recalled his Chinese mother who adopted him and the Chinese countryside he once called “home”. He was an orphan from the collapse of the Japanese Empire. He was only 3 years old when Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945.

Since the 1930s, Japanese farmers, laborers and young military reserve members began to migrate to Northeast China. The Japanese government promised them a better life. Nakajima's father was also attracted to Manchukuo, but life on the front line was miserable. He was drafted into the army three weeks before Japan surrendered, but was never heard from again. Nakajima's mother was so poor that she had no choice but to find a local family to take care of her son. Nakajima said: "Obviously, for them, Japan is the invader. They adopted the invader's child and raised me, undoubtedly out of humanitarian considerations."

This name The malnourished boy was brought to the village, where a local woman named Sun Zhenqin volunteered to be his guardian and gave him a new name, "Laifu." Nakajima said: "She would feed me by herself and gently massage my bulging belly due to malnutrition."

After Japan's Emperor Hirohito announced his surrender, the situation of Japanese immigrants in Northeast China It's getting worse. Only a few Japanese children were adopted by local families. It is unknown how many Japanese orphans have found new homes in China, but Tokyo has only confirmed more than 2,800 people.

Nakajima returned to Japan when he was 16 years old, and only returned to China in 1966 as a translator for a cultural exchange group. However, China was in the midst of the "Cultural Revolution" at the time, and Nakajima only communicated briefly with his adoptive mother over the phone. After that, the two had no contact again until Sun Zhenqin's death in 1975.

Nakajima is lucky. He was finally reunited with his biological mother. But Nakajima will never forget the kindness of Sun Zhenqin and other villagers. "What would happen if the situation were reversed? I don't know if the Japanese would do the same thing," he said.