SHENYANG, Sept. 19 (Xinhua) -- Not until 1986 did Katsu Takahashi, then 43, learn that she was a Japanese war orphan. Growing up in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, she was treated as her father's favorite child, always the first in the family to wear new clothes and shoes and the one who received the largest share of candy.
In 1945, when Japan surrendered and began to retreat from occupied Chinese land, many Japanese women and children who had arrived in northeast China as settlers during the war were abandoned by the Japanese militarists. Takahashi's biological family was among those left behind.
"Later I learnt that in 1945, Japanese militarists had distributed poison to Japanese households in northeast China and told them to commit mass suicide," said Takahashi.
Unwilling to sacrifice her two-year-old daughter, Takahashi's mother secretly left her outside. She was luckily found by the Chinese couple who later became her foster parents.
Takahashi is one of many Japanese war orphans. Records show that over 4,000 Japanese war orphans were left in China and adopted by Chinese families, who raised them despite their own suffering during the Japanese invasion and the harsh postwar environment.
Today, many of these orphans, including Takahashi, have returned to Japan without severing ties with their Chinese foster parents. Their stories continue to call for public attention to the brutality of a war fueled by Japanese militarism and the borderless love shown by ordinary Chinese people.
SURVIVING ABANDONMENT AND SUICIDE CALLS
Ninety-five years ago, on Sept. 18, Japan launched its invasion of China in Shenyang, northeast China's Liaoning Province, marking the beginning of China's 14-year War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.
In the following years, Japan sent not only troops to China but also a large number of Japanese settlers, uprooting countless Chinese people from their homes.
In 1936, Japan tried hard to encourage its farmers to migrate to northeast China, promising them access to large tracts of fertile farmland.
With great expectations, some farmers migrated there, only to find themselves serving as pawns in Japan's economic and military expansion, said Cui Xuesen, a professor at Dalian University of Foreign Languages in Liaoning, who has long studied Japanese war orphans.
The villages they lived in were placed under close surveillance and guarded by Japanese troops around the clock. As the war expanded, young and able-bodied men were increasingly drawn into military service, according to Fumiko Wada, whose husband was drafted.
In 1945, as Japan faced defeat, the Japanese forces secretly withdrew, abandoning most of the elderly, sick, women and children among the settlers in the war zone.
Wada, among the women left behind, recalled in her memoir that she took her two young children to the railway station to leave, only to find that the Japanese troops had already disappeared.
"A Japanese official even urged us to 'die for Japan' rather than be captured and humiliated, and soon grenades and poison were handed out," Wada wrote.
Amid gunfire and cries, some took the poison, while others threw themselves into the burning train. Wada shielded her children and fled south to the mountains, but her two-year-old daughter and three-year-old son died on the journey, due to hunger.
Disease, hunger and suicide claimed countless lives among those abandoned. In the turmoil, some Japanese children were left in China. Many of them were later raised by Chinese people.
"The war of aggression waged by Japanese militarism brought immense suffering not only to people of other countries, but also to people of its own," said Cui.
Since 2022, he has traveled to Japan multiple times, interviewing nearly 300 Japanese war orphans and documenting their oral histories.
The stories of these orphans, who serve as both witnesses and survivors of the war, are a vivid reflection of the tragedy caused by the atrocities of Japanese militarism, Cui noted.
Before Takahashi left for Japan, her foster father handed her a faded photo of her biological father. However, when she finally stepped on that unfamiliar land, Takahashi suffered a double blow: her biological father had already died, while her stepmother refused to acknowledge her.
Many Japanese war orphans faced a similar plight. Separated from their families at a young age for decades, these orphans struggled to obtain official recognition of their identities. After returning to Japan, many found it hard to reach their biological parents, struggled to rebuild a life there due to language and cultural barriers, and were trapped in a lifelong identity crisis.
DEFEND TRUTH VIA ACTIONS
After the normalization of diplomatic relations between China and Japan, Chinese authorities allowed the war orphans to choose freely whether to remain in China or return to Japan, and provided assistance accordingly.
After relocating to Japan, Yoshinori Tomii, who was adopted by a family surnamed Dong and graduated from a university in Beijing, still traveled a lot to Heilongjiang to see his foster family. With strong language skills and a cross-cultural background, he has founded businesses in several parts of China, contributing to China-Japan trade and local economic development.
Many other orphans were committed to promoting peace and opposing war, as another way to give back to their foster parents in China.
Sumie Ikeda, also known by her Chinese name Xu Ming, was adopted by a Chinese family in 1945. She became a teacher after graduating in China. When conditions allowed, her foster mother encouraged her to return to Japan and reunite with her biological parents.
Although she chose to return to Japan, Ikeda never forgot her years in China. In 2008, when a magnitude-8.0 earthquake hit southwest China's Sichuan Province, she immediately raised donations among war orphans across Japan. Together, they also helped build a primary school in Sichuan.
In 2009, Ikeda organized a group of Japanese war orphans to return to their "hometowns" in China. She remembered that many of them burst into tears when they set foot on the land they had long missed.
"My Chinese parents gave me a second life, and I grew up in the kindness of many other ordinary Chinese people," she said. "Therefore, my sincerest wish is to see the two peoples live in friendship."
Notably, the orphans' efforts to preserve memories of the war have gone beyond telling their own stories to helping ensure the history is told as it truly was.
For years, some Japanese textbooks and publications have downplayed the colonial nature of the settlement in northeast China, glossing over land seizures and the abandonment of settlers after Japan's defeat, while portraying it as a positive effort to build new lives overseas.
Since 2002, the war orphans have filed a series of lawsuits seeking compensation from the Japanese government. Their lengthy legal battles have prompted the Japanese public to reconsider the nature of the war and Japan's responsibility for it.
Today, an increasing number of artistic works based on this history are also helping more young people learn about the past, while even inspiring new creations.
For years, the dance drama "Chinese Mothers," themed around stories of Japanese war orphans, has been staged across cities in China and Japan.
In November 2025, Japanese documentary filmmaker Ryo Takeuchi held a special screening in Japan for his new work "The Nameless Child." The film tells how Chinese people took care of Japanese war orphans despite the bitter conflict between the two countries.
Having often read news reports about Japanese war orphans when he was a child, Takeuchi hoped to record their stories through his own lens.
"Only by understanding from where we came can we tell where to go," said Takeuchi. ■
