After Japan's surrender, civil war broke out
On August 15, 1945, Japan announced its unconditional surrender, and there were many matters related to the surrender that china and Japan had to deal with. One of them is the issue of the return of Japanese civilians to Japan.
At that time, there were still many Japanese on the mainland territory, adding up to more than three million, including the surrendered Japanese army, Japanese expatriates and descendants of the Japanese. Although it was not easy to repatriate them all to Japan, in the following six months or so, under the effective organization of the Nationalist government, most of the Japanese were quickly repatriated.
However, repatriation efforts were interrupted by a full-scale civil war that broke out in the country, and there were about 35,000 Japanese expatriates remaining in Chinese mainland.
The Red Cross made the bridge
After the founding of New China, although China and Japan did not formally establish diplomatic relations, from the perspective of humanitarianism and differential treatment of Japanese militarism and the Japanese people, the two sides hoped to properly and at an early date resolve the issue of the return of Japanese overseas Chinese left over from the war.
In the summer of 1950, when Li Dequan, president of the Red Cross Society of China, attended the International Conference of the Red Cross Society held in Monaco, he took the initiative to contact Shimazu Tadasumasa, president of the Japanese Red Cross Society, who attended the meeting, to discuss the return of Japanese overseas Chinese in China. At that time, President Tadasumasa Shimazu expressed to the Red Cross Society of China that he hoped that the Chinese side would inform the Japanese overseas Chinese in China that the Japanese Red Cross society would help them return to China.
"Ferry"
On December 1, 1952, when answering a Xinhua reporter's question on the number of Japanese and Japanese overseas Chinese and their living conditions, the relevant departments of the Chinese Government made it clear that the Chinese Government was willing to assist Japanese overseas Chinese who had voluntarily returned to China. For specific matters, the appropriate representatives of civil society organizations in Japan may negotiate with the Red Cross Society of China.
The announcement was called a "ferry" by the Japanese.
negotiation
On 25 December, a delegation of Japanese compatriots in China to china was dispatched to the Council to form a delegation of three groups, headed by Tadanaka Shimazu, president of the Japan Red Cross Society, Kinzo Uchiyama and Yoshikazu Hirano of the Japan-China Friendship Association, and Masaharu Tanaka of the Peace Liaison Association, to visit China to hold consultations on the return of Japanese overseas Chinese.
On January 26, 1953, a delegation of three groups departed for China, the first Japanese delegation to hold a passport stating the name of the country that went to the "People's Republic of China" to break down the technical obstacles that Japanese people might encounter when coming to China.
The delegation of the Red Cross Society of China, headed by Liao Chengzhi, received representatives of the delegations of the three Groups of Japan.
The two sides held negotiations for more than a month, and on March 5 signed the "Communiqué on Negotiating assistance to The Return of Japanese Overseas Chinese", agreeing that the Japanese Government would send a ship to transport Japanese overseas Chinese back to China, and that the Chinese side would bear all the expenses of the Japanese overseas Chinese before they arrived at the port, and to facilitate the returning Japanese overseas Chinese in carrying goods and exchanging foreign currency.
Japanese returned to China
On March 23, 1953, the first ship of Japanese returnees arrived at Maizuru Port with more than 1,000 Japanese overseas Chinese. Since then, until 1958, about 35,000 Japanese expatriates have been repatriated on 21 occasions.
As Japan's campaign to welcome these returnees unfolded, from 1953 to 1954, a Chinese boom broke out throughout Japan. These returnees used their own personal experience to tell the actual situation in China, praised the humanism of the proletariat, and compared it with the "three-light policy" carried out by the Japanese army in China, awakening the Japanese people's profound reflection on the heinous crimes committed by Japanese militarism in China.
thank
In order to express gratitude to the Chinese people for their help in the return of Japanese overseas Chinese in China, after the efforts of the three groups, a group of 551 overseas Chinese in Japan arrived at Tianjin Tanggu Port on July 2, 1953 in Xing'an Maru.
The Japanese side also set up the "Executive Committee for the Consolation of Chinese Martyrs" to investigate and collect more than 3,000 bones of Chinese martyrs who were forcibly abducted to Japan as laborers by Japanese militarists from 1943 to 1945 and died of torture, and from July 2, 1953, they were transported from Japan to China in 10 batches.
Organized a delegation to visit China
As people-to-people exchanges between China and Japan gradually heated up, on the eve of the National Day in 1954, two delegations of Japanese ultra-party parliamentarians visited Beijing.
One was a group of parliamentarians who attended the Stockholm World Peace Convention and later visited China from the Soviet Union, consisting of Naoji Nishimura of the Liberal Democratic Party, Yasuhiro Nakasone of the Improvement Party, Yoshio Sakurauchi, Nao Sonoda, and Goro Sudeo of the Communist Party.
The other was a large delegation sent by the Japanese side to China for China's National Day, namely, the Liberal Democratic Party's Kikuichiro Yamaguchi, Heiji Ogawa, and Tokuma Utsunomiya, and the leftist Socialist Party's Shigezaburo Suzuki and Sawokiki Junzo.
The two supra-party parliamentary delegations have more than 40 members, including powerful and influential figures from various parties.
Speech by Premier Zhou Enlai
On October 11, 1954, Premier Zhou Enlai met with the above delegation at the Ziguang Pavilion in Zhongnanhai and made a speech on the current problems in Sino-Japanese relations.
The speech reaffirmed the basic principles of China's policy toward Japan and emphasized that the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence will become an important guideline for the normalization of Sino-Japanese relations in the future, which can be roughly summarized into the following points:
(1) Japan may possess armaments for self-defense, but not an army under U.S. command.
(2) It is hoped that the Japanese people will stand on their own feet and win independence.
(3) The Chinese and Japanese peoples should strengthen friendly exchanges and prevent the danger of the revival of Japanese militarism.
(4) The main reason hindering the normalization of Sino-Japanese relations is the issue of Japan's relations with the United States and Taiwan.
(5) The Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence are the fundamental principles for handling Sino-Japanese relations.
(6) Peaceful coexistence can only be achieved if the two countries industrialize together. ("Agricultural China, Industrial Japan" is wrong)
(7) Even if China is strong, it will not threaten Japan's development.
The above seven points were fully convincing to the Japanese deputies and left a deep impression on the deputies.
Return
On October 30, 1954, a delegation of the Red Cross Society of China, headed by Li Dequan and deputy headed by Liao Chengzhi, arrived at Tokyo Haneda Airport by British Airways from Hong Kong. People from all walks of life in Japan extended a warm and grand welcome to the first new Chinese delegation to visit Japan.
In the first half of the 1950s, when official relations between China and Japan could not be developed, the Chinese government adopted a policy of strengthening people-to-people diplomacy and promoting officials and the government and the people at the same time.
In practice, the Chinese Government has taken measures such as taking the initiative to establish non-governmental trade relations, assisting Japanese overseas Chinese in China to return to China, and leniently dealing with Japanese war criminals still in detention in China, so that the development of Sino-Japanese non-governmental relations has risen to a certain level and reached a certain scale.
References: A Brief History of Contemporary Chinese Diplomacy by Zhang Li
Thank you for reading, please continue to pay attention to the public number "Yunzhu Wenzhai "!
The image comes from online intrusion and deletion.
Sharing is a virtue for more people in need to see!