As early as the end of the 19th century, Japan began to covet Northeast China, for which they put forward the theory of "continental policy" and "line of interests". Later, in order to strengthen colonial rule in Northeast China and further expand the invasion, the "Manchurian Migration Theory" was proposed.
In 1902, there were just over 300 Japanese in Dalian, but by 1930 the number had swelled to 215463, a large number of whom were Japanese women.
According to incomplete statistics, by September 1944, the number of Japanese immigrants living in various parts of Tohoku had reached 1662234, not including military personnel and their families.
So after the victory of the Anti-Japanese War and the recovery of the Northeast, where did these Japanese expatriates stranded in China go?
Tohoku Japanese expatriate
The modern Japanese colonization of Northeast China, that is, the emergence of a large number of Japanese overseas Chinese groups in Northeast China, began as early as 1906.
At that time, the president of the Manchurian Railway Company of Japan, who controlled the operation of the railway in the southern part of Northeast China, first put forward the idea that the Japanese government should organize the residents to move to Northeast China from the perspective of controlling Northeast China.
After the Japanese government agreed, the following year, a large number of Japanese entered the Manchurian railway annex in the cities along the southern railway in the northeast in the name of doing business and opening factories.
Before the September 18 Incident, Japan probably had a total of more than 400,000 immigrants in the southern part of Northeast China; after the September 18 Incident, Japan occupied the entire territory of Northeast China, and their ambition to invade Chinese immigrants was further expanded, and the speed of their immigration was also accelerating.
Even in order to speed up the process of dividing the territory of Northeast China, the Japanese government and the Kwantung Army formulated a large-scale colonization plan to send agricultural immigrants to Northeast China, that is, the "Manchurian Agricultural Migration Program for One Million Households".
In this plan, they planned to start in 1937 and spend nearly 20 years to emigrate 1 million households and 5 million people to Northeast China. After the completion of the project, we will aim to increase the number of Japanese immigrants to one-tenth of the population of Tohoku.
Before the liberation of August 15, the total number of immigrants in Northeast China was about 1.55 million (not counting the tens of thousands of Japanese young and middle-aged immigrants who were conscripted and transferred by the Kwantung Army).
On August 15, 1945, as soon as Japan's Emperor Hirohito announced his unconditional surrender through radio, Japan's colonial institutions in Northeast China and all enterprises and institutions set up by the puppet Manchurian government collapsed in an instant.
At such a historical moment, the Japanese puppet troops stationed in various parts of Northeast China and the Japanese expatriates working and living in the puppet Manchurian enterprises and undertakings were suddenly panicked and at a loss.
After all, they were not friendly to the Chinese before, and these expatriates were afraid of the revenge of the Chinese who had been oppressed by them for a long time, so they ran wildly through the mountains.
The Japanese government was supposed to take back these expatriates in China, and even the Potsdam Proclamation stipulated that after the Japanese army was completely disarmed, its troops and expatriates would be allowed to return to their hometowns and get a chance to live in peace.
However, the Japanese government has opted for a policy of abandoning the people.
As early as August 15, Japan's "Supreme War Guidance Council" made a policy of allowing "Japanese people who remained in China to settle in the area."
The Japanese government hoped that with the help of the Soviet army, these Japanese who had been living in Manchuria could resume their normal activities and continue to live in Manchuria, and even Xi accustomed to living in Manchuria, could renounce their Japanese nationality.
It is not difficult to see from this policy that the Japanese authorities want to leave these overseas Japanese prisoners to fend for themselves, and do not want to use too much time and energy to take over these overseas Japanese prisoners.
Of course, most of these overseas Chinese prisoners abandoned by the Japanese government were ordinary pioneer groups, and as for those high-ranking officials of the Japanese government and their families, the Kwantung Army Headquarters had formulated a detailed evacuation plan to ensure their safe return to China.
On the one hand, keeping these Japanese prisoners in China can ease the pressure on Japan;
On the other hand, if Japan wanted to make a comeback after many years, they could join forces with these Japanese who lived in seclusion in China, so based on these considerations, the Japanese government's lack of attention and inaction was the main reason for the large number of Japanese overseas Chinese stranded in Northeast China.
Japan can give up these overseas Chinese prisoners and leave them to fend for themselves, but China cannot, we can't leave such a big security risk at home, plus other considerations, it is imperative to repatriate the Japanese overseas Chinese in China!
A concerted effort was made possible for repatriation
Compared to other regions, repatriation in the Northeast is a onerous and complex task.
By April 1946, the Japanese in Northeast China had been assembled, and according to incomplete statistics, about 1.4 million Japanese immigrants were stranded in Northeast China at that time, of which about 800,000 were in the areas controlled by the Kuomintang and about 300,000 in the areas controlled by the Communists.
These Japanese had lived in China for a long time and had a certain amount of land and property, so it was very difficult to repatriate these immigrants to China along with the Japanese army.
Not only that, but there are also four forces in the Northeast: the Soviet Union, the United States, the Kuomintang, and the Communist Party, and the competition between the four forces in the Northeast complicates the repatriation of the Northeast. But the four sides have reached a consensus, that is, they must repatriate the Japanese prisoners!
Needless to say, the Kuomintang and the Communist Party were certainly in favor of the repatriation of overseas Chinese prisoners, because after all, the retention of a large number of overseas Japanese prisoners would create a hidden danger to China, and some of the Japanese who had changed their identity from aggressors to vanquished in the war would have a gap in their hearts, and their hearts would become distorted, and then they would begin to kill people and set fire to them in the process of escaping, and they would recklessly kill and kill the Chinese people.
Second, a large number of Japanese prisoners of overseas Chinese are stranded in northeast China, which will greatly increase the burden on the Chinese people.
After the war, China's economy has been severely hit, production and life are in urgent need of recovery, and the harvested grain is even difficult to make ends meet.
As for the U.S. government, they are worried that China and Japan will become close because of these stranded Japanese prisoners, which will shake the position of the United States in the Far East, and secondly, the United States also wants to break the Soviet Union's monopoly on Northeast China.
In the immediate aftermath of the war, Chiang Kai-shek was in charge of southwest China, and the Chinese Communists occupied the strategically important Eastern Railway Line, while East China and South China were still in the hands of the Japanese.
If the Kuomintang takes over Northeast China, then the United States can take advantage of the situation to intervene in Northeast China, so out of consideration for its own interests, the United States is also unwilling to allow these Japanese prisoners to stay in China.
Speaking again about the Soviet Union, to borrow a phrase from Soviet Commander-in-Chief Vasilevsky: "We will never allow a group of people who live in our neighboring territory and who are as sinister as wolves with whom we have a vendetta." ”
From this sentence, we can see that the Soviet Union was resolutely determined to repatriate Japanese prisoners.
The Soviet Union forcibly repatriated some of the Japanese prisoners of war they had arrested out of China and sent them to Siberia for "labor reform." Their attitude and methods were very tough.
Repatriation of overseas Chinese prisoners
In April 1946, under the pressure of international and domestic political forces, the Soviet Union withdrew its troops from Northeast China (except the Dalian area), and the Kuomintang and the Communist Party took over Northeast China in different forms.
Under the liaison of the Military Adjustment Department, the Kuomintang and the Communist Party temporarily shelved their political views, cooperated with each other, and went all out to do a good job in the work of overseas Japanese.
In late April, the repatriation of Japanese nationals from Northeast China proceeded in an orderly manner.
According to the order of repatriation, the repatriation of Japanese nationals in Northeast China in 1946 was divided into three stages.
The first stage was from April 23 to July 20, 1946, when the generals of the Kuomintang Northeast Battalion repatriated Japanese overseas Chinese from the Kuomintang occupied areas. It set up an overseas Japanese prisoner management center, allowing overseas Japanese from all over the country to first gather at the overseas Japanese management office in each city for registration, then inspect their physical condition and belongings, and finally send them to Huludao, a port controlled by the Kuomintang army, and the neighboring Jinxi and Jinzhou in batches, and finally board a ship at Huludao and leave the country.
On 24 July, the US military side of the Military Adjustment Department sent Colonel Bell, the commissioner of Japanese overseas Chinese in Northeast China, to meet with representatives of the Communist Party in Harbin to discuss the issue of the repatriation of Japanese overseas Chinese from the areas occupied by the Communist Party.
By about October, the repatriation of expatriates from the Communist- and Kuomintang-ruled areas had been largely completed, and a total of 910,000 Japanese nationals (and 9,600 Japanese soldiers) had been transported.
The third stage was to send it to the Japanese expatriates left behind in Dalian. Dalian had been occupied by the Soviets since the liberation, so the repatriation of Japanese nationals to this area had to be approved and assisted by the Soviets.
To this end, the U.S. Embassy in the Soviet Union and the Soviet Embassy in China held several rounds of consultations with the Soviet government and Soviet troops, and the Soviet side finally agreed to repatriate the Japanese nationals in Dalian starting in October.
By October 24, the 1946 large-scale repatriation mission in the Northeast Nationalized Region and the Communist-occupied areas was basically completed, and a total of 1.3 million overseas Japanese were repatriated.
However, after the mass repatriation in 1946, nearly 100,000 Japanese expatriates in Northeast China continued to live in the urban and rural areas of Northeast China on a voluntary basis. Among them, there are about 20,000 people in Dalian, at least 10,000 in Shenyang, about 4,500 in Changchun, and 3,356 in Harbin.
Most of these overseas Japanese who remain in China are engineers and technicians, managers and their families, doctors, teachers and their families, and overseas Japanese women.
The expatriate women were left behind due to the plague and unusually severe cold that caused a large number of deaths in some families during the spontaneous evacuation in the autumn of 1945.
Because they lost their loved ones, they were reluctant to return to Japan, and chose to marry Chinese men to form an international marriage and gain the right to stay in Tohoku.
According to relevant statistics, by the end of 1946 there were 472 Chinese men and Japanese women in Shenyang, and about 700 Japanese women and Chinese were married in Changchun. For these overseas Japanese who choose to continue to live in Northeast China, the occupied areas of both the Kuomintang and the Communist Party have given full care and protection.
Of course, after that, there were also Japanese expatriates who were repatriated one after another, and with the passage of time, the large-scale repatriation of Japanese nationals left behind by Japanese colonization in Northeast China finally came to an end.
Since then, although there has been the issue of Japanese overseas Chinese returning from northeastern China to settle down, it is clear that this is no longer in the category of repatriation, but a normal international migration between China and Japan.