In 2008, Taiwan released a romantic movie full of classic charm - "Haijiao No. 7", which caused widespread heated discussions on both sides of the Taiwan Strait as soon as it came out. The main reason for this discussion is that the film touches on a sensitive event more than 60 years ago - the evacuation of overseas Chinese from Taiwan after Japan's defeat in the war.
In fact, when Emperor Hirohito announced his acceptance of the Potsdam Proclamation and his unconditional surrender on August 15, 1945, 6.6 million Japanese were stranded abroad.
This includes not only about 3 million Japanese soldiers, but also about 3.6 million Japanese expatriates who have emigrated to China and Southeast Asia in previous years. There are about 2.6 million Japanese stranded in Chinese mainland, about half of whom are located in the northeastern part of the mainland. In addition, about 500,000 Japanese expatriates are stranded in Taiwan.
Despite the unconditional surrender of the Japanese emperor, according to the Potsdam Proclamation, the repatriation of the millions of Japanese nationals stranded abroad became a conundrum for the war, including, of course, those who surrendered.
Over the next three years, more than a million Japanese expatriates and prisoners of war were successfully repatriated from Northeast China, but many remained in China.
According to conservative estimates, more than 120,000 Japanese women in Tohoku alone have not been repatriated, not including children who are not counted. So, where did these Japanese end up?
To understand this history, we must go back to Japan's immigration program during the war of aggression against China and the repatriation of Japanese nationals after the war.
Before the war, when Kodama Gentaro was the governor of Taiwan, he proposed to borrow the model of the British East India Company and implement a colonial strategy of "plundering Chinese mainland in the name of commerce and trade".
As the Russo-Japanese War drew to a close, in order to prevent a counterattack by Tsarist Russia, Gentaro Kodama once again proposed the "Manchuria Railway Company" plan. For the first time, the plan put forward the idea of immigrating a large number of Japanese to Manchuria.
On July 13, 1906, the "Mantetsu Company" was officially established, and Gentaro Kodama was appointed chairman of the company. However, Gentaro Kodama died less than 10 days after taking office, perhaps at the cost of his subsequent Japanese aggression.
Kodama Gentaro's successor, Goto Shinpei, proposed measures such as developing coal mines, operating railways, and immigrating to Manchuria. During this period, the West Open-pit Coal Mine in Fushun fell into the hands of the Japanese, and his plan to "emigrate to the Northeast" became the prototype of the later "Twenty Years of Million Migration" by Japanese militarism.
A review of Japan's "Manchurian Emigration" program can be divided into four distinct phases.
The first is early immigration, that is, after the end of the Russo-Japanese War and before the September 18 Incident. At this stage, in the name of rice planting and investigation, the Japanese government set up early immigration demonstration bases in Dalian, Lushun and other places. However, due to drought and insect infestations at the time, the initial agricultural resettlement program ended in failure. Later, due to the Northeast authorities, represented by Zhang Zuolin, they vigorously resisted, resulting in the bankruptcy of the early immigration plan. Despite this, during this period, many Japanese professional and technical personnel came to the northeastern region of the mainland, mainly engaged in industrial production and infrastructure construction such as coal mines and railways, which laid the foundation for the large-scale immigration of Japan later.
The second stage was after the "September 18 Incident" and until before the outbreak of the "Lugou Bridge Incident". This period of Japanese immigration to China is known as the "armed immigration" stage. In February 1932, the Japanese Kwantung Army formulated the "Japanese Immigration Program" and the "Draft of Resettlement under the Tuntian Military System", aiming to immigrate 10,000 households within ten years through the method of the Tuntian system. The Japanese cabinet believed that instead of long-term military repression in Manchuria, it would be better to achieve permanent settlement through armed emigration, and even put forward the crazy slogan of "5 million people to emigrate to Manchuria in 50 years." The first armed immigrants came from 11 prefectures in Japan, including Nagano and Aomori, where Japanese not only had extensive experience in growing crops, but also had high levels of physical fitness and education, and most of them were under the age of 30.
The third phase of migration began with the "Lugou Bridge Incident" and lasted until the outbreak of the Pacific War. The immigrants of this period can be summarized as "national policy immigration", that is, the "Manchurian Agricultural Migration Plan for One Million Households". The plan proposed to move 5 million Japanese to Northeast China in the next 20 years and realize a population structure that "Japan is inseparable", which was obviously the wishful thinking of Japanese militarism at that time. In August 1936, the immigration program was included in one of Japan's "Seven Major Policies" and became the basic national policy of the "puppet Manchukuo", so it was called "National Policy Immigration".
During this period, the age of Japanese immigrants to Manchuria tended to be younger. Among them, the Japanese government has also established a "volunteer army", which is composed of young people under the age of 20, and plans to train them to become the backbone of pioneering.
Data show that during this period, about 100,000 Japanese teenagers emigrated to Manchuria, and many of them became reserve soldiers for the Kwantung Army. At the same time, a large number of female family members emigrated from Japan to Manchuria, although the exact number is unknown, but it is estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands.
The final stage of Japanese militarist migration was after the outbreak of the Pacific War and lasted until before Japan's defeat and surrender. During this period, due to the shortage of labor in Japan, women accounted for a large proportion of immigrants, but the overall trend was declining.
In fact, many of the immigrants who went to the Northeast during this period were old, weak, sick and disabled. Since these people have lost their competitiveness in Japan, they have no choice but to come to the northeastern region of the mainland to seek resources. Migration at this stage became a tool for Japanese militarism to divert domestic contradictions and pressures.
Through the above four stages of migration, until Japan announced its unconditional surrender, the number of Japanese stranded in China has exceeded millions. So, how were these Japanese expatriates and prisoners of war repatriated to Japan?
China's three-year repatriation plan is based on the principles of the "Potsdam Proclamation", after the Japanese government announced its unconditional surrender, China, the United States, the Soviet Union, and other countries jointly negotiated to resolve the issue of Japanese nationals and prisoners of war stranded abroad.
On October 25, 1945, China and the United States formally finalized a preliminary plan for the repatriation of Japanese nationals and prisoners of war in Shanghai, planning to repatriate the Japanese stranded in China in batches within five years in accordance with the principle of "soldiers first and then overseas Chinese, and first inside and then outside the border."
The Chinese government will be responsible for transporting the Japanese to the ports of Guangzhou, Shanghai, Yantai, and Qingdao, while the US government will organize ships to be responsible for maritime transportation. However, due to the large number of Japanese stranded in China at the time and the post-war domestic economic difficulties, a phased repatriation plan was established for five years.
The project faced enormous challenges, including difficulties in personnel scheduling, transportation, supplies and logistics. Especially in the mid-40s of the last century, the Chinese government faced great difficulties in personnel scheduling, transportation, materials and logistics. At the same time, there are still some Japanese militarists who do not accept surrender and even carry out underground sabotage operations in China, which hinders the repatriation plan.
In addition, the Kuomintang government at that time was busy with the civil war between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, and was not active in the repatriation plan, which further delayed the implementation of the entire repatriation plan.
Despite the difficulties, on October 20, 1945, the first batch of repatriated Japanese nationals set off from the port of Tianjin and returned to Japan by ship through Jingtanggu, officially beginning the process of repatriation of Japanese nationals from China.
The decision to give priority to the repatriation of Japanese soldiers was made in accordance with the spirit of the "Potsdam Proclamation" and the requirements of the Japanese government, because after the war, Japan needed more of these young and strong laborers to return to China for construction, while the old, weak, sick and disabled were left behind.
As for the plan of "first inside the customs and then outside the customs", it is mainly due to the large number of Japanese expatriates in the Tohoku region and the complexity of the historical origins.
By June 1946, more than half of the Japanese nationals had been successfully repatriated, except for the Tohoku region, and in order to improve transportation efficiency, China and the United States decided to reduce the luggage of the repatriated personnel.
However, for the Northeast, the task of repatriation remained onerous and was not successfully completed until 1949.
During this period, the issue of resettlement of Japanese nationals stranded in Tohoku became a top priority. In response to this challenge, the Northeast region set up a management center for Japanese expatriates and prisoners of war, and set up concentration camps in Shenyang, Changchun, and other places to be transported. Huludao has become the main port for the repatriation of Japanese expatriates in Northeast China, and more than 1.05 million Japanese have been repatriated to China through Huludao, forming a magnificent scene of "the repatriation of millions of Japanese overseas Chinese in Huludao".
Despite such a large repatriation program, more than 120,000 Japanese women were unable to return to China, according to data later released by the Japanese government. This makes one wonder what happened to these 120,000 Japanese women in Northeast China.
Follow-up survey data shows that more than half of these Japanese women stranded in Northeast China may have unfortunately died. In fact, as early as 1945, when the Japanese emperor announced his surrender, many Japanese women in China were brutally persecuted by the Kwantung Army. Due to the chaotic situation at that time, many family members of the Kwantung Army were ordered to commit mass suicide, and those who did not comply were even forced to "commit suicide".
In the records of Jiamusi Huachuan County, it is recorded that more than 1,600 family members of the Kwantung Army were held in more than 20 houses and eventually killed by machine gun fire.
Behind this fratricidal scene is closely related to the "shame culture" of the Japanese nation for a long time. In the eyes of many fanatical Japanese militarists, it is more honorable to die in a foreign land than to admit defeat and return home. Although this notion is difficult to understand, it does exist in a particular historical period.
In addition to the tragedy of being slaughtered by the Kwantung Army, many Japanese who remained in the Tohoku region froze to death or starved to death in the process of mass escape, and many died of illness, most of which were women. In the early days of Japan's surrender, many Japanese expatriates believed that they would be detained by the Chinese government and even retaliated against by the Chinese people. In the past war of aggression against China, these expatriates were actually accomplices of Japanese aggression, and they themselves realized that they had left too many sins on this land. Therefore, they feel guilty and choose to abscond.
However, the post-war environment in Northeast China at that time was extremely complicated, and many Japanese who fled died along the way, as well as the severe cold of winter. This is another kind of brutality of war.
Of course, in addition to the deaths of Japanese expatriates due to the above-mentioned reasons, many Japanese women have not been able to return to China because they have already established families in China, and many of them are married to Chinese men.
In the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, there were cases in some places in Northeast China where Chinese men married two or three Japanese women, and this was reasonable under certain historical conditions.
In addition, some Japanese women stranded in the Northeast have chosen to integrate into Chinese society, the most famous example of which is the People's Liberation Army Shiye Hospital, where half of the medical workers are Japanese female expatriates.
There are also Japanese expatriates who have become part of the industrial development of the Tohoku region with their expertise and have settled in China for a long time.
The reason why so many Japanese expatriates stranded in China are able to live and work here is mainly because the Chinese nation has a tolerant and benevolent spirit of tolerance.
It is worth mentioning that the Japanese expatriates stranded in Southeast Asia or Siberia not only engaged in manual labor such as demolition work, but were also brutally massacred like the Japanese prisoners and overseas Japanese stranded in the Philippines.
Although history has entered a new chapter today, the memory of history is still deeply engraved in people's hearts. Only by living in harmony and developing together can all nations in the world achieve long-term peace and stability, otherwise they will only bring endless harm to each other.