The legacy of war is blood and destroyed homes, and for the people of both warring sides, the psychological wounds of war are indelible pain. With the end of the Sino-Japanese War, 3.2 million Japanese left China one after another.
In May 1936, after the Japanese Kwantung Army captured the three eastern provinces of China, it formulated the "Manchurian Agricultural Migration Plan for One Million Households". Over the next nine years, a total of 14 groups of poor Japanese and peasant immigrants poured into Northeast China, totaling 200,000 people.
Japan is trying to change the ethnic structure of the Tohoku region through its immigration policy, trying to occupy it. At that time, Japan's immigration program was divided into three phases: the first phase was a pilot phase, which began in 1905 and ended with the 918 Incident in 1931, and was called "Aikawamura" immigrants by the Japanese.
Fukushima Yasumasa's resettlement activities were mainly divided into three stages, the first stage was from the 918 Incident to before the 77 Incident, and the second stage was from the 77 Incident to the end of the Anti-Japanese War.
During this period, the Japanese ** convened the Kwantung Army and the puppet Manchurian organization, convened the "Second Immigration Conference" in April 1936, and passed the "Manchurian Agricultural Migration Plan for One Million Households".
Japan** has incorporated the "20-year Migration Plan for One Million Households" into an important national policy, which undoubtedly poses a serious challenge to farmers in the Tohoku region.
Of the grain originally grown by them, 10 million tons need to be used domestically, and the rest needs to meet the needs of Japanese troops, Japanese immigrants and Korean immigrants in the northeast.
During this difficult time, it was considered a crime for Chinese to consume rice, and the rations left behind by Japanese immigrants were only used to feed the animals as a "compound food". What is even more distressing is that the land that originally belonged to the Chinese was plundered by the Japanese army and distributed to Japanese immigrants, forcing the Chinese to become cheap labor, and Japan's policy in the northeast is tantamount to genocide in disguise.
At 9:14:17 on August 6, 1945, a B-29 U.S. military plane carrying an atomic bomb aimed at a bridge in Hiroshima, Japan, and turned on the automatic bomb dropping device.
One minute later, the atomic bomb was 600 meters above the ground**, and a powerful white light and a huge mushroom cloud instantly reduced Hiroshima to ruins. Immediately afterwards, the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in the same way, and the successive blows forced the Japanese ** to stop the operation of continuing the aggression.
On August 15, 1945, the Emperor of Japan issued the "Edict of the End of the War", officially announcing Japan's surrender to the outside world. However, the news of Japan's surrender did not bring any good news to the puppet Manchu institutions and enterprises in the northeast, on the contrary, they faced the fate of collapse.
The Japanese puppet army and Japanese expatriates in China were in panic because they had long oppressed the people in China and feared that the Chinese would take this opportunity to retaliate. The train stations and docks were crowded with Japanese fleeing with their families, fearing that they would be killed by Chinese on the way to escape, and some even mixed in with the crowd disguised as Chinese.
In the pioneer regiments of Jiamusi and Hegang, some old, weak, sick, disabled, women and children, who had been poisoned by the Japanese bushido spirit, chose to commit suicide by seppuku under the control of food shortages and fear.
San Francisco Peace Treaty.
On 25 October, China and the United States jointly held a Sino-US joint meeting in Shanghai to repatriate Japanese nationals, and decided to start the work of concentrating and repatriating overseas Japanese and Japanese prisoners with the assistance of the United States from 15 November.
Due to the large number of Japanese in China and the limited number of ships available, China can only organize the evacuated Japanese to leave China by boat in batches.
In order to ensure the smooth progress of this work, the General Headquarters of the Chinese Army also promulgated on 30 September the "Measures for the Management of Overseas Japanese Nationals in China," which laid down detailed regulations and arrangements for the repatriation work.
Although the repatriation program is aimed at Japanese nationals in China except for the three eastern provinces, the situation in the three eastern provinces is different. The Soviet Red Army entered the three eastern provinces on August 10, disarmed the Kwantung Army and occupied the entire northeastern region, not allowing any other army to enter.
The 590,000 disarmed Kwantung Army was secretly escorted to Siberia by the Soviet Union, and as for the 1.5 million Japanese nationals in the northeast, the Soviet Union had no repatriation plan, and the cost of repatriation would be very huge, and the Soviet Union was unwilling to bear it.
As a result, these Japanese nationals were in a predicament, the squadron responsible for repatriation could not enter, and the Soviet Union did not care, and all means of transportation to the outside world were suspended. In order to save themselves, Japanese expatriates in Tohoku began to organize their own evacuation activities.
Instead, they moved from all parts of the Northeast to cities along the railway, waited for the Soviets to be kind or the international organization approved to enter the Northeast, and returned to China in the same way as repatriation from the interior.
Japanese expatriates in remote rural areas traveled lightly, giving up all their possessions except for food and a small amount of clothing. Laborers in the prime of life were conscripted into the army, leaving behind old and weak women and children. In late autumn, movement is slow, food and warm clothing are insufficient, and it is easy to breed plague diseases when living together.
In the cold winter of 1945 in Northeast China, a large number of immigrants died of hunger, cold, and disease. In one village in Fangzheng County, Heilongjiang Province alone, more than 5,000 Japanese expatriates were killed, resulting in the extinction of a large number of families.
The Japanese diaspora who were struggling with the war seemed to have a long way to return home. Food shortages, plagues, and the death of loved ones have left them with the courage to continue their lives.
They chose to end their lives by suicide, and by the spring of 1946, at least 80,000 expatriates in Japan's northeastern region had died of cold and disease. However, under pressure from the international community and various political forces in China, the Soviet Union finally agreed to withdraw its troops from the northeast.
The Kuomintang and the Communist Party also took over control of the Northeast in their own ways.
Beginning in late April, Japanese nationals in Tohoku began to be repatriated to Japan in the order of repatriation. The work was divided into three phases, the first of which lasted from April 23 to July 20, 1946, and was mainly responsible for the repatriation of Japanese nationals in the Kuomintang control area, and the Kuomintang Northeast Battalion commander was responsible for the specific implementation.
The steps of the repatriation process are as follows: first, Japanese nationals need to register and undergo a physical examination at the Japanese Overseas Chinese Repatriation Management Center in their city; Secondly, check the luggage they are carrying, and there are three things that are expressly forbidden for leaving the luggage: **etc.**, a large number of gold, silver, jewelry, calligraphy, and paintings, history books, important scientific research materials and reports, etc.
These are all items that are prohibited from being taken out of China.
After review, these expatriates were sent to Jinzhou and Jinxi in several batches for secondary concentration, and then sent to Huludao to leave by boat. As of July 20, 370,000 Japanese expatriates had left Huludao by boat.
In the eight Kuomintang-ruled areas from Shenyang to Changchun, except for Changchun and Shenyang, two large cities with a population of more than 250,000 overseas Japanese, overseas Japanese in other cities have basically been repatriated.
On 24 July, the process was nearing its end.
Beginning on August 19, the Chinese communists began to arrange for the repatriation of Japanese overseas Chinese from North Manchuria and East Manchuria. The repatriation method was to send 7,500 Japanese overseas Chinese by train to the north bank of the Songhua River every day, and then they immediately boarded a boat provided by the Kuomintang to cross the river, and after the south bank, they were received by the Kuomintang, and then sent by train to Huludao to leave the country by boat.
By 27 September, all 235,000 Japanese nationals in the areas occupied by our party had been repatriated, accounting for more than 70 percent of the entire region. By the end of September, the repatriation of Shenyang and Changchun had been basically completed, and by 2 October, a total of 910,000 overseas Japanese had been repatriated, including 9,600 Japanese prisoners.
Dalian, a city that had been under Japanese colonial rule for 40 years, made the number of Japanese expatriates stranded here far exceed that of other cities. However, the liberation of the Dalian area was not all smooth sailing, and due to the long-term occupation by the Soviet army, the repatriation of Japanese nationals required the consent and assistance of the Soviet army.
Fortunately, Dalian itself is a seaport city, and from May 1946, 20,000 Japanese expatriates left Dalian every day to return home on the transportation vehicles provided by the United States.
By mid-November, the repatriation of overseas Japanese in Dalian had basically been completed. The remaining overseas Japanese were organized by the Kuomintang and the Communist Party in various parts of the Northeast to leave the country, and by October 24, the Japanese overseas Chinese in the Northeast had basically been evacuated.
In the process of repatriating overseas Japanese, the Kuomintang and the Communist Party strictly followed the norms of international law and provided humanitarian assistance to overseas Japanese under special circumstances, fully embodying China's feelings of being a great power.
Although after the Great Repatriation in 1946, about 100,000 Japanese nationals remained in China voluntarily, including engineers and technicians, Japanese company managers and their families, doctors, teachers and their families, and Japanese women who had established families in China.
China has given special consideration to these overseas Japanese who have stayed behind, such as issuing residence certificates, paying salaries according to technical grades, and allowing the establishment of their own non-governmental organizations, Japanese schools, and shops in designated areas, thus effectively protecting and satisfying their basic living needs.
In 1947, as the war situation in the Tohoku region became increasingly severe, factories were shut down, and some Japanese who remained in the area lost their jobs and their lives were in dire straits.
Due to the peculiarities of the war, it was not possible to resettle Japanese expatriates, so the second repatriation began. After 1950, with the development of the economic construction of Northeast China, Japanese engineers were no longer able to participate in the construction and development of our country, and the remaining Japanese overseas Chinese began to ask to return to China to settle down.
At the beginning of March 1953, China began the third repatriation of overseas Japanese, and by the end of September, a total of 20,000 overseas Japanese had been repatriated from Northeast China. The eight-year repatriation of Japanese overseas Chinese from Northeast China has fully demonstrated that China has always adhered to the principles of respecting human rights, being generous and benevolent, and treating prisoners kindly in dealing with the issue of Japanese nationals, and has shown the demeanor of a great country.