For Japan’s War Orphans, the Battle Has Yet to End

As a Japanese war orphan in China, Takayoshi Ishihara’s life was one hardship after another. First his family was killed before his eyes at the end of World War II. Then he endured years of beatings by his adoptive father and taunting as a “Riben guizi” -- Japanese devil.

Ishihara returned to Japan after 30 years, only to face more suffering -- shunned by his remaining relatives as an unwanted burden in a land that scorns him as a foreigner.

Now 70, he and about 2,000 like him are venting their frustrations in a series of lawsuits demanding about $280,000 each in compensation from the state.

“The Japanese government is responsible for creating orphans like us, who had no way of returning home,” said Ishihara, who lives alone in public housing in Tokyo. “Had the government brought us back soon after the war ended, we wouldn’t have had such difficult lives.”

In the first ruling on the cases, the Osaka District Court in July said the state had no legal obligation to pay compensation. But the cases have cast attention on a painful legacy of Japan’s conquest and colonization of East Asia in the first half of the 20th century.

An estimated 2.8 million Japanese returned from China by ship after the collapse of Tokyo’s empire, most of them in 1945 and 1946. Another 5,900 came after normalization of ties between the two nations in 1972, including about 2,500 who were abandoned in China under the age of 12.

The sons and daughters of Japanese military officials, bureaucrats and businessmen, many were too young to remember their Japanese names. But many yearned to return to their homeland.

“All I wanted was to come back to Japan,” Ishihara said. “I thought I could even cope with severe poverty if I could only come back.”

But in coming home, they faced a grim reality.

Government programs helped many find long-lost relatives and paid for their resettlement. But the families, fearful of taking on a financial burden, often shunned the orphans. They were further victimized by Japan’s common prejudice against orphans and the Chinese. They earned far less than the national average. Even their children face bias.

Ishihara’s ordeal began in 1944 when he was brought to Manchuria with his farmer family. His father was drafted into the Japanese army and died of illness. At 10, he said he saw Soviet troops kill his mother and his three younger brothers.

A Chinese family took him in and named him Li Lianyu. But his adoptive father forced him to work their farm, forbidding him to go to school and beating him frequently.

Ishihara was also picked on by village children for being Japanese. Over the years he tried to blend in, and at 23 he married a niece of his stepmother and had six children. But he never forgot his Japanese ancestry.

His chance came in 1977. He arrived in Tokyo to find that the uncle who was supposed to pick him up had backed out of the agreement, leaving the Ishihara family in the hands of two volunteer social workers.

Forced to live in low-cost housing, Ishihara worked as a dumpling factory worker and a translator before opening a small Chinese restaurant. He retired last year.

A government survey this year showed that more than 60% of returnees say life in China was easier than in Japan, or the same.

The government says it is doing what it can. Returnees get a one-time payment of $1,360 and are eligible for aid if they are jobless or have an exceptionally low income.

In April, the ministry plans to start enhancing support programs for elderly returnees, such as providing interpreters for those needing medical care.

“Those returnees are getting old,” said Masaru Sasaki, a ministry official in charge of war-displaced Japanese. “Many lack language skills and are having trouble fitting into society.”

Iwao Ioriya, who lived in Manchuria during the war and helps other returnees, said the government failed them.

“Other Japanese who survived the war could at least become part of Japan’s post-war recovery and its economic growth,” he said. “These orphans were left behind abroad and neglected.”