It is often unacknowledged that before the end of the Pacific War, immigration and empire had created an East Asia that was rather ethnically integrated compared to 100 years before that. By August 1945, there were about 6.9 million Japanese civilians and soldiers living and working abroad in Japan’s Empire and territory acquired during the Second Sino-Japanese War, as well Manchukuo, the Japanese puppet-state in NE China. Other Japanese subjects who were living on the Japanese mainland numbered some 2.9 million. The imperial period also saw large migrations of Koreans, with 1.5 million in Manchuria,100,000 in China, and some couple thousand in Taiwan. To narrow the focus of this post though, I will write on the return of Japanese to Japan’s home islands.

The Allied Powers had discussed what was to be done about the Japanese presence abroad during the Cairo, Yalta, and Potsdam meetings where they sketched out the post-war order and borders of East Asia. These borders were essentially forced upon the region by the new occupying powers, the Allies (especially the US and the USSR), after Japan’s surrender collapsed the order that had been building since Japan established itself as the dominant power there. In fact, this process rather bluntly uprooted the lives of many whose families had been living in areas that did not correspond to their ethnicity for generations in some cases.

The Allies’ top priority was the repatriation of the 3.7 million Japanese soldiers stationed abroad. This was done mainly by the powers in control of each area; the US helped to evacuate soldiers in Ogasawara, the Philippines, the South Sea islands, and South Korea (990,000 people); the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-Shek in China (2 mil people), the French in Indo-China, the British in areas held in China and SE Asia. While the Allies prioritized repatriating Japan’s military forces, the early stages of civilian repatriation were conducted mostly by organizations formed by local Japanese community leaders.

Repatriation proceeded at different rates in different areas of the former empire depending on the conditions there. Tensions in Taiwan were relatively lower than other areas and the repatriation was able to be done with relative calm. In SE Asia, under British occupation, the repatriation took more time and Japanese soldiers held in camps were used for labor and at times fought alongside British soldiers during uprisings while the Western powers attempted to reassert control over their territories taken by the Japanese. There are also records of Japanese soldiers fighting with the Nationalists against the Communists in China after Japan’s surrender.

Those living in Manchuria fled south away from invading Soviet forces before the war, and further south into US-controlled South Korea after fighting had ceased. Violence against the Japanese by the Soviets, particularly against women, was said to be even more than that of the Chinese and left certain scars on Japan’s psyche that paint part of the way they remember the time around the end of the war.

The ports in South Korea were overcrowded with those fleeing south. The Japanese refugees who managed to return home before the Americans turned their eye to non-military evacuations, often fared better materially as they were able to avoid the restrictions on what could be brought back. When the Americans did begin to get involved, refugees were only allowed to take back 1,000 yen each. Many put their property into storage, hoping to return to Korea later to collect it, although these belongings were labeled as abandoned and requisitioned by the US forces.

Returnees to Japan, known as hikiagesha 引揚者, were processed via camps where they stayed while their identities and final destinations were confirmed. While there, they underwent sanitization measures that played a part in creating perceptions of the hikeagesha such as that they were carriers of disease from abroad that Japanese living on the main islands did not have immunities against. Other negative perceptions included the additional burden the millions of returnees would place on the already dire conditions of Japan in the immediate post-war. Articles written on the hikiagesha tended to draw distinctions between them and the normal Japanese public 一般国民, noting differences in behavior between the two groups.

Despite these images of the hikiagesha, it should be noted that the lives of the overseas Japanese civilian bureaucrats who governed the colonies and managed Japanese companies from abroad(such as the semi-public South Manchurian Railroad Company), differed vastly from those laborers and agricultural immigrants who were encouraged to move abroad as part of a scheme to alleviate the perceived problem of overpopulation in Japan proper. Many in the latter group left because they had few other avenues to prosperity and little to tie them to their homes. It was mostly this group that was seen as a burden for the communities they had returned to. In fact, while those who had left to start new lives in Manchuria were lured with images of untouched frontier land ripe for cultivating, there was another interpretation of the region as a place to send unwanted people. The former group of bureaucrats and managers tended to have more wealth and maintained closer ties to Japan, making it easier for them to reassimilate into life in Japan.

By the end of 1946, some 5 million hikagesha had returned to Japan. Some chose not to repatriate and hid themselves away or did not step forward during the process. Other returnees would come in later years. One group of returnees that drew much attention were captured Japanese soldiers that began to be repatriated from the Soviet Union in 1946. The last large group of these soldiers was released in late 1956. The Soviets claimed in 1949 that 95,000 Japanese prisoners remained, while Japanese estimates placed the number closer to 300,000. Whatever the case, it is clear that a significant number of these prisoners appeared to have died while in Soviet custody. Those that did return to Japan were initially viewed suspiciously and accused of being brainwashed with Soviet propaganda. While there are examples of radicalized Japanese, there also exists a body of literature in Japanese of memoirs recalling the difficulties experienced in the Soviet prisons.

Another noteworthy group is the Japanese war orphans and wives, mostly in NE China, who were left behind in the final days of the war. The orphans did not begin to return to Japan until the 1980s and lacked linguistic and cultural fluency that created problems in their ability to keep jobs. The orphans, now adults, who returned to Japan receive monthly payments from the government to support their livelihoods. Women who were left behind tended to remarry into Chinese families, however, according to Japanese law, though they can return to Japan, their families would not, resulting in many women choosing to remain in China.

There have been books written about the repatriation process for the former Japanese Empire in various regions and across various years, and I could only cover a brief amount of that content here. Equally as interesting is what happened to non-Japanese imperial subjects living in Japan after their liberation and their experiences of repatriation or choosing to stay in Japan.

​

Works Cited:

Dower, J. W. (2000). Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Aftermath of World War II. London: Penguin.

Watt, L. (2010). When Empire Comes Home: Repatriation and Reintegration in Postwar Japan. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Asia Center.

Edits for content and proofreading