When it is remembered how Japan fought its war – pushing out the boundaries of its empire until it encompassed much of China, the whole of south-east Asia and Indonesia, and half the vast expanse of the Pacific, and then seeing that empire fall to pieces in a series of suicidal last stands, fought across tens of thousands of square miles of territory, which generally left barely any surviving witnesses – it is hardly surprising that the country experienced incredible difficulties in establishing who had lived and who had died during the last days of the conflict. Surrender left 3.5 million surviving Japanese soldiers, sailors and airmen stranded overseas, just over a million of whom were stationed in the Philippines, in Indonesia and on various Pacific islands. It took three years to complete their repatriation, and, even then, thousands of those unfortunate enough to have been stranded behind the Iron or the Bamboo Curtains did not make it home until years later. Modern Japan still witnesses the return of a steady stream of 100 or so “war babies” each year – now-ageing adults who were born in China during the war years and grew to adulthood there in a country wracked by civil war and revolution.
