The Repatriation from China’s Northeast

Huludao is in Liaoning Province, up in the Northeast. In 1931, four months after the famous ‘September 18 Incident’, the three provinces of China’s northeast, namely Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang, became a Japanese colony. The following year, the Japanese began a programme of mass migration there.

By the time of the Japanese surrender in 1945, Japan’s agricultural workforce alone numbered more than 320,000 in Northeast China. Overnight, the immigrants became refugees. Our story today tells of how these refugees were repatriated back to Japan – many of them through Huludao.