These people adopted me after my country invaded theirs

These Chinese parents took him in even though he was Japanese and his country had invaded theirs. Photos: AFP

Now 73 and sitting in his Tokyo home, Yohachi Nakajima fights back tears when he thinks of his Chinese adopted mother and the farming village he once called home – a boy lost inside imperial Japan’s crumbling empire.

He was just three years old when Tokyo surrendered on Aug 15, 1945, ending World War II but also leaving about 1.5 million Japanese stranded in Manchukuo, Tokyo’s puppet regime in north-eastern China.