As I learned years later, Japan had started the repatriation of all Japanese abroad, including those in the military, immediately after its surrender, but the repatriation of the Japanese survivors in Manchuria did not start until May 1946. U.S. military ships called LSTs, which were normally used to transport troops and heavy equipment, came to Koro Island Port in southwest Manchuria to pick up the Japanese survivors in Manchuria. Through this route, close to a million Japanese survivors were rescued before October 1946. Then, and only then, did the long awaited repatriation of the Japanese in Dairen finally start, in November 1946. We had been left to somehow survive on our own in a hostile land for over a year. Why? Some say that the government was misinformed about the condition we were in, while others say that there was an international conflict as to the new ownership of Manchuria, all at the cost of the lives of thousands of Japanese men, women, and children. The exact death toll among the Japanese in Manchuria at that time will probably never be known.

Thus, one freezing morning in February 1947, my parents, my two younger sisters, and I left Uncle Hideo’s house to join a group of repatriates at Dairen Port. My brother Mamoru, his wife Hisako, and their little son Yukio had left a month earlier. We were to meet at my father’s birthplace, Oita, Kyushu, where we might be able to find out the whereabouts of my other two brothers, Kay and Takashi.

The personal belongings that one could carry, one-thousand yen (approximately thirty U.S. dollars then) each, and a bag of bedding per family were all that each repatriate was allowed to take back to Japan. We were warned that if anyone in the group was found guilty of smuggling extra money or jewels, the entire group's departure would be canceled.

When my brother's family left, Hisako was seven months pregnant. She carried Yukio on her back, a big bag of diapers in one hand, and rubber sheets and medical supplies in the other, in case of an emergency. Mamoru carried a huge backpack filled with personal items on his back and dragged another huge bag of bedding. When we left, I helped my father drag our family bedding bag, trying to handle the weight of the huge backpack at the same time. Both my younger sisters were carrying backpacks as well and carryalls in both hands.

It took us all day to go through the long line for strict inspection of our luggage as well as a physical search in an individual booth. I did not have to strip, but a Russian female soldier ordered me to take my coat off and touched all parts of my body over my heavy sweaters and wool pants. She inspected the inside of my shoes also. She was looking for extra money or jewels, as we had been warned.

After going through the long inspection line, we spent a night on the concrete floor of a warehouse at the Dairen Port, each family huddling under their pile of blankets, munching on crackers and biscuits. The lofty warehouse had no heating of any kind, and February was the coldest month in Manchuria. We dozed off now and then, sitting and hugging each other under the blankets. The next morning, we were herded into the bottom of a large cargo ship. There were tiers of metal shelves in the hold, spaced about four feet apart. Reduced to unwanted cargo, we were crammed onto those metal shelves. The naked light bulbs that were hanging here and there barely gave out enough light to distinguish the slippery metal stepladder that led us from one shelf to another. We spread a blanket on the shelf to claim our space and walled it off with our backpacks and bags, a futile attempt for a little privacy. Then Mother, who would usually see to it that everyone else was comfortable first, suddenly whispered, "Please, I must lie down." Father turned to her sharply and noted her flushed cheeks and watery eyes in the semidarkness of the hold and motioned to me. We hurriedly made a bed for her with the rest of the blankets. I went around looking for some ice to cool her burning forehead, but the best I could manage was a bowl of cold water. Father and I kept her head cool by changing the wet towels, all the while assuring my little sisters that Mother was all right and that she would soon get up. I spent the next two, three—or was it four, five?—days wiping her hot face and body with a cold towel, force-feeding her as much liquid as she could take. When she was finally able to sit up, I went up to the deck for fresh air for the first time since we had left Dairen Port. It was dawn. I still remember the moment clearly. I looked up at the sky with a tremendous sense of gratitude and saw the shadows of clouds floating like thin black strips in the foggy orange luminance of the morning sun, like the heralds of God ascending at the edge of the sky. I had no idea where we were, what day it was. I only knew that Mother had survived a close call. She survived the ordeal and all of us reached Japan safely.

Japan, at last. I watched everyone, especially my parents, crying and trembling at the first sight of Japan's shore. I was glad that they were finally home, but what I felt was far from a sentiment of homecoming. I was lost. I remember standing on the deck of the tugboat, captivated by the strange sensation of untimely picnic. Green mountains! In February? And so close to the shore. The port of Sasebo was so small that the cargo ship that had transported us from Dairen could not go in. We had to change into a tugboat to get into the Sasebo Port. In contrast to the numerous concrete buildings of Dairen Port, and the four piers that extended far into the bay, boasting its capacity to handle more than forty of the four-thousand-ton class ships all at once, Sasebo Port had green hills close to the shore. It seemed to me like a picnic spot!

"Welcome home, my fellow repatriates, welcome home!" Standing on a crate, a man greeted us, shouting at the top of his lungs through a megaphone.

"I know how it is to leave everything behind." The man was agitated by his own emotion. "Everything. Your business, your property, your friends, your life that you've built, and maybe your hometown for those younger ones who were born there. I know what it is like. Believe me, I know how you feel, for I, too, have left my lifework and come home empty-handed."

The man stopped, sobbing openly. My father, who was standing next to me, was busily rubbing his face and clearing his throat, and I wished to God that the man would stop agitating us. We were already a bundle of raw nerves. I watched the back of my mother’s small shoulders as she panted under the weight of the huge backpack, and was afraid that she might collapse any moment.

We walked protectively, surrounding Mother—my two little sisters at her sides, Father and I directly behind, watching her struggling steps. We were walking on Japanese soil. Japan, the country that I had been taught to love and honor; the country for which I had once been ready to dedicate myself. Look! I am walking on it, walking on the soil of my country, Japan. Why, then, do I feel like a stranger?

At the entrance to the temporary barracks set up for the repatriates, we were met by a group of white-jacketed sanitation people. They pulled open each of our collars and stuck in a hose to douse us with a pungent white powder called DDT.

"This is by the order of the occupation forces," they told us, silencing our feeble protest. The occupation forces! Of course, Japan was occupied by the United States, remember? So why not dunk us, the unwanted cargo kicked out of communist-occupied Manchuria, in DDT? Welcome home, you miserable maggots! Welcome home to the Land of the Rising Sun! The pungent white powder hissed, crawling down my spine.

Kuramoto, Kazuko. Manchurian Legacy: Memoirs of a Japanese Colonist. East Lansing: Michigan State U Press, 1999; 111-114.