Japanese WWII orphans mourn adoptive Chinese parents in Heilongjiang

Ikeda Sumie, director general of a Tokyo support group for those Japanese returned from China, mourns for adoptive parents in front of a grave in a cemetery to memorize adoptive Chinese parents in Fangzheng County near Harbin, capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, July 13, 2015. A group of 54 Japanese citizens, all now orphans, on Monday paid a visit to the graves of their adoptive Chinese parents here. Abandoned by their birth parents during the hasty retreat at the end of World War II in 1945, the orphans, now over 70 years old, were taken in and raised by the very Chinese residents of those northeastern provinces who spent so many years suffering at the hands of the waifs' parents. As WWII and the War of the Chinese People's Resistance Against Japanese Aggression was coming to end, more than 4,000 children were simply abandoned by their fleeing parents. Most of them relocated to Japan after China and Japan normalized relations in 1972. (Xinhua/Wang Kai)