ABSTRACT
On September 2, 1945, Japan accepted the terms of the Potsdam Declaration and unconditionally surrendered to the Allies. The downfall of the Japanese empire gave rise to a spectacular surge of migration within East Asia. The 3.67 million Japanese servicemen and civilians in military employ ( gunzoku ), deployed to imperial outposts in Asia, were demobilized. At the same time, around 1.6 million Koreans and other non-Japanese residents, including Okinawans living in the Japanese home islands ( naichi ), were sent back to their home regions. In quick succession, Japanese imperial subjects were repatriated from Korea, Taiwan, the South Pacifi c ( Nan’yō ), the Kwantung Leased Territory, the Japanese puppet kingdom of Manchukuo, Karafuto (Southern Sakhalin), and parts of China, altogether reaching up to 3.21 million people. 1 Of the more than 2.3 million Koreans living in Manchuria, close to 800,000 were transported to the Korean Peninsula or else repatriated of their own accord. 2 The total number of migrants moving in all directions approached 9 million people, equivalent to 9 percent of the total population of the Japanese Empire, estimated at 100 million people at the time. It was one of the largest human migration moments in history. 3
Parallel with this massive multidirectional fl ow of human beings, the aftermath of Japan’s defeat witnessed two further phenomena: the assimilation of those who chose to stay and the massive change in the lives of those who remained behind due to circumstances beyond their control. These individuals included Koreans living in Manchuria (now northeast China), ethnic Koreans who remained in Japan, Japanese residents forced to remain on the Chinese mainland, Japanese and Korean people stranded on Sakhalin, and indigenous Taiwanese people who were left behind in China. Kawashima Shin discusses issues related to the Taiwan aspects in Chapter 2 of this volume , while Katō Kiyofumi touches on the larger issues of imperial dissolution in Chapter 1 , and Park Jung Jin focuses particularly on the case of North Korea in Chapter 11 .
