Nakajima Yuhachi recalls his past after he was abandoned by his birth parents during the Japanese retreat at the end of World War II in 1945. [Photo: screen shot from CCTV]

A 73-year-old Japanese war orphan Nakajima Yuhachi recalls his past after he was abandoned by his birth parents during the Japanese retreat at the end of World War II in 1945.

Su Zhengqin, a local villager in Mudanjiang, northeast China's Heilongjiang province, adopted Nakajima and took good care of him although her family had to face the discrimination from their neighbors.

Nakajima says his foster parents were the simplest common villagers. Though their lives were tough, they always provided for him.

"My belly was big but I was quite skinny due to the dyspepsia. So my foster mother fed me with the food she had chewed, and massaged my belly every day. My condition got better and better. About ten months later, my birth mother planned to return to Japan with the Japanese group. She came to take me back to Japan. But of course, I chose to stay with my foster mother in China."

Nakajima's birth mother once authorized the Red Cross to find him and attempted to take him to Japan. But Nakajima refused her.

However, Nakajima felt more and more curious about his life experience as he grew older. Letters from his birth mother made him decide to go home at the age of 16 in 1958.

"They told me there would be no ships transporting us to Japan any more. That was the last chance. I had to go since they said so. My foster mother passed away in December of 1975. I never saw her again after I left China. So I wrote it into my book. I felt greatly sorry for her."

Nakajima finished his memoirs in his retirement and published them by himself in Japan in April and in China later in July.

It is the first of its kind released in both Chinese and Japanese.

From 1931, the Japanese government encouraged its people to migrate to China's northeastern provinces.

As WWII and the War of the Chinese People's Resistance Against Japanese Aggression were coming to end, more than 4,000 children were abandoned by their fleeing parents. Most of them relocated to Japan after the two countries normalized diplomatic relations in 1972.