Call for memorial to foster parents
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Xinhua, September 21, 2011
A Chinese professor yesterday called for a memorial to the Chinese foster parents of Japanese orphans left behind in China during World War II.
Cao Baoming, vice president of the China Society for the Study of Folk Literature and Art, said the memorial should honor Chinese who adopted the orphans of their enemies, even after their homeland was invaded and their relatives slaughtered during Japanese aggression.
Cao, an expert on wartime Japanese orphans, said: "Their maternal love extends beyond national boundaries and hatred, and should be recorded in history."
He urged the government to provide living assistance to surviving foster parents, and establish a memorial to preserve this period in history by a means of a display of relics, pictures, writings and videos.
About 5,500 Japanese orphans were abandoned in China when their parents either fled or died in 1945 following the defeat of the occupiers, Cao said.
Gao Fengqin, 68, was one of these orphans. She said she was sent by her parents to a family in Harbin, capital of China's northeastern Heilongjiang Province, when she was five.
She recalled: "I was skinny with lice all over me. I begged my mother to take me away, but she left me only the view of her back."
Gao's story is a result of Japan's invasion and occupation of China in the 1930s and 1940s. War broke out in July 1937 on the outskirts of Beijing and ended in August 1945 when Japan surrendered.
More than 20,000 Japanese emigrants were sent to northeast China as a "pioneering group" between 1936 and 1945.
They were dispersed when the army retreated, forcing them to abandon their children, according to Cao.
Gao was raised by Chinese parents and, later, raised a family of her own in China.
"My Chinese parents treated me as their own and never let me feel wronged," she said.
In Changchun, capital of northeastern Jilin Province, 39 adoptive parents lived in a residence designated for them 20 years ago. Today, however, only one remains.
"The group is aging and passing away," said Cao. "They represent the greatness of love as a witness to history and a living model of human morality."
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