At a language class earlier this year for war-displaced Japanese left behind in China as children at the end of World War II, Tsuyako Suzuki was suddenly reminded that it had been exactly 29 years since she managed to make it to the country of her parents.
Suzuki was attending the class in Yokohama with three other elderly female war orphans, and the instructor was teaching seasonal customs. When the instructor explained that Jan. 7 is a day for eating rice porridge with seven herbs, Suzuki found herself blurting out: "That's the date when I arrived in Japan."
Suzuki, 71, was born in January 1944 to Japanese parents who had emigrated to Manchuria in northeast China. Following Japan's surrender to the Allies in August 1945, she and her parents, like many other Japanese settlers, moved to a refugee camp in Ning'an, Heilongjiang province.