The Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau on Monday said 89 Chinese nationals suspected of entering Japan illegally by posing as families of war-displaced Japanese will be deported soon.

Immigration officials said they detained some members of the group, which is made up of 35 families mainly from Heilongjiang Province in northeast China. Most of them took up residence in Tokyo and Nagano Prefecture.

The group told the officials they paid a middleman in China to produce a document certifying that they are family members of Japanese left in China around the end of World War II.

But some members of the group said that after their arrival in Japan, the middleman threatened to reveal their true status to Japanese authorities, according to the officials.

One couple even paid the middleman 50,000 yen to 120,000 yen a month to keep quiet, the officials said.

The Japanese government recognizes war-displaced Japanese as war orphans eligible for repatriation. The government has been inviting them to Japan to look for relatives since March 1981. Family members of such Japanese are qualified to acquire resident's status in Japan.