TOKYO — As a Japanese war orphan in China, Takayoshi Ishihara's life was one hardship after another. First his family was killed before his eyes at the end of World War II. Then he endured years of beatings by his adoptive father and taunting as a "Riben guizi" -- Japanese devil.
Ishihara returned to Japan after 30 years, only to face more suffering -- shunned by his remaining relatives as an unwanted burden in a land that scorns him as a foreigner.
Now 70, he and about 2,000 like him are venting their frustrations in a series of lawsuits demanding about $280,000 each in compensation from the state.
"The Japanese government is responsible for creating orphans like us, who had no way of returning home," said Ishihara, who lives alone in public housing in Tokyo. "Had the government brought us back soon after the war ended, we wouldn't have had such difficult lives."
In the first ruling on the cases, the Osaka District Court in July said the state had no legal obligation to pay compensation. But the cases have cast attention on a painful legacy of Japan's conquest and colonization of East Asia in the first half of the 20th century.
An estimated 2.8 million Japanese returned from China by ship after the collapse of Tokyo's empire, most of them in 1945 and 1946. Another 5,900 came after normalization of ties between the two nations in 1972, including about 2,500 who were abandoned in China under the age of 12.
The sons and daughters of Japanese military officials, bureaucrats and businessmen, many were too young to remember their Japanese names. But many yearned to return to their homeland.
"All I wanted was to come back to Japan," Ishihara said. "I thought I could even cope with severe poverty if I could only come back."
But in coming home, they faced a grim reality.
Government programs helped many find long-lost relatives and paid for their resettlement. But the families, fearful of taking on a financial burden, often shunned the orphans. They were further victimized by Japan's common prejudice against orphans and the Chinese. They earned far less than the national average. Even their children face bias.
Ishihara's ordeal began in 1944 when he was brought to Manchuria with his farmer family. His father was drafted into the Japanese army and died of illness. At 10, he said he saw Soviet troops kill his mother and his three younger brothers.
