When Japan announced its surrender at the Japanese surrender ceremony in Nanjing on September 9, 1945, its forces and officials fled northeast China. State-backed pioneer corps settlers were left behind, and more than 4,000 of their children became stranded Japanese orphans – abandoned by the very government that had sent their families to colonize the region. Their lives have been marked by three waves of abandonment by the Japanese government. Back in their homeland, their suffering is often dismissed as simply the "negative legacy" of war.