By Bennett Murray
HANOI, Vietnam (AA) - At an emotional ceremony in Hanoi, the Vietnamese children of Japanese soldiers left behind by their fathers after World War II met Emperor Akihito on Thursday.
"We would like to share our understanding toward your difficult time in the past,” said the emperor addressing the family members, which included 14 children now in their 60s and 70s and one former wife.
Following the withdrawal of the Japanese from Vietnam upon Tokyo’s defeat in 1945, some 700 soldiers defected to the communist Viet Minh fighters of revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh, who would push out the French colonialists in 1954 and eventually defeat the Americans in the Vietnam War.
Most were eventually told to go home after independence, however, and were unable to take their young Vietnamese families with them to Japan, which was allied with the United States.
Although many of their fathers had received honors from the new Vietnamese government, the children nonetheless faced discrimination as the Japanese were still deemed “imperialists”.
Most would never hear from each other again.
Akihito, who arrived in Vietnam on Tuesday in the first trip to the country ever conducted by a Japanese emperor, is currently on a goodwill tour of Southeast Asia.
It is his first trip abroad since announcing last August that he might abdicate in his old age.
He is due to arrive in Thailand on Sunday, where he is expected to give condolences to the nation in the wake of King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s death last October.