My Dear Child of the Enemy

I was at the gym the other day. I plugged in my earphones to the StairMaster and turned the channel to Discovery. Recently i've developed a liking towards documentaries.. guess it ties in with the sleeping early and getting old thingy.

The title of the show was My Dear Child of the Enemy. Within 15 minutes into the show, i was hooked. Transfixed on the tv in front while my legs were moving on their own. This documentary, was about Chinese foster parents who adopted Japanese children abandoned on the streets of Manchuria, China after the defeat of Japan during World War II. About a million Japanese were living in Manchuria at that time.

The documentary shone the spotlight on 4 people, Miss Li and her adopted daughter, Yuri and another pair of mother-daughter that i can't remember their names anymore. Miss Li was 1 of the 6 elders living in the China-Japan Amity House in Changchun, China. The Amity House was built by some Japanese to show their gratitude towards their foster parents. I guess.. it's just an old folks home with a different name.

Miss Li was 80 years old and lived in the Amity House with her sister and brother-in-law. Her adopted daughter, Yuri returned to Japan in the 1980s with her husband under some sort of program offered by the Japanese government. Almost all of Japan's abandoned war orphans returned to Japan during this period. Yuri promised to send for her foster mother after settling down. However, since she returned to Japan, she lived on government handouts due to difficulty in getting a job. She couldn't speak nor write in Japanese. Her life in Japan, in her own words, was very lonely.. with her husband being her only friend. Back in China, her foster mother was getting very sick.. to the point she couldn't ingest any solid food. Her mother begged her to go back and visit her in China to fulfill her dying wish. Yuri used up all her savings and even had to borrow money to go visit her dying mother. She could only be in China for 10 days .. but this fact was unknown to her foster mother..

Back in China, she wanted to bring her mother to the hospital, but again, she was penniless. She tried to ask from her cousins there but they said she should have tried harder instead of borrowing money from people all the time. Miss Li, who was sitting on her bed listening to their conversation, cried silently. On the last day of her visit, Yuri made some dumplings for her mother.. it was her favourite. Even though Miss Li had been eating nothing but porridge for the past few weeks, she looked really happy and take in the dumplings slowly. It was at this time that Yuri had to break the news to her foster mother that she had to return to Japan.. the dinner ended in tears, again.

Yuri packed all her belongings and said goodbye to Miss Li.

"Please come back soon.. having you by my side is the only wish i have now..."

She merely nodded, knowing this could be the last time they will ever meet in this lifetime. Then, she left. The camera continued to linger on Miss Li's face, capturing the unspeakable sorrow and grief etched on her wrinkled face .. and the silent tears on her face matched those on mine.

The 2nd story was also about a Chinese foster mother and her Japanese adopted daughter. The difference lies in this Japanese adopted daughter chose to stay in China instead of returning to Japan, her ancestral land. However, it was her son, an engineer, who decided that migrating to Japan would bring them a better future.. so the whole family, including the old Chinese woman all prepared to venture into the unknown, leaving their whole lives behind..

Towards the end, i keep hoping they would portray some sort of happy ending to both the stories. Maybe some kind people heard of Miss Li's plight and raised a fund for Yuri to stay with her until her last breath.. maybe they will show footage of the other Chinese foster mother adapting well in Japan... maybe.. maybe... but they didn't. The documentary ended with a group shot of the remaining 6 residents of the China-Japan Amity House.. still waiting for their foster children's homecoming.

I was touched by the documentary so much, it haunted me for a few days. I googled it up, but found no further information on the documentary other than it won the NHK Japan Grand Prix Prize in 2005. I wished that i could read about the whereabouts of Miss Li, Yuri and the other pair, i wished that i could read that they live happily ever after .. but i didn't. I guess real life doesn't work in that way..

I haven't prayed to God for a long time. But that night, i prayed hard to God that Miss Li would get her dying wish and wouldn't die as a lonely old woman.