Ikeda Sumie, director general of a Tokyo support group for those Japanese orphans returned from China, mourns for adoptive parents in front of a grave in a cemetery to memorize adoptive Chinese parents in Fangzheng county in Northeast China's Heilongjiang province, July 13, 2015. [Photo/Xinhua]

HARBIN -- A group of 54 Japanese citizens, all now orphans, on Monday paid a visit to the graves of their adoptive Chinese parents in Fangzheng county in Northeast China's Heilongjiang province.

From 1931, the Japanese government offered incentives to its people to migrate to China's northeastern provinces, which were then illegally occupied for another decade.