Hakata Port
In the four months between the Japanese surrender and the end of 1945, around 1.3 million of the 2 million Koreans living in Japan, most of whom were conscripted laborers, returned to Korea. In the following year, another 82,900 Koreans repatriated under the official Allied repatriation program. Japanese port towns became repatriation centers where Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese repatriates waited for “liberty ships” to take them back to their homelands. Hakata Port in Fukuoka Prefecture (pictured above) and Senzaki Port in Yamaguchi Prefecture were the two main centers for official repatriation to Korea. Around 500,000 Koreans passed through Hakata Port on their way to Korea in the first year after the war.