The group is considering filing the lawsuit with the Hiroshima District Court on Sept. 24, claiming the government neglected them and provided insufficient support after their homecoming.

About 70 people including some of the plaintiffs who are living in Hiroshima Prefecture and their supporters attended Sunday's ceremony.

Fumishige Nakayama, 58, who became the group's leader, urged fellow repatriates and supporters to stand up and fight to be compensated for their sufferings on foreign land and also for the discrimination and hardships they experienced even after being repatriated to Japan.

A total of some 580 people repatriated from China are preparing to file damages suits at five district courts across the country.

As of June 30, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said 2,462 such Japanese were repatriated from China.

Many Japanese children were abandoned and left behind by their parents in then Japanese-controlled Manchuria in northeastern China in the chaotic situation surrounding the Soviet Union's entry into the war in August 1945.