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In the early 1930s, the Japanese government sent about 320,000 people to Manchukuo – officially known as Manchuria. Most of them served in the military or as bureaucrats, along with businessmen and families from rural parts of Japan who were told they could help themselves to land and farm. That dream collapsed when the Soviet Union, immediately after the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, revoked its pact of neutrality with Japan and invaded.