>>47094348After Japan's defeat in World War II, around 700 of its soldiers stayed on, many of them joining forces with Vietnam's revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh in his fight to secure independence from the French.
After France was defeated in 1954, Shimizu was among the first wave ordered to return home by Japanese authorities, who refused to accept their Vietnamese wives or children.
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But Xuan remembers her husband as a "very nice man".
"I made a pillow from a military jacket he left behind for me, covering it with a (Vietnamese) flag. I imagined my husband was the star," she said, smiling while referring to the red and gold cascade.
"It means he is with me all the time, in my sleep."
She lost track of him after he left in 1954, until the couple was reunited by Japanese journalists in 2006, 52 years after they bid a sad farewell.
He had remarried, but she remained single, working as a nurse, a nanny and a farmhand to raise their children.
Life wasn't easy for her half Japanese children in their small village.
"There was discrimination. I fought with local residents who bullied us, saying we were children of Japanese fascists," said her youngest son Binh, 62.
Today, Japan is a leading investor in Vietnam and the country's top aid donor. Thousands of Vietnamese students travel to Japan to study every year, many coming home speaking fluent Japanese.
The royal couple's five-day trip from Tuesday follows a visit by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last month.
Although none of Xuan's family has ever travelled there, Japan has shaped their lives.
Now in her twilight years, she still sings Japanese ballads she learned by heart and says she is eager to meet the emperor next week, offering no notes of bitterness.
