The story of a Chinese veteran’s love for a Japanese woman he met shortly after World War II and his quest nearly 70 years later to learn what happened to her has been widely circulating on Chinese websites in recent days.

Relations between Japan and China have been markedly poor of late, as the two countries square off over control of disputed islands in the East China Sea and debate conflicting interpretations of the events of World War II.

This summer, Chinese media, officials and scholars have pushed for greater remembrance of the brutality of Japan’s occupation of China, with near daily reports about war crimes from more than half a century ago.

Against that backdrop, the tale of Zhou Fukang, now 92, offers a warmer recollection of that era. His story also reflects a growing effort to acknowledge the contribution of Chinese Nationalist soldiers who fought against Japan, many of whom suffered decades of oppression after the Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949. Despite such recognition, some surviving veterans like Mr. Zhou struggle in their old age to merely get by.

Mr. Zhou, a political officer in Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese Nationalist Army, was part of the contingent of troops sent to Taiwan in 1945 to accept the surrender of Japanese forces. While there he met a young Japanese teacher, Henmi Sueko, whom he heard playing a piano in a schoolhouse in the city of Hsinchu, where he was stationed. Taiwan had been under Japanese rule since 1895, when it was ceded by the Qing empire following its loss in the first Sino-Japanese War.

Their relationship was brief. Without a common language, he had to ask another teacher to introduce them, and their interactions often consisted of his humming along while Ms. Henmi played the piano, Mr. Zhou told the Hangzhou-based City Express newspaper.

When Ms. Henmi returned to Japan a few weeks later, Mr. Zhou could say only a few words of goodbye through a translator. A few months later he heard that one of the boats carrying Japanese civilians home had struck a mine and sunk. He wondered if she was aboard, but has heard no word of her since their parting in 1945, he told The City Express.

In 1946 Mr. Zhou returned to mainland China, where a civil war was being waged between the Nationalists and the Communists. In 1955 he was charged with counterrevolutionary crimes, and sentenced to a 15-year prison term in Inner Mongolia. He was released in 1970, during the Cultural Revolution. He worked in a factory by day and was “struggled against” by Red Guards in public denunciation sessions by night. It was much the same as prison, he told the newspaper, only he got a salary.

It was only in the 1980s that he was able to return from Inner Mongolia to his home in Xiaoshan, a district of the eastern city of Hangzhou. He always thought of getting married, but never did. “When I got out of prison I was nearly 50. How could I find a wife?” he told The City Express. “At that time I had nothing, and I was carrying the label of being an ex-convict.”

Today he supplements his monthly welfare payment of 618 renminbi, about $100, by collecting scrap materials for resale. Volunteers visit on occasion, part of a nationwide effort to improve the quality of life for China’s surviving war veterans.

Last month one volunteer took photos of Mr. Zhou holding a sign that read, “Henmi Sueko, where are you?” After local newspapers included him in stories marking the 69th anniversary of the end of the war, his quest to track down Ms. Henmi began getting wider play on Chinese social media sites.

Many were struck by Mr. Zhou’s current hardships and called for better support of veterans. “The important thing isn’t the search for a lost sweetheart,” wrote a person on Sina Weibo under the name Gong Junpeng. “It’s how a national hero could fall into such circumstances.”

Mr. Zhou told The City Express he realized that Ms. Henmi might have died long ago, but thoughts of her helped him recall the happiest time of his life.

“Originally, I thought there was no need for a scrap picker like me to find her. It would be a loss of face to let people in Japan know I collect scrap,” he told the newspaper. “But I’d really like to see her once more.”