Russia and Japan have a territorial dispute over the four southernmost Kuril Islands, known in Russia as the Southern Kurils and in Japan as the Northern Territories. They are, from largest to smallest: Iturup/Etorofu, Kunashir/Kunashiri, Shikotan, and the Habomai Islands.In Russia Shikotan and Habomai Islands are grouped into the Lesser Kuril Chain ( ). See Seokwoo Lee, Towards a framework for the resolution of the territorial dispute over the Kurile Islands, Boundary and territory briefing, v. 3, no. 6, University of Durham, 2001; ; p. 14 The Kuril Islands are a chain of islands that stretch between the Japanese island of Hokkaido at their southern end and the Russian Kamchatka Peninsula at their northern end. The islands separate the Sea of Okhotsk from the Pacific Ocean. The four disputed islands, like other islands in the Kuril chain which are not in dispute, were unilaterally annexed by the Soviet Union following the Invasion of the Kuril Islands at the end of World War II. The disputed islands are under Russian administration as the South Kuril District and part of the Kuril District of the Sakhalin Oblast (, ). They are claimed by Japan, which refers to them as its Northern Territories or Southern Chishima, and considers them part of the Nemuro Subprefecture of Hokkaido Prefecture.
The San Francisco Peace Treaty, signed between the Allies and Japan in 1951, states that Japan renounces "all right, title and claim to the Kuril Islands", but does not explicitly recognize the Soviet Union's sovereignty over them."Text of Gromyko's Statement on the Peace Treaty". The New York Times, page 26, 9 September 1951. Japan claims that at least some of the disputed islands are not a part of the Kuril Islands, and thus are not covered by the treaty. Russia maintains that the Soviet Union's sovereignty over the islands was recognized in post-war agreements. Japan and the Soviet Union ended their formal state of war with the Soviet–Japanese Joint Declaration of 1956 but did not sign a peace treaty. During talks leading to the joint declaration, the Soviet Union offered Japan the two smaller islands of Shikotan and the Habomai Islands in exchange for Japan renouncing all claims to the two larger islands of Iturup and Kunashir, but Japan declined the offer. This disagreement between the two-island offer made by the Soviet Union and Japan's demand of regaining two larger islands as well became the cornerstone for continuation of the dispute into the present day.
Background
The first Russo-Japanese agreement to deal with the status of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands was the 1855 Treaty of Shimoda, which first established official relations between the Russian Empire and Tokugawa Japan. Article 2 of the Treaty of Shimoda, which provided for an agreement on borders, states "Henceforth the borders between Russia and Japan will pass between the islands Iturup (Etorofu) and Urup (Uruppu). The whole island of Iturup belongs to Japan and the whole island Urup and the other Kuril Islands to the north constitute possessions of Russia". The islands of Kunashiri, Shikotan and the Habomai Islands, all lying to the south of Iturup, are not explicitly mentioned in the treaty and were understood at the time to be a non-disputed part of Japan. The treaty also specified that the island of Sakhalin/Karafuto was not to be partitioned but was to remain under a joint Russo-Japanese condominium.
In the 1875 Treaty of Saint Petersburg, Russia and Japan agreed that Japan would give up all rights to Sakhalin in exchange for Russia giving up all rights to the Kuril Islands in favor of Japan. However, a controversy remains as to what constitutes the Kuril Islands, due to translation discrepancies in the French official text of that treaty.Thierry Mormanne, « Le problème des Kouriles : pour un retour à Saint-Pétersbourg », in : Cipango, Nº 1, Paris, pp. 58–89, 1992. ISSN 1164-5857.
The Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05 was a military disaster for Russia. The 1905 Treaty of Portsmouth, concluded at the end of this war, gave the southern half of Sakhalin Island to Japan.
During the Russian Civil War following the October Revolution, Japan occupied parts of Russia's Far East initially as part of the Allied intervention, but did not formally annex any of these territories. Japanese forces withdrew from the Russian mainland in 1922 and from northern Sakhalin in 1925.
Japan was a main ally of Nazi Germany, which the Soviet Union initially had a non-aggression pact with, but found itself at war with from 22 June 1941. However, after the Battles of Khalkhin Gol ended the Japanese–Soviet Border War in 1939 and before the Soviet Union declared war on Japan on 8 August 1945, there was practically no hostile activity between the Soviet Union and the Empire of Japan. Between 1939 and 1945, millions of Soviet and Japanese soldiers were facing each other along the Manchurian border. The Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact was signed in Moscow on 13 April 1941, and became effective on 25 April, but was renounced by the Soviet Union on 5 April 1945. On 8 May Nazi Germany surrendered to the Allies, which ended the war in Europe and started the secret three-month countdown for the Russians to start hostilities against Japan, as per the Yalta Agreement. On 9 August 1945, just after midnight in Manchuria, the Soviets invaded Manchuria and the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, beginning the Soviet–Japanese War. The Soviet Union invaded South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands in the subsequent days.
The Invasion of the Kuril Islands took place between 18 August and 3 September (Japan had announced its surrender 15 August, and formally signed it 2 September). The Japanese inhabitants of the Kurils were expelled two years later. The United States had helped the preparation of the Soviet invasion through Project Hula, transferring naval vessels to the Soviet Union.
Modern dispute World War II agreements
The modern Kuril Islands dispute arose in the aftermath of World War II and results from the ambiguities in and disagreements about the meaning of the Yalta agreement (February 1945), the Potsdam Declaration (July 1945), and the Treaty of San Francisco (September 1951). The Yalta Agreement, signed by the US, Great Britain and the Soviet Union, stated:
The leaders of the three great powers – the Soviet Union, the United States of America and Great Britain – have agreed that in two or three months after Germany has surrendered and the war in Europe is terminated, the Soviet Union shall enter into war against Japan on the side of the Allies on condition that: ... 2. The former rights of Russia violated by the treacherous attack of Japan in 1904 shall be restored, viz.: (a) The southern part of Sakhalin as well as the islands adjacent to it shall be returned to the Soviet Union; ... 3. The Kuril islands shall be handed over to the Soviet Union.
Japan and the US claimed that the Yalta agreement did not apply to the Northern Territories because they were not a part of the Kuril Islands, although US geographers have traditionally listed them as part of the Kuril chain. In a 1998 article in the journal Pacific Affairs, Bruce Elleman, Michael Nichols and Matthew Ouimet argue that the US never accepted the cession of all the Kuril Islands to the Soviet Union and has maintained from Yalta onward that it simply agreed at Yalta that Moscow could negotiate directly with Tokyo to come to a mutually acceptable solution, and that the US would support in such a peace agreement the Soviet acquisition of the Kurils.Bruce A. Elleman, Michael R. Nichols and Matthew J. Ouimet, A Historical Reevaluation of America's Role in the Kuril Islands Dispute, Pacific Affairs, Vol. 71, No. 4 (Winter, 1998–1999), pp. 489–504 As a key piece of evidence, the same article quotes an 27 August 1945, letter from U.S. president Harry Truman to Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin: "You evidently misunderstood my message [about the Kuril Islands] ... I was not speaking of any territory of the Soviet Republic. I was speaking of the Kurile Islands, Japanese territory, disposition of which must be made at a peace settlement. I was advised that my predecessor agreed to support in the peace settlement the Soviet acquisition of those islands." The Soviet Union—and subsequently, Russia—rejected this position.
The Potsdam Declaration states the following regarding the Japanese territories: "8. The terms of the Cairo Declaration shall be carried out and Japanese sovereignty shall be limited to the islands of Honshū, Hokkaido, Kyushu, Shikoku and such minor islands as we determine". The islands comprising the Northern Territories are not explicitly included in this list, but the US subsequently maintained, particularly during the preparation of the Treaty of San Francisco, that the phrase "and such minor islands as we determine" could be used to justify transferring the Northern Territories to Japan.
The Cairo Declaration of 1943 did not explicitly mention the Kuril Islands but stated: "Japan will also be expelled from all other territories which she has taken by violence and greed".
Japan later claimed that the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Declaration did not apply to the islands on the grounds that they had never belonged to Russia or been claimed by it since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries in 1855, and thus they were not among the territories acquired by Japan "by violence and greed".
San Francisco Treaty A substantial dispute regarding the status of the Kuril Islands arose between the U.S. and the Soviet Union during the preparation of the Treaty of San Francisco in 1951. The Treaty was supposed to be a permanent peace treaty between Japan and the Allied Powers of World War II. By that time, the Cold War had already taken hold, and the position of the U.S. in relation to the Yalta and Potsdam agreements had changed considerably. The U.S. had come to maintain that the Potsdam Declaration should take precedence and that strict adherence to the Yalta agreement was not necessary since, in the view of the U.S., the Soviet Union itself violated several provisions of the Yalta agreement in relation to the rights of other countries. The Soviet Union vehemently disagreed"Text of Gromyko's Statement on the Peace Treaty". The New York Times, 9 September 1951; From page 26: "The Soviet delegation has already drawn the attention of the conference to the inadmissibility of the situation under which the draft peace treaty with Japan fails to state that Japan should recognize the sovereignty of the Soviet Union over the southern part of Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands. The draft is in flagrant contradiction with the obligations assumed by the United States and Great Britain with regard to these territories under the Yalta Agreement." and demanded that the U.S. adhere to its promises made to the Soviet Union in Yalta as a condition of the Soviet Union's entry into the war with Japan. A particular point of disagreement at the time was that the draft text of the treaty, while stating that Japan will renounce all rights to Southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, did not state explicitly that Japan would recognize the Soviet Union's sovereignty over these territories.Clark, Gregory, "Northern Territories dispute lives on self-righteous deadlock", The Japan Times, 12 May 2009, p. 12.
The Treaty of San Francisco was signed by 49 nations, including Japan and the United States, on 8 September 1951. Article (2c) states:
Japan renounces all right, title and claim to the Kurile Islands, and to that portion of Sakhalin and the islands adjacent to it over which Japan acquired sovereignty as a consequence of the Treaty of Portsmouth of 5 September 1905.