Sakhalin: The Island of Unspoken Struggles

INTRODUCTION

On August 8, 1945, just two days after the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov presented Japan's Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Naotake Sato, with a declaration of war, breaching the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact (also known as the Japanese–Soviet Non-aggression Pact) that had been in force between the two countries since April 13, 1941. The declaration came after Molotov deliberately spent several weeks deflecting Japan’s requests to help mediate a surrender to the United States.

In an effort to bring World War II to a swift end and reduce the number of allied casualties, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill attempted to persuade Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin to enter the war against Japan. The strategy meeting between the three leaders took place in 1943 during the Tehran Conference. At the time, the Soviet Union was focusing its war effort on repelling the Germans from its territories in the west and could not afford a war with Japan in the east as well. Therefore, it wasn’t until the Yalta Conference in 1945, with the German defeat imminent, that Roosevelt and Churchill succeeded in securing Stalin’s pledge to enter the Pacific War.

Six months later, the Soviets launched a major offensive in Manchuria, Korea, Sakhalin Island, and the Kuril Islands. In a battle that commenced on August 9 and lasted until August 20, the Soviet Union poured 1.6 million troops into Manchuria and over-powered the 700,000-strong Kwantung Army, capturing Puyi, China’s last emperor of the Qing dynasty. Puyi had been forced to abdicate his throne in 1912, but when Japan created the puppet state of Manchuko in 1932, he was chosen to become its emperor.

In another wave that began on August 11, the Soviets crossed the border at the 50th parallel and advanced south on Sakhalin. What began as a short but effective Soviet campaign against the Japanese forces in Manchuria later turned into a resolute push to occupy the territories discussed during the Yalta Conference. The Soviets unleashed unspeakable brutality against the Japanese military and the defenseless civilian population.

As Soviet forces marched southwards on Sakhalin, they came face-to-face with the Imperial Japanese Army’s Daihachijuhachi Shidan (88th Infantry Division), stationed along the border. The defender’s objective in engaging the Soviets was to buy enough time for the civilians to flee by ship to Hokkaido. Six thousand residents of Maoka (present-day Kholmsk) on the western coast of southern Sakhalin had already been evacuated when the Soviet attack began before dawn on August 20. Soviet warships entered the harbor, firing on the town and the 18,000 refugees still waiting to be evacuated. Civilians were sprayed with machine gun fire as they ran towards the hills to escape the Soviet troops streaming off the warships. According to Japanese records, approximately 1,000 people were killed that morning.

Although pockets of Japanese troops in the vicinity continued to resist until August 23, some soldiers retreated from Maoka with plans to surrender to the Soviet forces. They were brutally shot to death as they came forward to discuss the surrender.

On August 22, one full week after Japan had tendered its surrender to the Allies, Soviet warplanes attacked Toyohara (present-day Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk). Despite the local authorities having erected a large white flag and a tent marked with a red cross in front of the railway station for the multitudes of refugees, five or six fragmentation bombs and approximately 20 incendiary bombs were dropped by the Soviets, killing several hundred people. Early in the morning that same day, three Soviet submarines attacked the Japanese refugee transport ships the Daini Shinko-Maru, the Ogasawara-Maru, and the Taito-Maru off the coast of Rumoi in western Hokkaido. The Daini Shinko-Maru managed to reach the port, but the other two ships sank with a loss of 1,708 people, many of whom were women and children. As they floated in the water, the surviving passengers of the Ogasawara-Maru were blanketed by gunfire from Soviet fighter planes. Only 17 of the 750 people on board survived.

The Soviet Union completed its occupation of Sakhalin and the Habomai Islands (a group of islets in the southernmost Kuril Islands) on September 5. Over the next two years, Soviet authorities repatriated the majority of the Japanese civilians who still remained on the island. The Sakhalin Ainu, and part of the Nivkh and Uilta populations, were also expelled. The Korean workers taken to Sakhalin by Japan between 1920 and 1945 as part of the kyosei renko (forced labor program) were detained and consigned to equally harsh treatment under the new Soviet regime.

Almost 600,000 Japanese soldiers surrendered to Soviet forces in Manchuria, Sakhalin Island, and the Kuril Islands. Most were transported to labor camps in Siberia, where roughly 10 percent died during the following decade.

While Japanese acts of brutality towards civilians and Allied POWs attracted global outrage and punitive justice, the violence unleashed upon civilians by the Soviet forces during the invasion of Karafuto and the use of Japanese POWs as slave labor in the immediate postwar era has gone unquestioned by any postwar tribunal.