Word: hokkaido
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...World War II, but Japan still claims them. This newly strengthened Soviet outpost includes Mi-24 assault helicopters, among the most sophisticated antitank gunships in the world and therefore an obvious threat to the Japanese armored units stationed just across the Nemuro Strait on the northernmost Japanese island of Hokkaido...
With that, Sasakawa unveiled a patriotic proposal: he would surrender the entire treasure to the Soviet Union in exchange for a group of islands off Hokkaido that the Soviets seized from Japan after World War II and have steadfastly refused to return. Promised Sasakawa, with a chuckle: "I'm ready to talk with whomever Brezhnev-san might send over to my office...
...only by energy (Japan, which supported U.S. sanctions against Iran, once got 11% of its oil from that country) but also by Moscow's invasion of Afghanistan and its military buildup on the Soviet-occupied Kurile Islands, which are only 65 miles from the northeastern coast of Hokkaido. Faced with these uncertainties, the voters clearly decided that this was not the time for a potentially unworkable coalition of parties with irreconcilable policies. Some voters apparently supported the Liberal Democrats out of sympathy for Ohira's death. Concluded Kunihiko Takano, a respected economic commentator: "The people may not like...
Eager for new spending appropriations, officials of Japan's self-defense forces stressed the potential "Soviet threat" to Japan's main northern island of Hokkaido. But Premier Masayoshi Ohira, who was busy with the final stage of Japan's election campaign, tried to play down the controversy. Among other things, he feared that a strident debate over the islands would further poison Soviet-Japanese relations, already damaged by Tokyo's friendship treaty with China last year. Accordingly, his Foreign Minister, Sunao Sonoda, dovishly cautioned against "overreaction," sounding very much like U.S. officials on the Cuban issue...
Mount Usu had last erupted in 1945. Since then, magma, or semimolten rock from the mantle surrounding the earth's core, had been slowly and quietly rising through cracks under the peak of the mountain, building up tremendous pressures and triggering repeated earth tremors that rocked Hokkaido. Finally, on Aug. 7, the 725-meter (2,400-ft.) Usu awakened with a roar like that of a bomb. A huge black cloud soared to a height of 12,000 meters (39,000 ft.). A dense shower of gray ash and chunks of porous, rock-like pumice poured...