Word: sakhaline
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Further, it looked as if Russia would get Japan's half of Sakhalin Island and the Kuril Islands enclosing Russia's Okhotsk Sea. Russia's position in east Asia would return to about where it was in 1904 before the Russo-Japanese war. Stalin's imperialism had redressed the Tsars' imperial ineptitude...
...Sakhalin Island, half Russian and half Japanese, is poised like a blockbuster at the head of the Japanese archipelago. Last week the bleak, sparsely peopled island was the subject of a sudden blaze of Soviet publicity. Without exception, every Moscow morning newspaper published a two-column letter from the workers of Russian Sakhalin, thanking Premier Joseph Stalin for their liberation from the "horrors" of Japanese occupation 20 years ago. They promised: "We shall not relax our efforts one minute ... to bolster our defenses." The letter was also read in full by the Moscow radio...
...Sakhalin is fabulously rich (timber, gold, oil, coal), tempting to greedy neighbors. In 1905 Japan wrested its southern half away from Russia. In 1918, when Russia was in revolution, Japanese soldiers marched north, held the whole island for seven years. When finally they left the upper half, they took with them a 45-year concession for coal...
Last week, 26 years ahead of time, Moscow abruptly forced Tokyo to abandon its Sakhalin concessions. The enemy of Germany was still at peace and still bargaining with the enemy of the U.S., Britain and China. But what Russia gave Japan was nebulous or nominal: 5,000,000 rubles ($950,000), plus a promise to sell Japan 50,000 tons of oil annually for five years-after the war. Japan has vast stocks of oil on hand, can get all she wants in the Dutch East Indies. But the road south is long, watched closely by U.S. subs. Short...
...Next Best Thing." Said an Allied diplomat: "This is the next best thing to giving us bases." Moscow's tone was tough and belligerent. The Government's Izvestia said that Japan had promised to cancel the Sakhalin concession early in 1941, failed to keep her word. Said Izvestia scornfully: there were some Japanese politicos who had bet on Hitler's victory, "but the Red Army's successes and the developing war operations of our allies have played their role. A sobering up had to come...