Word: sakhaline
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...Which gave Russia the southern part of Sakhalin Island and all the Kuriles, plus control of Port Arthur and Dairen and of the strategically invaluable railroad across Manchuria...
...National Guard divisions, the 40th and the 45th, embarked last week for Japan-the first Guard divisions to be sent overseas. They were being rushed off before they had finished their training. The public was also aware, but only vaguely, of big Russian concentrations in Manchuria and on Sakhalin island: a Russian assault on Japan might cut off the troops in Korea and touch off World War III. But these and similar grave possibilities, so real to the Pentagon, gave Americans no acute sense of clear and present danger...
...Japanese used to say that Russian Vladivostok was "a dagger" pointed at their islands (the Siberian port lies 680 airline miles northwest of Tokyo). Since World War II's end, another Russian dagger has been poised, even closer to Japan: the island of Sakhalin (600 miles long, 75 miles wide), separated by only 26 miles of sea from the northernmost main Japanese island, Hokkaido. The lower half of Sakhalin once belonged to Japan; it was turned over to the Russians by one ot Yalta's secret deals...
When the Chinese Communist armies in Korea began to run into trouble a few weeks ago, rumors got around that the Russians were building up troop concentrations on Sakhalin. Whether based on fact or not, the rumors made the U.S. high command sharply conscious that Japan's occupation garrison had been shipped to Korea, leaving the islands virtually defenseless on the ground. A Russian invasion of Japan from Sakhalin could outflank and trap U.N. forces in Korea...
...diplomatically correct fashion, the Russians went on to insist that the Kurils and southern Sakhalin became theirs at Yalta; that the Cairo agreement of 1943 gave Formosa to China (Russia contends that now means Communist China); and that at Potsdam it was decided that no "occupation troops" could be left in Japan once the peace terms were fulfilled...