Word: shikotan
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...replay of the Soviet-troops-in-Cuba affair? Not exactly, but the controversy surrounding new military preparations on the tiny Soviet-held island of Shikotan off the coast of Japan did bear some striking similarities. In Tokyo last week Japan's top defense official, Ganri Yamashita, reported to the Cabinet that over the past year the Soviet Union has deployed up to 12,000 combat troops on Shikotan and two other isles in the southern Kurils, less than twelve miles off Japan's northeastern shore. The division-level force, he said, was equipped with tanks, SAM antiaircraft missiles...
...closing days of World War II by sending the Red Army into industrialized Manchuria to strip it bare. Nor have the Japanese forgotten that the Russians took advantage of them at war's end by seizing South Sakhalin, the Kurils, the Habomais and the islands of Shikotan off Japan's northern coast. Of course, with U.S.-Japanese relations deteriorating and with Chinese hostility directed against both Moscow and Tokyo, the Soviets may yet decide to play a trump card by returning at least the Habomais and Shikotan...