The Kuril Islands Dispute Between Russia and Japan

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Analysis

 e Kuril Islands Dispute Between Russia and Japan: Perspectives of  ree

Ocean Powers

Vlad M. Kaczynski, Warsaw School of Economics

Abstract

Japan and Russia have never come to an agreement over the ownership of the four southern Kuril Islands and

therefore have never signed a peace treaty at the end of World War II. Russia currently occupies the islands, but

Japan claims them as Japanese territory.  e Soviet Union exerted ﬁ rm control over the islands. Under Yeltsin,

Russia’s position seemed to weaken, but no progress was achieved in signing a peace treaty. Since Putin’s rise

to power, neither side has been willing to make concessions and the situation remains stalemated.

Introduction

he ﬁ ghting in World War II ended on August 14,

1945 when Japan capitulated to the American Paciﬁ c

forces. Subsequently, the September 8, 1951 San Francis-

co Peace Conference oﬃ cially ended hostilities between

the United States and Japan. However, in the 62 years

since the end of the war, Japan and Russia have failed to

sign a peace treaty ending the conﬂ ict between them.

 e main reason for this failure is a border dispute

over four small islands in the Kuril chain oﬀ the north-

ern coast of Japan’s Hokkaido Island.  e Japanese

refer to these islands as the Northern Territories.

 e Kuril Archipelago extends for 750 miles

(1,200 km) from the southern tip of Russia’s

Kamchatka Peninsula to the northeastern coast

of Japan’s Hokkaido Island.  e 56 islands cover

6,000 square miles (15,600 sq km) and, together

with Sakhalin Island, form an administrative region

of Russia.  e Kurils were originally settled by the

Russians in the 17th – 18th centuries. Japan initially

seized the southern islands and in 1875 obtained the

entire chain. After World War II, they were ceded to

the Soviet Union, the Japanese population repatri-

ated and replaced by Soviet citizens. Japan still claims

ownership of the four southern islands and has tried

repeatedly to regain them.

An associated controversy concerns the status of

Sakhalin Island, a large island northwest of Hokkaido

(approximately 589 miles or 948 km long). It had been

settled by Russians and Japanese for centuries but in

1875 Japan and Russia agreed that Japan would give

Sakhalin Island to Russia in exchange for 18 Kuril

Islands.  en, following the Russo-Japanese war in

1905, Japan regained control of Sakhalin Island south

of 50° latitude. Japan then took control of the entire

island following the Russian Revolution of 1917, but

abandoned the island in 1924. Finally, at the end of

World War II, the Soviet Union took control of the

entire island, along with the Kurils, and forced the

Japanese population out.

Both the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin Island are tec-

tonically and volcanically active. A large earthquake in

1995 killed approximately 2,000 people on Sakhalin,

whose total island population is about 680,000.  e

Kurils are home to about 35 active volcanoes.

 e Kuril Islands are administered by Russian au-

thorities on Sakhalin Island. Never large, the popula-

tion declined to about 16,000 following a major earth-

quake in 1994. Currently, some 3,500 border troops,

far fewer than in Soviet times, remain to guard the

territory. During the Soviet period, the islands were

considered a vital garrison outpost.  e military val-

ued the island chain’s role in protecting the Sea of

Okhotsk, where Soviet strategic submarines were lo-

cated.  e major industries are ﬁ sh processing, ﬁ shing,

and crabbing, much of which is illegal. Once pam-

pered and highly paid by the Soviet government, the

Kuril islanders were neglected by Moscow after the

collapse of the Soviet Union. Of necessity, the inhab-

itants are developing closer ties with northern Japan.

 e Japanese Claim

he dispute between the two countries centers on

controlling the four southernmost Kuril Islands,

which were taken over by the Soviet Union in 1945.

Japan claims that these islands are part of Japan, as

they have always been visible with the naked eye from

the Japanese island of Hokkaido and appear on centu-

ries-old maps of Japan as being part of Japan.

At the San Francisco Peace Conference, Japan

agreed to give up any claim to Sakhalin and the Kuril

Islands north of the four closest to Japan – Shikotan,

Etorofu, Kunashiri and the tiny Habomai island

group. At the time, Japan also agreed to give up con-

trol of Korea, Taiwan, the South China Sea islands,

Penghu, and its Antarctic territory.

 e Soviet Union refused to agree to these terms

and did not sign the peace treaty. Since that time, the

Russian Federation replaced the Soviet Union and has

agreed to re-examine the issue of the Kurils.

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 e US Perspective

here are two prevalent misconceptions about the

U.S. government’s policies on the Kuril – North-

ern Territories – Islands dispute.  e ﬁ rst is that Presi-

dent Roosevelt agreed at the Yalta Conference to cede

“all” of the Kurils to the Soviet Union. In fact, the Yal-

ta agreement never used the word “all” and it was only

during August 1945, in a series of exchanges between

Stalin and Truman, that Truman agreed in General

Order No. 1 to grant the USSR occupation rights

to “all” of the Kurils, including the southernmost is-

lands traditionally considered to be part of Hokkaido.

 e Department of State’s interpretation of the Yalta

agreement and General Order No. 1 was that the So-

viet occupation of the southernmost Kuril islands was

intended to be a temporary military occupation only,

until a Soviet-Japanese peace treaty transferred sover-

eignty of the Kurils to the USSR.

 e second misconception concerns the so-called

“Dulles  reat Incident” of 1956, when Secretary of

S t a t e J o h n F o s t e r D u l l e s t o l d F o r e i g n M i n i s t e r M a m o r u

Shigemitsu that if Japan gave up its claim against the

USSR for the southern Kurils, then the United States

might feel obliged to retain Okinawa in perpetuity. A

large number of scholars, and especially Soviet schol-

ars, have claimed that Dulles’s “threat” was intended

to torpedo the renewal of friendly Japanese-Soviet re-

lations. Newly declassiﬁ ed documents show, however,

that Dulles was actually trying to help the Japanese

negotiators by oﬀ ering them American-backed lever-

age against the Soviet Union. Contrary to many schol-

arly criticisms, the United States government’s policy

on the Kuril Island dispute has been consistent in stat-

ing that in the absence of an oﬃ cial peace treaty, the

disputed islands remain Japanese territory.

 e Russian View

apan and Russia made some progress in negotiating

the Kuril problem during the Yeltsin era. During the

1990s, the Kremlin seemed ready to recognize Japan’s

territorial claims to the islands of Iturup, Kunashiri,

Shikotan, and Habomai and cede them to Japan, as

documented by several intergovernmental documents.

 ese texts include the Tokyo and Moscow declara-

tions of 1993 and 1998 and the “Agreement on coop-

eration in ﬁ shing for living marine resources” signed

also in 1998.  ese documents expressed both coun-

tries’ willingness to conclude a peace treaty in 2000

and to “…enter the 21st century as trustworthy and

eﬃ cient partners.” However, under Putin, the Krem-

lin was ﬁ rm in asserting Russian sovereignty over the

islands and the problem remains unresolved.

 e Soviet Union’s position rejecting Japan’s ter-

ritorial claims to the southern Kuril Islands was ﬁ rm

and based on “corresponding international agree-

ments”.  ese islands constitute more than 50 percent

of the land surface of the whole archipelago and in-

clude the two largest islands, Iturup and Kunashiri.

 e Soviet view was last oﬃ cially expressed in 1989.

 e major points of the Soviet position were that:

a)  e USSR holds the exclusive right to develop the

southern Kurils;

b) When these islands were part of Japan, they were

used as a springboard for aggression toward neigh-

boring countries, in particular to attack Pearl

Harbor in 1941 and Soviet civilian ships during

World War II, when a neutrality pact between

Russia and Japan was in force;

c) Japan was an aggressor state in World War II. It

was deprived of a part of its territory, including

all Kuril Islands, as punishment by the winning

countries, for its aggression against many nations.

d) Revising these international arrangements is tanta-

mount to questioning the results of World War II.

e)  e Soviet Union demonstrated its intention to

promote cooperation on the basis of equality and

mutual beneﬁ ts as well as to “secure post-war bor-

derlines between Russia and Japan.”

 e problem seemed to be closed as Japan, by sign-

ing a variety of agreements, de facto recognized the

Russian occupation of the four islands. However the

general weakening of the state in the late Soviet period

and internal frictions between Gorbachev and Yeltsin

in their race for power made Soviet foreign policy

and the “Kurils issue,” in particular, a weapon of this

struggle.

Fig 1. Map of Kuril Claims

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During the ﬁ nal days of the Soviet Union, Yeltsin’s

allies began to speak in support of a proposal to cede,

or to sell, the islands to Japan at the cost of US $20–

50 billion. During his visit to Japan in 1990, Yeltsin

proposed a “ﬁ ve-staged program for settling territorial

claims”.  e plan consisted of:

1) oﬃ cially recognizing the “Kuril problem”,

2) demilitarizing the islands,

3) declaring the territory a zone of free enterprise,

4) signing a peace treaty and establishing “uniﬁ ed

management” over the islands, and

5) a complete overview of the Kuril issue by a future

generation of politicians.

During his presidency, Yeltsin never removed his

ﬁ ve-point plan from the governmental agenda, but, at

the same time, he never made it public at the oﬃ cial

level. Nevertheless, this plan might have been, and

still may be, a “secret” foundation for the Kremlin’s

policy toward the Kurils. Besides, these islands were

never mentioned as a part of Russian territory, which

was seen by many Russian specialists as absolutely in-

admissible in such documents.

 e Yeltsin-era Tokyo and Moscow Declarations

both recognize the claim of Japan to the four islands.

 e Joint Soviet-Japanese Declaration of 1956, to

which Tokyo regularly refers as the basis for its bi-

lateral relationship, talks about a probable transfer of

Habomai and Shikotan, the two smaller islands, and

does not mention the larger islands of Kunashiri and

Iturup.  is transfer would take place only after the

signing of a peace treaty.

Unlike similar documents of the past, neither the

Tokyo nor Moscow Declarations have been ratiﬁ ed as

intergovernmental agreements by the Russian parlia-

ment. Some have speculated that Yeltsin’s administra-

tion did not submit these documents for ratiﬁ cation

because it was aware of their disadvantageous content

for Russia, leading to their ultimate rejection by the

legislators.

Even though Yeltsin’s ﬁ ve-stage plan was never

oﬃ cially approved, key components of it have been

implemented.  us, the ﬁ rst stage, recognition of the

problem, was accomplished quickly and without any

serious problems in 1994–1996.

 e second stage, demilitarization of the islands,

was implemented with no less success. As a result, there

are only frontier posts and small naval units based on

the Kurils at present. However, Russians claim that

the Japanese armed forces in Hokkaido have increased

in number and strengthened their combat capabilities

due to additional state-of-the-art armament.

Japan interpreted the Russian military drawdown

in the 1990s as a sign of Russia’s weakness and exerted

unprecedented pressure on this part of Russia’s terri-

tory by authorizing Japanese ﬁ shing boats to operate

in Russia’s 200 mile Exclusive Economic Zone around

the southern Kurils. As a result, the number of ﬁ shing

violations grew to ten thousand. Under these circum-

stances, the then-commander of the Federal Frontier

Troops General A. Nikolayev received permission to

use force to protect Russian waters, including ﬁ ring

at Japanese ships.

 e subsequent confrontation threatened Yeltsin’s

entire plan. Prompt diplomatic arrangements were

made and negotiations to allow Japanese boats to ﬁ sh

in Russia’s territorial waters were held between the

two countries.

 e third stage, encouraging free enterprise, was

implemented by allowing Japanese citizens to visit the

Kurils without a visa, negotiation of the ﬁ shery agree-

ment in 1998, Japan’s humanitarian aid to inhabitants

of the islands, and an appeal by Russian authorities to

Japanese business circles to invest in the region.

 e fourth stage of the plan, signing a peace trea-

ty, has yet to be achieved. In 1999, Yeltsin’s team re-

jected the idea of signing a peace treaty for the ﬁ rst

time, even though this idea had been proclaimed in

the 1993 and 1998 Declarations.  is treaty was to

deﬁ ne comprehensive approaches for future Russian-

Japanese cooperation in all areas including “the issue

of a boundary solution”.

Unfortunately, Putin has made no progress in

signing a treaty. His attitude toward Japan’s territorial

claims is clearly expressed in his repeated statements

about the integrity of Russia’s territory and especially

in his statement in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk on September

3, 1999: “Does anyone say that the government plans

to cede the Kurils? We negotiate, we acknowledge the

problem, but transfer of the Kurils is out of the ques-

tion”. With neither side willing to make territorial

concessions, the situation is stalemated.

About the author:

Vlad M. Kaczynski is Associate Professor at the School of Marine Aﬀ airs and Aﬃ liate Associate Professor of the Ellison Center

for Russian, East European and Central Asia Studies, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, United States. Currently he is a

Visiting Fulbright Professor at the Warsaw School of Economics, Poland.