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Soviet documents reveal Moscow's view on territory seized from Japan at end of WWII
By Kyodo News, Jun 2, 2019
Jun 3, 2019 - 11:49:06 AM

MOSCOW - Top Soviet officials were aware that a lack of reference in the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty to the sovereignty of islands seized from Japan in the closing days of World War II could be exploited in postwar negotiations with Tokyo, declassified documents obtained by Kyodo News showed Sunday.

Under the treaty signed by Japan and 48 other nations, Tokyo gave up territories it had seized, such as Taiwan, the Korean Peninsula and southern Sakhalin. The Soviet Union did not sign the treaty, implemented in 1952 to end the Allied postwar occupation of Japan.

The documents, which refer to the Communist Party’s strategies for negotiations launched in June 1955 with Japan, showed that Moscow decided to demand Tokyo’s recognition of Soviet sovereignty over the seized islands, which are still at the heart of the current Japan-Russia talks toward a peace treaty, because the San Francisco treaty did not back Moscow’s territorial claim.

The joint declaration signed by Japan and Russia in 1956 ended the state of war, but a peace treaty has not yet been signed.

Russia has continued to demand that Japan accept the outcome of the war and recognize Russia’s sovereignty over the islands off Hokkaido, called the Northern Territories in Japan and Southern Kurils in Russia.

Japan maintains that the islands have been illegally occupied by Russia after the Soviet Union seized them following Tokyo’s surrender in the war in 1945.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed in November to step up talks on the basis of the 1956 declaration that mentions the transfer of the smaller two of the four islands following the conclusion of a peace treaty, but little progress has been made since.