Islands’ fate on the table at Moscow-Tokyo talks
THE house where Hirotoshi Kawata spent his boyhood, until his family fled Soviet troops in 1945, is no longer standing. But the 84-year-old is so desperate to return to Taraku, one of the Habomai Islands off the northern tip of Japan, that he says he is willing to live rough in a tent just so he can go “home”.
Mr Kawata, along with surviving islanders and descendants of the 17,300 Japanese who were evicted from Japan’s Northern Territories after Japan’s surrender in 1945, is pinning his hopes on a meeting that is scheduled for Tuesday afternoon in Moscow between Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister, and Vladimir Putin, his Russian counterpart.
The two leaders will discuss the future of the islands, which Moscow refers to as the Southern Kurils, as well as economic cooperation. Tokyo has proposed that the Habomai archipelago and Shikotan be returned to Japanese control and that the two governments move forward on joint development of the remaining two disputed islands, Etorofu and Kunashiri.
The diplomatic row has soured relations since 1945 to the point that the two governments have never signed a peace treaty to formally end the Second World War. Both sides profess to be keen to move toward just such a treaty, but public opinion in Russia may force Mr Putin to stop short of handing over territory.
Mr Kawata insists the territory is Japanese and that Russia is illegally occupying the islands.
“I was 11 years old when the Soviet troops came and I remember them shooting at people,” he said. “When that began to happen, people started to get aboard fishing boats in secret and leave for the Japanese mainland.”
Mr Kawata’s family were fishermen and stayed longer than most of Taraku’s 1,457 residents, but eventually found life too difficult. Even after moving to Hokkaido, the family always assumed they would go back. Seventy-four years later, Mr Kawata still clings to that hope.
“I was shocked and saddened when I visited in 1989 because there was nothing left from when I was a boy,” he said.
However, Russia has accused Japan of “grossly distorting” a preliminary agreement reached in November, with the Japanese ambassador to Moscow summoned by Igor Morgulov, the deputy foreign minister, and told that Russia believed Tokyo was “attempting to artificially stir up the atmosphere surrounding the islands”. Moscow is apparently displeased at comments by Mr Abe that there will be a breakthrough.
“I expect Putin to be more of a ‘good cop’ than his ministers,” said James Brown, an associate professor at the Japan campus of Temple University.
But, he added: “I’ve never been completely convinced that Russia was really willing to do a deal.”