World War II, continued

last updated 8 January 2015

Kuriles, Russia

Japan this week demanded that Russia return four islands that it occupied at the end of World War II. The rocky islands, which Russia calls the Southern Kuriles and Japan calls the Northern Territories, had been under Japanese control for more than a century when the Allies promised them to the Soviet Union at the 1945 Yalta peace conference. The Soviets occupied the islands the following year, and kicked out the few thousand Japanese who lived there; today the Kuriles are home to some 15,000 Russian citizens. Japan and the Soviet Union never concluded a formal peace treaty after World War II because of the dispute, and this week, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said that his country would not sign a trade agreement with Russia until the islands were returned.