The Soviet leaders traditionally saw their occupation of the Northern Territories as legitimized, among other things, by the 1944 Yalta agreement between the USSR and three Western powers.

The Soviet Union apparently took the U.S.— Japanese political-military alliance quite seriously—probably more seriously than we might imagine. The Soviet Union’s reluctance to return the Northern Territories to Japan, even at the expense of the bilateral relationship, is ascribable to the global confrontation between the USSR and the United States.

It was the USSR that was first to drop the idea to gain Japanese recognition of its rights over the territories renounced by Japan at San Francisco, and to propose the transfer of Shikotan and Habomai, precisely in line with what was advocated by the Japanese representative at the time of the signing of the San Francisco treaty, i.e., recognition of Kunashiri and Etorofu as a part of the Kuriles renounced by Japan, but strong insistence on Habomai and Shikotan being part of Hokkaido, and therefore referred to at that time as the Northern Territories (hoppo ryodo) separate from North and South Chishima.

(1) The Northern Territories consists of four islands located off the northeast coast of the Nemuro Peninsula of Hokkaido. They are: Habomai, Shikotan, Kunashiri and Etorofu.

The islands, called the Northern Territories in Japan and the Southern Kuriles in Russia, were seized by Soviet forces at the end of World War Two, when 17,000 Japanese residents were forced to flee.

Northern territories

Meaning

Name