The Washington Post - USA (2022-04-01)

A8 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.FRIDAY, APRIL 1 , 2022

The World

CHINA

Search concludes at

site of airliner crash

Chinese officials said Thursday
that the search for wreckage in last
week’s crash of a China Eastern
Boeing 737-800 is basically done
and that more than 49,000 pieces
of debris had been found.
Flight 5735 plunged from
29,000 feet into a mountainside in
southern China’s Guangxi region
on March 21, killing all 132 people
aboard. The impact created a
6 5-foot-deep crater, set off a fire in
the surrounding forest and
smashed the plane into small
parts scattered over a wide area.

China’s director of aviation

safety said at a news conference in

the nearby city of Wuzhou that

important parts, including the

horizontal stabilizer and the

engine, had been recovered after

nearly 10 days of searching,

according to the official Xinhua

News Agency.

More than 800,000 cubic feet of

soil was excavated and 49,

pieces of the plane were found,

said a n official with the Guangxi

government.

The plane’s two “black boxes” —

the flight data recorder and the

cockpit voice recorder — have

been found and sent to Beijing for

examination and analysis.

— Associated Press

WEST BANK

2 killed in firefight as

Israel raids Jenin camp

Israeli forces raided a refugee

camp in the occupied West Bank

on Thursday, setting off a gun

battle in which two Palestinians

were killed and 15 wounded, as

Israel targeted what it said were

militant networks in the wake of

deadly attacks.

In a separate incident, a

Palestinian stabbed a 28-year-old

Israeli man on a bus in the West

Bank before being killed by a

bystander, the military said. The

Magen David Adom emergency

service said the stabbing victim

was taken to a hospital.

The raid at the Jenin camp

came two days after a Palestinian

from a nearby village fatally shot

five people in central Israel, part of

a wave of attacks in recent days

that have killed 11 people.

The Israeli military said troops

came under fire after entering the

camp to arrest three suspects

linked to Tuesday’s attack. It said

one soldier was wounded. The

army said it has arrested 31

suspects in recent West Bank raids.

— Associated Press

Kenya’s top court blocks leader’s

plan to overhaul constitution:

Kenya’s top court stopped

President Uhuru Kenyatta’s bid to

make broad constitutional

changes that opponents say were

an effort to widen the presidency’s

powers and that had dominated

early campaigning for an election

in August. The Supreme Court,

whose ruling is final, upheld a

finding by lower courts that

Kenyatta initiated the changes

through a constitutional provision

exclusively reserved for citizens,

not executive leaders.

Ambush on militia in Ethiopia’s

Oromia region kills 26: Gunmen

suspected to be from Ethiopia’s

Amhara region killed 26 people

and injured 15 in an ambush on a

vehicle carrying militia members

in neighboring Oromia, officials

said. Ethiopia has struggled to

contain violence in its ethnically

based regions in recent years. The

Oromo are Ethiopia’s largest

group and the Amhara its second.

Attacks on both sides of their

border occur frequently, mainly

over land.

S. Korean court upholds ban on

tattooing: The Constitutional

Court in Seoul upheld a ban on

tattooing, confirming South Korea

as the only developed country that

permits no one but medical

professionals to perform the

procedure. Violations can bring

fines of up to 50 million won

($41,300) and prison terms.

— From news services

DIGEST

of the Russian fishermen who do

business in Nemuro.

Here, Russia’s announcement

of its withdrawal from the negoti-

ations carries consequences. It

prevents the former residents

from visiting the gravesites of

relatives on the islands. It also

ends cultural visits to the islands’

Russian residents by Japanese

hoping that the two populations

could one day coexist if the dis-

pute were ever resolved.

“It is extremely unfair and

unacceptable, undermining the

efforts of the residents of both

countries who have been working

hard to promote an exchange,”

Hokkaido Gov. Naomichi Suzuki

said in response to Russia’s an-

nouncement.

With Russia considering shut-

ting down its economic agree-

ment with Japan, the fishing

industry is also on edge, because

it relies on the waters between

Japan and Russia — considered

one of the best places on the

planet for fishing, where 3 mil-

lion tons of fish and other seafood

are caught annually.

Fewer than 5,500 former resi-

dents of the Northern Territories

are still alive. They are clear-eyed

about what Japan’s tougher re-

sponse to Russia’s invasion of

Ukraine means for the future of

the negotiations over the islands,

but some still support Japan’s

standing up to Russia. At the

museum in Nemuro dedicated to

the islands dispute, residents and

visitors left messages bashing

Russian President Vladimir Putin

and expressing solidarity with

Ukraine.

Some residents said they hope

to see Prime Minister Kishida

take a tougher approach with

Russia to resolve the Northern

Territories dispute.

“What Russia is doing in

Ukraine, trying to change the

status quo by force, can never be

justified,” said Yasuji Tsunoka, 84,

who was 8 when Soviet forces

took over the tiny island of Yuri, a

part of the cluster of Habomai

islets that had 70 homes.

“Kishida made strong sanc-

tions, and we understand this.

But we want now, more than ever,

for negotiations to be direct and

strong, without trying to con-

stantly be sensitive of Russia,” he

said. “The situation in Ukraine is

once again an issue of territory,

just like the northern islands

with Japan.”

After the Soviets took over the

islands, some Japanese families

remained for a few years, living

alongside the Soviet families that

moved there. Tokuno recalled at-

tending school with Soviet chil-

dren, and his experience was

later turned into an animated

children’s film called “Giovanni’s

Island.”

But, eventually, to make room

for Soviets, Japanese residents

were displaced from their homes

and pushed into sheds and horse

stables. By October 1947, all Japa-

nese remaining in the Northern

Territories were taken off the

islands in Soviet ships. That

group included Tokuno, who re-

called that they first withstood

grueling conditions on Sakhalin

before making it to Nemuro.

Some died on the journey.

It wasn’t until 1964 that Russia

and Japan agreed to allow limited

numbers of humanitarian trips to

the islands so that former resi-

dents could visit relatives’ burial

sites.

The former residents said they

hope future Japanese genera-

tions, as well as U.S. leaders, will

take up the fight.

“We will continue sharing the

movement with the next genera-

tion to keep it going for as long as

it takes,” Tsunoka said. “Japan

must never stop.”

BY MICHELLE YE HEE LEE

AND JULIA MIO INUMA

nemuro, japan — Soviet sol-
diers barged into Hirotoshi Ka-
wata’s home on Sept. 4, 1945,
searching for hidden Japanese
soldiers and valuables. Kawata,
then 11, remembers understand-
ing only two words they said:
tokei, or wristwatch; and sake,
which they went on to loot from
the home.
It was the beginning of the
Soviet takeover of a resource-rich
chain of islands in northern Ja-
pan, to the terror of families who
had thought the worst of World
War II was over after Japan’s
surrender. Japanese were soon
forbidden to work or move freely,
and women and children were
detained for forced labor.
Many families fled on boats in
the middle of the night, rowing
until they were far enough from
the coast to turn on their engines.
Kawata’s family was among thou-
sands displaced during that time.
“All these years later, I still
can’t forget everything I saw right
before my eyes,” said Kawata, 87.
Now, “seeing the Ukrainians ... it
just hits so close to home. It
doesn’t seem like something hap-
pening in the distance.”
Thousands of miles from
Ukraine, in this city in the far
northeast of Japan where many
of the roughly 17,200 former resi-
dents of the Northern Territories
resettled, the Russian invasion
and the plight of millions of
Ukrainian refugees resonate
deeply.
For these former residents,
whose average age is nearly 87,
the war has crushed their hopes
of ever seeing their homeland
again, after Russia broke off ne-
gotiations over the islands in
response to Japan’s sanctions on
Russia for invading Ukraine.
“The only ones left to tell these
stories are just the recollections
of some fifth-graders. The rest
have all passed away unable to
share their stories,” said Hiroshi
Tokuno, 88, who fled Shikotan
island at age 13.
For years under Prime Minis-
ter Shinzo Abe, Japan sought to
improve relations with Russia
and prioritize a peace treaty and
territorial settlement in an effort
to make Moscow a strategic part-
ner and keep it from drawing
closer to China. When Russia
annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Pen-
insula i n 2014, concern over ne-
gotiations for the islands shaped
Abe’s tepid response.
But in a dramatic turn away
from its years of pursuing a
Russian rapprochement, Japan,
under Prime Minister Fumio
Kishida, has imposed wide-
reaching economic sanctions
over the invasion. Although nego-
tiations over the northern islands

had stalled since 2020, Moscow

said last week that it had no

intention of returning to talks

and planned to end visa-free trips

by Japanese citizens to the is-

lands. It also threatened to with-

draw from joint economic proj-

ects there.

What Japan calls the Northern

Territories, the islands of Ku-

nashiri, Etorofu, Habomai and

Shikotan, lie off the coast of

Hokkaido, and some are visible

from Nemuro on a clear day. They

were part of Japan before World

War II, but soon after its surren-

der in August 1945, the Soviet

Union claimed the islands, which

it called the Kuril Islands.

These volcanic islands south-

east of Russia’s Sakhalin island

separate the Sea of Okhotsk and

the Pacific Ocean and are at the

heart of postwar Russo-Japanese

relations. The two countries

made a joint declaration in 1956

ending the state of war between

them but have not signed a peace

treaty. That has been awaiting a

resolution of the dispute over the

islands.

From Japan’s perspective, the

Soviet seizure of the islands was a

betrayal, because Japan had al-

ready surrendered and the

i slands had been Japanese

t erritory since the first treaty

between the Russian Empire and

the Empire of Japan in 1855, said

James Brown, an expert in

R usso-Japanese relations at Tem-

ple University’s campus in Tokyo.

For Russia, the islands are its

rightful territories, obtained in

exchange for joining the United

States against Japan in World

War II. Giving up the islands

would be considered a betrayal of

Soviet soldiers and citizens and

Russia’s World War II legacy,

Brown said. The islands are also

of strategic interest to Russia,

because they make it easier for

Moscow to get its ships into the

Pacific Ocean from the Sea of

Okhotsk, and have valuable natu-

ral resources, including a rare-

earth metal used in aerospace

construction.

Tokyo and Moscow have held

peace negotiations on and off

since the 1956 declaration, but

there has not been any significant

movement. Japan has quarrels

with China and South Korea over

largely uninhabited islands, but

the scale of the dispute with

Russia is different: The islands

are bigger (Etorofu is nearly

2,000 square miles) and thou-

sands of people’s lives are directly

affected.

In Nemuro, it’s hard to travel a

few blocks without seeing a

h uge statue or sign demanding

i n uncharacteristically forceful

Japanese: “The Northern Territo-

ries, give it back!” Road signs and

street names are written in Japa-

nese and Russian, for the benefit

For these elderly

Japanese, ‘seeing

the Ukrainians ...

it just hits so

c lose to home’

JULIA MIO INUMA FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

MICHELLE YE HEE LEE/THE WASHINGTON POST

TOP: In Nemuro, where many who fled the islands resettled, a sign reads: “Give it back! The

Northern Territories.” MIDDLE: Hiroshi Tokuno, 88, points to the part of Shikotan island

where he lived until he was 13. ABOVE: A photo of Tokuno and his siblings on Shikotan. “The

only ones left to tell these stories are just the recollections of some fifth-graders,” he said.

After Tokyo’s

surrender in WWII,

Soviet troops took over

a Japanese chain of

islands called the

Northern Territories.

Many residents f led.

Today, those surviving

still yearn for home —

and feel deeply for

those fleeing Russia’s

MICHELLE YE HEE LEE/THE WASHINGTON POST war in Ukraine.