anopther place china should go claim back:
Sakhalin was inhabited in the Neolithic Stone Age. Flint
implements, like those found in Siberia, have been found at Dui and
Kusunai in great numbers, as
well as polished stone hatchets, like European examples, primitive
pottery with decorations like those of the Olonets, and stone weights for
nets. Afterwards a population to whom bronze was known left traces
in earthen walls and kitchen-middens on the Aniva Bay.
Among the indigenous people of Sakhalin
are the Ainu on the southern half, the
Oroks in the central region, and the Nivkhs on the northern
part.[4]
Chinese chronicled the Xianbei and
Hezhe tribes, who had a way of
life based on fishing.
The Mongol Empire made some efforts
to subjugate the native people of Sakhalin starting in about 1264
CE. According to Yuanshi, the official history
of the Yuan
Dynasty, the Mongols militarily subdued the
Guwei (骨嵬, Gǔwéi), and by 1308, all inhabitants
of Sakhalin had surrendered to the Mongols.[5]
The Nivkhs and the Oroks were subjugated earlier,
whereas the Ainu
people submitted to the Mongols later.[citation
needed] Following their
subjugation, Gǔwéi elders made tributary visits to Yuan
posts located at Wuleihe, Nanghar, and Boluohe, until the end of
the Mongol Yuan Dynasty in China (1368). In the early Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), the
tributary relationship was re-established. Following the
introduction of Chinese political and commercial institutions in
the Amur region, by the middle of the 15th century the Sakhalin Ainu were making
frequent tributary visits to Chinese-controlled
outposts.[5]
The Chinese in the Ming Dynasty knew the island as Kuyi or Kuwu
(Chinese: 苦兀; pinyin: Kǔwù), and
later (and at present) as Kuye (Chinese: 庫頁; pinyin: Kùyè). There
is some evidence that the Ming eunuch admiral Yishiha reached Sakhalin in
1413 during one of his expeditions to the lower Amur, and granted Ming titles
to a local chieftain.[6]
Under the Ming Dynasty, commerce in Northeast Asia and Sakhalin was
placed under the "system for subjugated peoples", or ximin
tizhi. These suggest that the island was at least nominally
included under the administration of the Nurgan Regional Military
Commission which was set up by Yishiha near
today's village of Tyr on the Siberian mainland in
1411, and operated until the mid-1430s.[6]
A Ming boundary stone still exists on the island.[citation
needed]
According to Wei
Yuan's work Military history of the Qing
Dynasty (Chinese: 聖武記; pinyin: Shèngwǔ Jì),
the Later
Jin sent 400 troops to Sakhalin in 1616, after a
newfound interest because of northern Japanese contacts with the
area, but later withdrew as it was considered there was no threat
from the island.
A Japanese settlement in the southern end of Sakhalin of
Ootomari was established in 1679 in a colonization attempt.
Cartographers of the Matsumae clan created a map of
the island and called it "Kita-Ezo" (Northern Ezo, Ezo being the old name for the
islands north of Honshu). The 1689 Nerchinsk Treaty between Russia
and China, which defined the Stanovoy Mountains as the
border, made no explicit mention of the island. Yet, the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912) did
consider the island as part of its territory. Policies of the Qing
Dynasty followed a similar pattern to the previous Ming Dynasty, which drew
Sakhalin peoples further into the "system for subjugated peoples".
Local people were forced to pay tribute at Qing posts, and Qing
officials granted some titles to local elders and entrusted them
with the task of "keeping the peace". By the mid-18th century, Qing
officials had registered 56 surname groups; of these, Qing sources
note that six clans and 148 households were those of Ainu and Nivkh
who came under the Qing administrative umbrella on
Sakhalin.[7]
However, as the Chinese governments did not have a military
presence on the island, people from Japan attempted to colonise the
island.
The first European known to visit Sakhalin was Martin Gerritz de Vries, who
mapped Cape
Patience and Cape
Aniva on the island's east coast in 1643. The
Dutch captain, however, was not aware of their being on an island,
and 17th century maps usually showed these points—and often
Hokkaido, too—as parts of the mainland.
As part of a nationwide Sino-French cartographic program, the
Jesuits Jean-Baptiste Régis, Pierre
Jartoux, and Xavier Ehrenbert Fridelli
joined a Chinese team visiting the lower Amur (known to them under its
Manchu name, Saghalien Ula,
i.e. the "Black River"), in 1709,[8]
and learned from the "Ke tcheng" natives of the lower Amur about
the existence of the offshore island nearby. The Jesuits learned
that the islanders were said to have been good at reindeer husbandry. They
reported that the mainlanders used a variety of names to refer to
the island, but Saghalien anga bata, i.e. "the Island [at]
the mouth of the Black River" was the most common one, meanwhile
the name "Huye" (presumably, "Kuye", 庫頁) they had heard in Beijing
was completely unknown to the locals.[9]
The Jesuits, however, did not have a chance to visit the island
personally, and the inadequate information about its geography
provided by the Ke tcheng people and the Manchus who had
been to the island would not allow them to identify it with the
land visited by de Vries in 1643. As a result, many 17th century
maps showed a rather strangely shaped Sakhalin, which included only
the northern half of the island (with Cape Patience), while Cape
Aniva discovered by de Vries and the "Black Cape" (Cape Crillon) were thought to
be part of the mainland.
It was not until the expedition of Jean-François de La Pérouse
(1787), who charted most of the Strait of Tartary, but was not
able to pass through its northern "bottleneck" due to
contrary winds, that the island on European maps assumed a form
similar to what is familiar to modern readers. A few islanders La
Perouse met near what is today called the Strait of Nevelskoy told him
that the island is called "Tchoka" (or at least that is how he
recorded the name in French), and it was used on some maps
thereafter.[10]
The Russian explorer Adam Johann von Krusenstern
visited Sakhalin in 1805, but regarded it as a peninsula.
Alarmed by the visits of European powers, Japan proclaimed its
sovereignty over the whole island in 1807. The Japanese say that it
was Mamiya Rinzō who
really discovered the Strait of Tartary in 1809.
On the basis of its being an extension of Hokkaidō,
geographically and culturally, Japan again proclaimed sovereignty
over the whole island in 1845, as well as the Kuril Islands, as there were
competing claims from Russia. However, the Russian navigator
Gennady Nevelskoy in 1849
recorded the existence and navigability of this strait and — in
defiance of the Qing and Japanese claims — Russian settlers
established coal mines, administration facilities, schools,
prisons, and churches on the island. Japan proclaimed its
sovereignty over Sakhalin (which they called Karafuto) yet again in 1865 and
the government built a stele announcing this at the
northern extremity of the island.
In 1855, Russia and Japan signed the Treaty of Shimoda, which
declared that both nationals could inhabit the island: Russians in
the north, and Japanese in the south, without a clear boundary
between. Russia also agreed to dismantle its military base at
Ootomari. Following the Opium
War, Russia forced China to sign the Treaty
of Aigun (1858) and Convention of Peking (1860),
under which China lost to Russia all claims to all territories
north of Heilongjiang (Amur) and east of Ussuri, including Sakhalin. A
katorga (penal colony) was established
by Russia on Sakhalin in 1857, but the southern part of the island
was held by the Japanese until the 1875 Treaty of Saint Petersburg
(1875), when they ceded it to Russia in exchange
for the Kuril Islands.
After the Russo-Japanese War, Russia and
Japan signed the Treaty of Portsmouth of 1905,
which saw the southern part of the island below 50th parallel north reverting
to Japan; Russia retained the other three-fifths of the area.
During the Siberian Intervention, Japan
briefly held the northern part of the island from 1920 to 1925.
South Sakhalin was administrated by Japan as Karafuto Prefecture
(Karafuto-chō (樺太庁?)), with the capital
Toyohara, today's Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, and had a
large number of migrants from Korea.
The northern, Russian, half of the island formed Sakhalin Oblast, with the
capital in Aleksandrovsk-Sakhalinsky.
In August 1945, according to Yalta Conference agreements,
the Soviet
Union took over the control of Sakhalin. The
Soviet attack on South Sakhalin was part of the Manchurian Strategic Offensive
Operation and started on 11 August 1945, after
the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and four days before
the Surrender of Japan. The 56th
Rifle Corps consisting of the 79th Rifle Division, the 2nd Rifle
Brigade, the 5th Rifle Brigade and the 214 Armored Brigade attacked
the Japanese 88th Division. Although the Red Army outnumbered the
Japanese by a factor of three, they were unable to advance due to
strong Japanese resistance.
It was not until the 113th Rifle Brigade and the 365th
Independent Naval Infantry Rifle Battalion from Sovetskaya Gavan landed on 16
August at Tōro (塔路?) — a seashore village of
western Sakhalin — that the Soviets broke the Japanese defence
line. Japanese resistance grew weaker after this landing. Actual
fighting, mostly skirmishes, continued until 21 August. From 22
August to 23 August, most of the remaining Japanese units announced
a truce. The Soviets completed the conquest of Sakhalin on 25
August 1945 by occupying the capital, Toyohara. Japanese sources
claim that 20,000 civilians were killed during the
invasion.[citation
needed]
Out of some 448,000 Japanese residents of South Sakhalin who
lived there in 1944, a significant number were evacuated to Japan during the
last days of the war, but the remaining 300,000 or so stayed behind
for several more years.[11]
While the predominant majority of Sakhalin Japanese were eventually
evacuated to Japan in 1946–1950, tens of thousands of Sakhalin Koreans (and a number
of their Japanese spouses) remained in the Soviet Union.[12][13]
No final peace treaty has been signed and the status of four
neighboring islands remains disputed. Japan renounced its claims of
sovereignty over southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands in the
Treaty of San Francisco (1951),
but claims that four islands currently administered by Russia were
not subject to this renunciation. Japan has granted mutual exchange
visas for Japanese and Ainu families divided by the change in
status. Recently, economic and political cooperation has gradually
improved between the two nations despite disagreements.[citation
needed]
