Kuril Islands

• 1. Volcanic Ring Of Fire

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  The Kuril Islands form part of the ring of tectonic instability encircling the Pacific Ocean referred to as the Ring of Fire. The islands themselves are summits of stratovolcanoes that are a direct result of the subduction of the Pacific Plate under the Okhotsk Plate, which forms the Kuril Trench some 80 kilometers east of the islands. The chain has around 100 volcanoes, some 40 of which are active, and many hot springs and fumaroles. There is frequent seismic activity, including a magnitude 8.5 earthquake in 1963 and one of magnitude 8.3 recorded on the 15th of November 2006, which resulted in tsunami waves up to 1 meter reaching the California coast. Raikoke Island, near the centre of the archipelago, has an active volcano which erupted again in June 2019, with emissions reaching 10 kilometers high. The northernmost, Atlasov Island, is an almost-perfect volcanic cone rising sheer out of the sea. It has been praised by the Japanese in haiku, wood-block prints, and other forms, in much the same way as the better-known Mount Fuji. Its summit is the highest point in Sakhalin Oblast.

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• 2. Ainu Presence And Early Voyages

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  The Ainu people inhabited the Kuril Islands from early times, although few records predate the 17th century. From the Kamakura period to the Muromachi period, there were Ezo (Ainu) people called Hinomoto from the Pacific coast of Hokkaido to the Kuril region. A Dutch expedition under Maarten Gerritsz Vries explored the islands in 1643. Russian Cossacks landed on Shumshu in 1711. American whaleships caught right whales off the islands between 1847 and 1892. Three such ships were wrecked on the islands: two on Urup in 1855 and one on Makanrushi in 1856. In September 1892, north of Kunashir Island, a Russian schooner seized the bark Cape Horn Pigeon, of New Bedford, and escorted it to Vladivostok, where it was detained for nearly two weeks. The name Kuril originates from the autonym that the Indigenous Ainu had used for the islands, kur, meaning 'man'. Once Russians had discovered the islands in the 18th century, they derived a name for islands from the Russian word 'to smoke' due to the perpetual volcanic plumes emitting from the islands' volcanoes resembling smoke.

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• 3. Japanese Control And War Strategy

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  At the very end of the 19th century, the Japanese administration started the forced assimilation of the native Ainu people. Also at this time the Ainu were granted automatic Japanese citizenship, effectively denying them the status of an indigenous group. Many Japanese moved onto former Ainu lands, including the Kuril islands. The Ainu were required to adopt Japanese names, and ordered to cease religious practices such as animal sacrifice and the custom of tattooing. Prior to Japanese colonization (in 1868) about 100 Ainu reportedly lived on the Kuril islands. In 1941 Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto ordered the assembly of the Imperial Japanese Navy strike-force for the Hawaii Operation attack on Pearl Harbor in Tankan or Hitokappu Bay, Iturup Island, South Kurils. The territory was chosen for its sparse population, lack of foreigners, and constant fog-coverage. The Admiral ordered the move to Hawaii on the morning of the 26th of November. On the 10th of July 1943 the first bombardment against the Japanese bases in Shumshu and Paramushir by American forces occurred. From Alexai airfield 8 North American B-25 Mitchells from the 77th Bombardment Squadron took off, led by Capt James L. Hudelson.

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• 4. Soviet Takeover And Dispute

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  Between the 18th of August and the 31st of August 1945 Soviet forces invaded the North and South Kurils. The Soviets expelled the entire Japanese civilian population of roughly 17,000 by 1946. Between the 24th of August and the 4th of September 1945 the Eleventh Air Force of the United States Army Air Forces sent two B-24s on reconnaissance missions over the North Kuril Islands with the intention of taking photos of the Soviet occupation in the area. Soviet fighters intercepted and forced them away. In February 1945 the Yalta Agreement promised to the Soviet Union South Sakhalin and the Kuril islands in return for entering the Pacific War against the Japanese during World War II. Japan maintains a claim to the three islands of Kunashir, Iturup, and Shikotan, and the Habomai Islands, together called the Northern Territories. On the 8th of February 2017 the Russian government gave names to five previously unnamed Kuril islands in Sakhalin Oblast: Derevyanko Island, Gnechko Island, Gromyko Island, Farkhutdinov Island and Shchetinina Island.

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• 5. Marine Life And Ecosystems

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  Owing to their location along the Pacific shelf edge and the confluence of Okhotsk Sea gyre and the southward Oyashio Current, the Kuril islands are surrounded by waters that are among the most productive in the North Pacific, supporting a wide range and high abundance of marine life. Extensive kelp beds surrounding almost every island provide crucial habitat for sea urchins, various mollusks and countless other invertebrates and their associated predators. Further offshore, walleye pollock, Pacific cod, several species of flatfish are of the greatest commercial importance. During the 1980s, migratory Japanese sardine was one of the most abundant fish in the summer. The main pinnipeds were a significant object of harvest for the indigenous populations of the Kuril islands, both for food and materials such as skin and bone. In historical times, fur seals were heavily exploited for their fur in the 19th and early 20th centuries and several of the largest reproductive rookeries, as on Raykoke island, were extirpated. Since the 1960s there has been essentially no additional harvest and the pinniped populations in the Kuril islands appear to be fairly healthy and in some cases expanding.

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• 6. Modern Population And Economy

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  In 2010, 19,400 people inhabited the Kuril Islands, of which 16,700 lived on the four disputed southern islands and 2,600 lived on Paramushir, the northernmost large island; the islands in between are uninhabited. These include ethnic Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Tatars, Nivkhs, Oroch, Japanese and Ainus. Russian Orthodox Christianity is the main religion. Some of the villages are permanently occupied by Russian soldiers. Others are inhabited by civilians, who are mostly fishermen, workers in fish factories, dockers, and social sphere workers (police, medics, teachers, etc.). Fishing is the primary occupation. The islands have strategic and economic value, in terms of fisheries and also mineral deposits of pyrite, sulfur, and various polymetallic ores. In 2014, construction workers built a pier and a breakwater in Kitovy Bay, central Iturup, where barges are a major means of transport, sailing between the cove and ships anchored offshore. In 2022, a special economic zone was established on the Kuril islands with special tax regimes, exemption from corporate income tax, VAT with reduced customs duties for 20 years.

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