History
In 1789 Kunashiri was one of the settings of the Menashi-Kunashir Battle in which Ainu revolted against Japanese tradespeople and colonists.
Russian navigator Vasily Golovnin attempted to map and explore the island in 1811, but was apprehended by Japanese authorities and spent two years in prison.
On September 1, 1945, or one day before the surrender documents of World War II were signed on September 2, 1945, after the denounciation of the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact in April 1945 and the declaration of war on Japan on August 9, 1945 (formally, the pact itself remained in effect until April 13, 1946), according to decisions of the Yalta Conference, Soviet Union annexed the Kuril Islands and the mainly disputed Northern territories, which Japanese government claims that they are not parts of Kuril Islands for historical reasons, and landed on the disputed island.
Read more about this topic: Kunashir Island
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man’s right to his body, or woman’s right to her soul.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“Revolutions are the periods of history when individuals count most.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“You treat world history as a mathematician does mathematics, in which nothing but laws and formulas exist, no reality, no good and evil, no time, no yesterday, no tomorrow, nothing but an eternal, shallow, mathematical present.”
—Hermann Hesse (1877–1962)