Sakhalin
Sakhalin,
GOST transliteration
Sahalin, ( ,
Traditional Chinese: 庫頁島;
Simplified Chinese: "页岛;
pinyin: kùyèdǎo
Japanese: 樺太 romaji: karafuto), also
Saghalien, is a large elongated
island in the North
Pacific, lying between 45° 50' and 54° 24' N. It is part of the
Russian Federation and is its largest island. The capital of Sakhalin is
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. It is currently administered as
Sakhalin Oblast which includes the nearby
Kuril Islands. This oblast is located in the
Russian Far East, but it is also partially claimed by
Japan which historically knew these islands as the Japanese
Far North, along with the
Kuril Islands. Southern Sakhalin, along with the
Kuril Islands and Japan, were the indigenous lands of the
Ainu peoples before they were displaced by force.
The European names derived from misinterpretation of a
Manchu name
sahaliyan ula angga hada (
peak of the mouth of Amur River).
Sahaliyan means
black in Manchu and refers to Amur River (
sahaliyan ula). Its Japanese name,
Karafuto () (
Kanji characters for Ainu sounds...does not retain meaning in Japanese) comes from
Ainu Kamuy-Kara-Puto-Ya-Mosir (Kara Puto), which means "God of mouth of water land". The name was restored to the island by the
Japanese during their possession of its southern part (
1905-
1945).
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 peoples (as they called themselves), as well as others. Chinese chronicled the
Xianbei () and
Hezhe() tribes, who had a way of life based on fishing. The Chinese in the
Ming dynasty() knew the island as Kuyi (), and later as Kuye (). According to the Book of Shengmu (), the Ming sent 400 troops to Sakhalin in
1616, after a newfound interest because of northern Japanese contacts with the area. (all nations, Japan, China, and Russia were brutal to the local peoples), but later withdrew as it was considered there was no threat to China from of the island. A Ming boundary stone still exists on the island.
A Japanese settlement in the southern end of Sakhalin of Ootomari was established in
1679 in a colonialization attempt. Cartographers of the
Matsumae clan created a map of the island and called it "Kita-Ezo" (Northern Ezo, Ezo is the old name of
Hokkaido). The
1686 Nerchinsk Treaty reaffirmed Sakhalin as Chinese territory, again without consulting local peoples who had no connection with China or Russia whatsoever. Nevertheless Russia started occupying the island, with an army made up of convicts, from the
18th century onwards. The
Qing Empire () also claimed sovereignty over the island and Sakhalin was under formal Chinese rule (on paper, the locals were completely unaware of Russian or Chinese claims) from the
Jin Dynasty onwards. However, as the Chinese governments did not have a military presence on the island, people from both Japan and Russia attempted to
colonize the island, albeit from different ends.
Sakhalin became known to Europeans from the travels of
Ivan Moskvitin and
Martin Gerritz de Vries in the 17th century, and still better from those of
Jean-François de La Pérouse (
1787) and
Ivan Krusenstern (
1805). Both, however, regarded it as a peninsula, and were unaware of the existence of the
Mamiya Strait or
Strait of Tartary, which was discovered in
1809 by
Mamiya Rinzo.
On the basis of it being an extension of
Hokkaido, geographically and culturally, Japan unilaterally 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 definitively 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, churches on the island. The indigenous people were killed or forced to move elsewhere.
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 the Qing to sign the unequal
Treaty of Aigun and
Convention of Peking, under which China lost claim to all territories north of
Heilongjiang (
Amur) and east of
Ussuri, including Sakhalin, to Russia. 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, 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 resulted in the southern part of the island below 50° N reverting to Japan; the Russians retained the other three-fifths of the area. South Sakhalin was administrated by Japan as
Karafuto-chō (樺太庁), with the capital Toyohara, today's
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, and had quite a large number of migrants from Japan and Korea.
In August
1945, sensing Japan's impending defeat, the
Soviet Union took over the control of Sakhalin. The Soviet attack on South Sakhalin started on
August 11 1945, four days before the
Surrender of Japan, after the bombing of
Hiroshima. 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. (Japan had quite a presence here, and developed much infrastucture.) It was not until the 113th Rifle Brigade and the 365th Independent Naval Infantry Rifle Battalion from Sovietskaya Gavan (Советская "авань) landed on Tōrō ("路), a seashore village of western Sakhalin on
August 16, that the Soviets broke the Japanese defense line. Japanese resistance grew weaker after this landing. Actual fighting, mostly petty skirmishes, continued until
August 21. From
August 22 to
August 23, most of the remaining Japanese units announced a truce. The Soviets completed the conquest of Sakhalin on
August 25 1945 by occupying the capital, Toyohara. Japanese sources claim that 20,000 civilians were killed during the invasion.
Since
January 2,
1947, the Sakhalin Region, in its present form, has been officially defined and integrated as a part of the
Russian Federation.
No final peace treaty has been signed, and the status of the neighbouring
Kuril Islands remains disputed. Japan renounced its claims of sovereignty over southern Sakhalin (but not the Kuril Islands) in the
Treaty of San Francisco (
1951), but did not recognize Russian sovereignty. According to Japan's official position, Sakhalin's attribution is not determined yet, and it is marked as
no man's land on Japanese maps. Historically, the issue remains a major strain on
Japanese-Russian relations. However, Japan has been granted mutual exchange visas for Japanese and Ainu families divided due to Russian occupation. Recently, economic and political cooperation has gradually improved between the two nations in spite of it.
Korean Air flight
007, a
South Korean civilian airliner, flew over Sakhalin and was shot down just west of the island by the Soviet Union on
1 September 1983, killing all 269 passengers and crew.
On
May 28 1995, an
earthquake measuring 7.5 on the
Richter scale occurred, killing 2,000 people in the
town of
Neftegorsk.
Sakhalin is separated from the mainland by the narrow and shallow
Mamiya Strait or
Strait of Tartary, which often freezes in winter in its narrower part, and from
Hokkaido (
Japan) by the
Soya Strait or
Strait of La Pérouse. Sakhalin is the largest island of the
Russian Federation, being 948
km (589
miles) long, and 25 to 170 km (16 to 105 miles) wide, with an area of
78,000 km² (30,100 mi²).
Its
orography and
geological structure are imperfectly known. Nearly two-thirds of Sakhalin is mountainous. Two parallel ranges of mountains traverse it from north to south, reaching 600–1500
m (2000–5000
ft). The Western Sakhalin Mountains peak in
Mt. Ichara, 1481 m (4860 ft), while the Eastern Sakhalin Mountains's highest peak is
Mt. Lopatin 1609 m (5279 ft) is also the island's highest mountain. Tym-Poronaiskaya Valley separates the two ranges. Susuanaisky and Tonino-Anivsky ranges traverse the island in the south, while the swampy Northern-Sakhalin plain occupies most of its north.
Crystalline rocks crop out at several capes;
Cretaceous limestones, containing an abundant and specific fauna of gigantic
ammonites, occur at
Dui on the west coast, and
Tertiary conglomerates,
sandstones,
marls and
clays, folded by subsequent upheavals, in many parts of the island. The clays, which contain layers of good coal and an abundant fossil vegetation, show that during the Miocene period Sakhalin formed part of a continent which comprised north
Asia,
Alaska and
Japan, and enjoyed a comparatively warm climate. The
Pliocene deposits contain a
mollusc fauna more arctic than that which exists at the present time, indicating probably that the connection between the
Pacific and
Arctic Oceans was broader than it is now.
Main
rivers: the
Tym, 400 km (250 miles) long and navigable by rafts and light boats for 80 km (50 miles), flows north and north-east with numerous rapids and shallows, and enters the
Sea of Okhotsk. The
Poronai flows south-south-east to the Gulf of Patience or
Shichiro Bay, on the south-east coast. Three other small streams enter the wide semicircular
Gulf of Aniva or Higashifushimi Bay at the southern extremity of the island.
At the beginning of the 20th century, some 32,000 Russians (of whom over 22,150 were convicts) inhabited Sakhalin along with several thousand native inhabitants. The island's population has grown to 673,100 today, 83 percent of whom are ethnic Russians and followed by
Koreans at about 30,000 (5.5%). The native inhabitants consist of some 2,000
Nivkhs, 750
Oroks, 200
Evenks and some
Yakuts. The Nivkhs in the north support themselves by fishing and hunting.
The capital,
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, a city of about 200,000, has a large
Korean minority many who were forcibly brought by the Japanese during
World War II to work in the coal mines. Most of the population lives in the southern half of the island, centered mainly around Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk and two ports,
Kholmsk and
Korsakov (population 50,000 each).
The 400,000 Japanese inhabitants of Sakhalin were deported following the conquest of the southern portion of the island by the
Soviet Union in 1945 at the end of World War II.
Owing to the influence of the raw, foggy
Sea of Okhotsk, the climate is very cold. At Dui the average yearly temperature is only 0.5 °C (January -15.9 °C; July 16.1 °C), 1.7 °C at Kusunai and 3.1 °C at Aniva (January, −12.5 °C; July, 15.7 °C). At
Alexandrovsk-Sakhalinsky near Dui the annual range is from 27 °C in July to −39 °C in January, while at Rykovsk in the interior the minimum is −45 °C. The rainfall averages 570 mm. Thick clouds for the most part shut out the sun; while the cold current from the Sea of Okhotsk, aided by north-east winds, brings immense ice-floes to the east coast in summer.
The whole of the island is covered with dense
forests, mostly
coniferous. The Yezo (or Yeddo) spruce (
Picea jezoensis), the
Sakhalin fir (
Abies sachalinsis) and the
Daurian larch (
Larix gmelinii) are the chief trees; on the upper parts of the mountains are the
Siberian dwarf pine (
Pinus pumila) and the
Kurile bamboo (
Arundinaria kurilei).
Birches, both
Siberian silver birch (
Betula platyphylla) and
Erman's birch (
B. ermanii),
poplar,
elm,
Bird cherry (
Prunus padus),
Japanese yew (
Taxus cuspidata) and several willows are mixed with the conifers; while farther south the
maple,
rowan and
oak, as also the Japanese
Panax ricinifolium, the
Amur cork tree (
Phellodendron amurense), the
Spindle (
Euonymus macropterus) and the
vine (
Vitis thunbergii) make their appearance. The underwoods abound in berry-bearing plants (e.g.
cloudberry,
cranberry,
crowberry, red whortleberry),
Red-berried elder (
Sambucus racemosa), wild
raspberry and Spiraea.
Bears,
foxes,
otters and
sables are numerous, as also the
reindeer in the north, and the musk deer, hares, squirrels, rats and mice everywhere. The
bird fauna is mostly the common east Siberian, but there are some
endemic or near-endemic breeding species, notably the
endangered Spotted Greenshank (
Tringa guttifer) and the
Sakhalin Leaf Warbler (
Phylloscopus borealoides). The rivers swarm with fish, especially species of
salmon (
Oncorhynchus). Numerous whales visit the sea-coast.
Transportation, especially by sea, is an important segment of the economy. Nearly all the cargo arriving for Sakhalin (and the
Kuril Islands) is delivered by cargo boats, or by ferries, in railway wagons, through a sea ferry passage at
Vanino-
Kholmsk. The ports of
Korsakov and
Kholmsk are the largest and handle all kinds of goods, while
coal and
timber shipments often go through other ports. In 1999, a ferry service was opened between the ports of Korsakov and
Wakkanai,
Japan.
About 30% of all inland transportation volume is realized through railways. Sakhalin has railway lines stretching from
Nogliki in the north to Korsakov in the south. There is also a departmental narrow-gauge line at Nogliki-
Okha, extending 228 km. With the existence of a ferry serving Vanino-Kholmsk, Sakhalin has railway connection with the railway network of the rest of
Russia.
Sakhalin is connected by regular flights to
Moscow,
Khabarovsk,
Vladivostok, and other cities of the
Russian Federation. The airport of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk has regularly scheduled international flights to
Hakodate, Japan and
Seoul and
Busan, Korea. There are also charter flights to the Japanese cities of
Tokyo,
Niigata, and
Sapporo and the Chinese cities of
Shanghai,
Dalian, and
Harbin.
The idea of building a
fixed link between Sakhalin and the Russian mainland was first mooted in the
1930s. In the
1940s, an abortive attempt was made to link the island via a 10 km long undersea
tunnel. The workers supposedly made it almost to the half-way point before the project was abandoned under
Nikita Khrushchev. In
2000, the Russian government revived the idea, adding a suggestion that a 40 km long bridge could be constructed between Sakhalin and the Japanese island of Hokkaido, providing Japan with a direct connection to the Euro-Asian railway network. It was claimed that construction work could begin as early as
2001. The idea was received skeptically by the Japanese government and appears to have been shelved, probably permanently, after the cost was estimated at as much as US$50 billion.
Sakhalin is a classic "resource economy" relying on
oil and
gas exports,
coal mining,
forestry, and
fishing. There are also some
coal deposits and limited quantities of
rye,
wheat,
oats,
barley and
vegetables are grown, although the
growing season averages less than 100 days.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and economic liberalization, Sakhalin has experienced an
oil boom with extensive petroleum exploration and mining by most large oil
multinationals. The oil and natural gas reserves contain an estimated 14
billion barrels (2.2 km³) of oil and 96
trillion cubic feet (2,700 km³) of gas.
In
1996, two large consortiums signed contracts to explore for oil and gas off the northeast coast of the island,
Sakhalin-I and
Sakhalin-II. The two consortiums are estimated to spend a combined $21
billion U.S. dollars on the two projects. This will include an estimated $1 billion (US) to upgrade the islands infrastructure: roads, bridges, waste management sites, airports, railways, communications systems, and ports. In addition, Sakhalin-III-through-VI are in various early stages of development.
The Sakhalin I project, managed by Exxon Neftgas Limited (ENL), completed a production-sharing agreement (PSA) between the Sakhalin I consortium, the Russian Federation, and the Sakhalin government. Russia is in the process of building a 136 mile (219 km) pipeline across the Tatar Strait from Sakhalin Island to
De-Kastri on the Russian mainland. From De-Kastri it will be loaded onto tankers for transport to East Asian markets, namely Japan, South Korea, and China.
The second consortium, Sakhalin Energy Investment Company Ltd. (Sakhalin Energy) is managing the Sakhalin II project. They completed the first ever production-sharing agreement (PSA) with the Russian Federation. Sakhalin Energy will build two 800 km pipelines running from the northeast of the island to Prigorodnoye (Prigorodnoe) in Aniva Bay at the southern end. The consortium will also build, at Prigorodnoye, the first ever liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant to be built in Russia. The oil and gas is also bound for East Asian markets. Sakhalin II has come under fire from environmental groups, namely Sakhalin Environment Watch, for dumping dredging in Aniva Bay. The groups were also worried about the offshore pipelines interfering with the migration of whales off the island. The consortium has now (Jan 2006) re-routed the pipeline to avoid the whale migration.
In
2000, the oil and gas industry accounted for 57.5% of Sakhalin's industrial output. By
2006, it is expected to account for 80% of the island's industrial output. Sakhalin's economy is growing rapidly thanks to its oil and gas industry. By 2005, the island had become the largest recipient of foreign investment in Russia, followed by
Moscow. Unemployment in 2002 was only 2%. However, all of the oil and gas is for export and none is available to the island's population.
*
Russian Far East*
Bronislaw Pilsudski*
Kuril Islands*
Sakhalin Husky*
The Sakhalin Times (Weekly English Language newspaper published in Yuzhno Sakhalinsk)*
Map of the Sakhalin Hydrocarbon Region at Blackbourn Geoconsulting
*
Sakhalin Official site (English)*
TransGlobal Highway - Proposed Sakhalin-Hokkaido Friendship Tunnel.*
Photos of Sakhalin @ Flickr*
Photos of Sakhalin @ Back Of Beyond*
"The Sakhalin II Phase 2 Project The New Energy Source for the Asia Pacific: Transforming the Vision into Reality" presntation by David J. Greer "эйвид "ж. "риер, OBE Eur. Ing., C. Eng., FIMechE, Sakhalin II Deputy CEO/Project Director, Sakhalin Energy Investment Company Ltd. to
Scottish Oil Club, October 2005.
* C. H. Hawes,
In the Uttermost East (London, 1903). (P. A. K.; J. T. BE.)
