62. Japan surrenders Japan surrendered on August 15, less than two weeks after the end of the Potsdam Conference. In the surrender agreement they signed, “Japan accepted the Cairo and Potsdam terms.” (Page 17) However, they never accepted the Yalta agreement, which gave the Kuriles to Russia. Indeed they had no knowledge of the Yalta agreement until five months after they surrendered, when the agreement was revealed to the public. At the end of World War II, Russia declared war on Japan and seized control of the Kuriles and another set of islands located right next to them, the Habomai Islands and Shikotan Island. Unlike Korea, Manchuria, or Taiwan, Japan did not gain control of these islands through the use of her military. Russia had no right to claim the islands after the war. Indeed, their claim violated the promise the Allies made in Cairo to refrain from territorial expansion. Because the seizure of the Kuriles violated the Cairo Declaration, the Japanese government thought about demanding that Russia return all of the islands in the Kurile chain. “Although Japan accepted the Potsdam Declaration (August 15) and signed the Instrument of Surrender (September 2), the Yalta Agreement had not then been revealed, and Japan had never agreed to it,” said the Japanese government. “Thus, Japan should invoke the principle of ‘no territorial expansion,’ and need not give up the Kurile Islands, because they did not become Japanese as a result of war.” (Page 80) But in the end, Japan decided to demand that Russia return only the southern half of the Kuriles, the Habomai Islands, and Shikotan. Together, this group of islands would become known as the Northern Territories. References The page numbers come from the book “Cold War Frontiers in the Asia-Pacific” by Kimie Hara.
Posted on: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 23:56:33 +0000
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