6. The Secret Factor: Japanese Network Of Intelligence-Gathering On Russia During The War

Abstract

Sakhalin's insularity made it a perfect location for a penal colony. One can argue that in spite of the generally accepted view at the time that Sakhalin, with its penal history, was an economic and social fiasco and had therefore no future, its established communities and prosperous individual farms, on the contrary, were indications of its potential to become an agricultural and industrial colony. The author examines two distinctive features of Sakhalin theater of war: cruelty and chaos. Cruelty and mistreatment is not something which immediately comes to mind in a discussion of the Russo-Japanese War. Acts of torture, for example, are meticulously shown in a testimony kept in the Russian State Archives, revealing sadistic practices. Russian, and later on, Soviet Sakhalin and Japanese Karafuto were to coexist, albeit tensely, for forty years, when a very similar war scenario would change the island's geography all over again. Keywords: cruelty; Japanese Karafuto; Russo-Japanese War; Soviet Sakhalin