Sakhalin Island Skirmish

One day last week Yakichiro Suma, the positive little spokesman of Japan's Foreign Office, told newspapermen that relations with Russia were very nice, thank you. "For the moment," he admitted, "a non-aggression pact is not a part of our program." Two days later Russia and Japan were on the verge of war.

First reports of difficulties came from Nomonhan, on the Manchukuo-Outer Mongolian border, scene of severe fighting last summer. Observers told of troop and supply trains being rushed to the old front. Fighting was reported, then denied by Japan.

Not denied, but officially confirmed by the Japanese War Office, was a subsequent skirmish on half-Russian, half-Japanese Sakhalin Island. Soviet frontier guards were said to have crossed the border and fired on a band of Japanese policemen. The incident developed into a dogfight in which, the Japanese claimed, "a dozen" Russians and "several" Japanese were wounded.

Sakhalin, a 600-mile-long, fish-shaped island directly north of Japan, has always been a dark spot. Before 1850, the island was scarcely inhabited. In 1875, Japan agreed to let Russia have the whole storm-beaten spit. Russia made a grim prison of it, and every year exiled to it some 7,000 prisoners--who then had a 4,000-mile walk across the ice of Tartary Strait and Siberia to the nearest court of appeals. In the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05, Japan won the half of the island which lies south of latitude 50DEG north. Ever since, Japan and Russia have squabbled (but never actually fought) over its oil, coal and fish. Each now wants the whole place. A full-fledged war could scarcely develop on bleak Sakhalin--last week's clash was followed by a blizzard which stopped railroad trains, to say nothing of troops on foot--but it looked at week's end as if Sakhalin clashes and Nomonhan scares would keep Russia and Japan from joining hands in what the Allies fear--exclusive enemy domination of the Far East.

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