evidence: Sakhalin Island, island at the far eastern end of Russia. It is located between the Tatar Strait and the Sea of Okhotsk, north of the Japanese island of Hokkaido. With the Kuril Islands, it forms Sakhalin oblast (region). Sakhalin was first settled by Japanese fishermen along its southern coasts. In 1853 the first Russians entered the northern part. By an agreement of 1855, Russia and Japan shared control of the island, but in 1875 Russia acquired all Sakhalin in exchange for the Kurils. The island soon gained notoriety as a Russian penal colony. As a result of the Russo-Japanese War, Japan in 1905 (Treaty of Portsmouth) gained Sakhalin south of the 50th parallel and gave this part the Japanese name of Karafuto. After the Russian Revolution, the Japanese occupied all of Sakhalin, but they withdrew in 1924; in the following year White Russian forces were driven out of the north by Soviet troops. The Soviet Union regained the southern half of the island in 1945, at the end of World War II, together with the Kurils, and Sakhalin’s entire Japanese population eventually was repatriated.