evidence: Sakhalin/Karafuto Under Control of the Japanese Empire [...] After the Russo-Japanese War, South Sakhalin became a new colonial territory of Japan. Initially, the Japanese formed the "civil administration" of Karafuto, which in reality was the military administration that governed the island. However, from 1907, the newly formed Governorate of Karafuto (Karafuto-chō) took control of the island. Karafuto was a new territory and its residents, including the Japanese, had no right to vote or participate in politics. It was officially included in the Japanese Empire as a prefecture in 1943. First, the colonial government had planned to promote the development of the island through agricultural settlement. However, it faced issues when agricultural resources were exhausted. The agricultural settlement and development were not successful because it was impossible to produce rice in Karafuto. Farmers worked as seasonal forestry and fishery laborers or produced other cash crops to earn money to buy rice, a staple food for Japanese and Koreans (Nakayama, 2015, p. 23). [...] Paichadze, S. (2022). Sakhalin/Karafuto Under Control of the Japanese Empire.