evidence: The 75-year-old Russian national has made the trip from Sakhalin 10 times since 2005, through a special program the Japanese government set up in 1990 to help cover the costs of such visits. [...] The southern half of Sakhalin was once a Japanese territory called Karafuto, where coal mining and paper production flourished. By mid-1945, about 400,000 Japanese people called it home. [...] Shirohata was born in Sakhalin three years after the war and remembers her father talking fondly about their ancestral homeland. "He used to admire Japan for its techniques in industry and agriculture," she says.