evidence: Sakhalin memories: Japanese stranded by war in the USSR - Published "My mother always said she wanted her children to return and live in Japan," says 61-year-old Fumiko Furihato, whose family was stranded in Soviet territory at the end of World War II. [...] As the Soviet Union consolidated its control on Sakhalin in the late 1940s, life was extremely difficult for the Japanese citizens left behind. The Furihato family lived in one room in an old barracks. [...] Between 1905 and 1945, the Japanese invested heavily in southern Sakhalin, which they called Karafuto. They built railways and factories including a big pulp and paper plant. But apart from the narrow-gauge railway track, there is little evidence left of their presence. The only significant Japanese building remaining in the island's capital Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk is now the regional museum.