evidence: WARSAW (Mainichi) -- A 78-year-old Japanese man who grew up in the southern part of Sakhalin, Russia, occupied by the former Soviet Union at the end of World War II, and has since been living in Ukraine, took refuge with his family in neighboring Poland following the Russian military invasion. He and his family will fly to Japan on March 18. What does the man, whose life was changed by two wars, think about the current situation? Hidekatsu Furihata was born in central Japan's Nagano Prefecture, but due to his father's work, he moved to south Karafuto (now Russia's Sakhalin), which was a Japanese territory at the time. However, in August 1945, the Soviet Union invaded Japan. Karafuto was occupied and later became Soviet territory. Although Furihata was very young, he still remembers the day when Soviet soldiers came into his house and barked at his family, asking why there were still Japanese people there. Most of the Japanese who remained on Karafuto had returned to Japan by 1959. However, permission was not granted to Furihata's father. The reason is unknown, but it is believed that the Soviet Union would not let his father leave because he worked at a paper mill and was competent. After attending a technical university in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Furihata married his Polish wife, and in 1971 they moved to what is now Ukraine, where his wife's sister lived. He then worked as a machinist for many years.