evidence: Sakhalin: the Japanese Under Soviet Rule Mariya Sevela gathers oral recollections from the people of Karafuto, a Japanese colony on the island of Sakhalin from 1905 until the arrival of the Soviet army forty years later. The island of Sakhalin in the Sea of Okhotsk is a microcosm of Russo-Japanese relations. ‘Discovered’ almost simultaneously by the Russians and the Japanese in the mid-seventeenth century, it witnessed several shifts of rule between 1855 and 1945. Following Japan’s victory over Russia in 1905, by the Treaty of Portsmouth Sakhalin was divided at the 50th parallel. While the northern section remained Russian, the Japanese colony of Karafuto was established on the southern part of the island.