Late last year, a group of junior high and high school students from Okinawa Prefecture visited the city of Nemuro, Hokkaido, to learn firsthand about issues related to disputed islands off Hokkaido that are controlled by Russia.
Called the Northern Territories in Japan, the four islands — Etorofu, Kunashiri, Shikotan and the Habomai group of islets — were seized by Soviet forces in the closing days of World War II in 1945. The islands have been under Russian control ever since.
Over 80 years after the end of World War II, former Japanese residents of the islands remain unable to return to their hometowns.
“Because there is a past, there is a present. That’s why stories of the past are just as important as stories of today,” Hiroshi Tokuno, 91, who is originally from Shikotan, told the group of 17 students during their Dec. 26-29 visit to Nemuro.
Tokuno, a registered storyteller since he was in his 30s, was speaking to the students at an exchange center on the Northern Territories issue in the snow-covered city, where subzero temperatures continued day after day.
In 1945, when Tokuno was 11 years old, Soviet troops occupied the islands around the end of the war. After a period of “mixed living” with Russian residents on Shikotan, Tokuno was transferred to an internment camp in Sakhalin at age 13 before eventually being repatriated to Hokkaido. His experiences later became the model for the Japanese animated film “Giovanni’s Island.”
“When I think about Shikotan Island — my hometown — I still get emotional, and it brings me to tears,” Tokuno said.
“But today, I’ll try not to cry,” he added with a gentle smile.
He talked about scenes of daily life on the island — where the whaling industry was thriving — his friendship with a Russian girl that was also depicted in the film and the harsh conditions of life in the Sakhalin internment camp. Students listened attentively to his wishes to return to his home island — a plea that has never been realized.
According to the League of Residents of Chishima and Habomai Islands, an association of former residents of the disputed islands, the number of former residents — once about 17,000 — had fallen to 4,953 as of the end of March 2025, with their average age being 89.3. As only about 10 storytellers remain active in Nemuro, passing down the history has become an urgent issue, just as aging survivors of the war in Okinawa Prefecture are facing the same challenge.
On the disputed islands, special programs such as visa-free exchanges and short visits to ancestral graves took place in the past, but all such visits have…