Japan and Russia at war
Seriously, they are! I was just doing some work on Japanese and Russian whaling history and came across this fact.
You see Japan obtained a lot of its early whaling fleet as captured vessels from disputes with Russia. The development of the Japanese industrial whaling fleet is also integrally linked to the imperialist expansion of its military conquests and invasion of China (Manchuria) when it required whale oil to obtain foreign currency and then only later whale meat to feed its troops as they suppressed parts of occupied China. Up until then, the Japanese dumped most of the meat at sea and only landed the oil.
The Soviet Union, realizing that Japan was actually going to lose the Second World War decided they wanted a piece of the peace dividend and declared war on Japan on the 8th August 1945.
However, I never realized it but it seems that the old Soviet Union and Japan never actually signed a peace accord after the second world war.
The Soviet Union (as the Russian Federation was then) seized the four islands (the Northern Territories) just before the end of World War II. After occupying them, the Soviet Union declared they were part of its territories in February 1946 and all Japanese residents were forced to leave by 1949. The Russian’s now call them the Southern Kurils.The dispute has prevented Japan and Russia from concluding a peace treaty to formally end the war. Here ends the digression.
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