dependent Naval Infantry Rifle Battalion from Sovetskaya Gavan landed on 16 August at T?ro � a seashore village of western Sakhalin � that the Soviets broke the Japanese defence line. Japanese resistance grew weaker after this landing. Actual fighting, mostly skirmishes, continued until 21 August. From 22 August to 23 August, most of the remaining Japanese units announced a truce. The Soviets completed the conquest of Sakhalin on 25 August 1945 by occupying the capital, Toyohara. Japanese sources claim that 20,000 civilians were killed during the invasion.[citation needed]
Out of some 448,000 Japanese residents of South Sakhalin who lived there in 1944, a significant number were evacuated to Japan during the last days of the war, but the remaining 300,000 or so stayed behind for several more years. While the predominant majority of Sakhalin Japanese were eventually evacuated to Japan in 1946�1950, tens of thousands of Sakhalin Koreans (and a number of their Japanese spouses) remained in the Soviet Union.
Central part of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. 2009
No final peace treaty has been signed and the status of four neighboring islands remains disputed. Japan renounced its claims of sovereignty over southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands in the Treaty of San Francisco (1951), but claims that four islands currently administered by Russia were not subject to this renunciation. Japan has granted mutual exchange visas for Japanese and Ainu families divided by the change in status. Recently, economic and political cooperation has gradually improved between the two nations despite disagreements.
Recent history
On September 1, 1983, the Korean Air Flight 007, a South Korean civilian airliner, flew over Sakhalin and was shot down by the Soviet Union, just west of Sakhalin Island, near the smaller Moneron Island; the Soviet Union claimed it was a spy plane. All 269 passengers and crew died, including a U.S. Congressman, Larry McDonald
