Exploring Japan's Remote Border with Russia (no one comes here)

0:02 We are currently heading north alongside

0:04 the border between Russia and Japan to get

0:07 us close to the contested islands that very few people have ever heard of.

0:12 If we would drive out there, we would get shots.

0:16 I've got a confession.

0:18 I've got a slight obsession with maps.

0:22 And an odd pastime of mine is to roam on Google Maps,

0:26 zooming into strange and unusual part of our globe,

0:29 searching for our world's hidden stories.

0:31 And as we were preparing for our trip to Japan,

0:34 I found something that surprised me.

0:37 Russia.

0:38 Just a few kilometers away from Japan are a mysterious

0:42 stretch of islands oddly close that I'd never heard of before.

0:46 The deeper we looked, the more confusing it became,

0:49 as neither of the two countries have been able

0:51 to actually agree on who these islands belong to.

0:55 But today, they are fully in the hands of Russia.

0:59 Yet, Japan does not agree, meaning that on this little corner of our planet,

1:03 a dispute that dates all the way back to World War II never fully ended.

1:07 With lots of questions about this stretch of islands,

1:12 but initially feeling very unclear what we would find in this unexplored region,

1:16 we decided to simply book our flights and head

1:19 straight into this mystery at Japan's Wild Northern Edge.

1:22 Here in yet another of the least populated places in the country,

1:27 we'll explore three locations along this coastline with the mission

1:30 of finding someone with direct stories and experiences from these islands,

1:34 asking the question, what happened here?

1:39 And what stories hide in this strange and unexplored part of Japan?

1:54 Over the next few days, we're going to be going along this wild,

1:57 untamed coastline to see what we can find and who we can meet.

2:02 And we're starting with seeing how close we

2:08 can get to these islands from this little ship.

2:16 This is as far as we can get while still being in Japan.

2:20 Once we cross past a certain amount of kilometers off off the coastline,

2:24 then you cross the border.

2:26 And you can see just how massive one of the contested islands right here is.

2:34 The people who live along this coast have to look at it every day.

2:49 After getting back to dry land,

2:51 we headed down the coast from Rausu to the coastal town of Shibetu to see if we

2:55 could find some locals that could help us

2:58 understand more about how these islands became so contested.

3:01 But as we began to walk around, the town seemed almost completely deserted.

3:15 We are in a tiny little fishing town smack in the middle of the U

3:21 that surrounds these these islands on the map that we want to explore.

3:26 This entire street here are closed restaurants.

3:29 It just feels like used to be a life here that no longer exists.

3:33 We're not too sure which direction we should go,

3:36 but the real end point is going to be getting

3:40 to the very last cape on the other side going south,

3:44 getting as close as we possibly can to the border.

3:48 That's a bit trippy.

3:49 It's a bit strange to know that these disputes and conflicts are

3:53 going on and people wanting to go there but not able to.

3:58 This is going to be a bit challenging to find the right

4:03 people to talk to, but uh we're going to be on the search.

4:19 Oh my god, we are so close.

4:25 These islands that we're looking at right now, Japan claims are theirs.

4:30 Yeah.

4:31 People were sent away from there.

4:33 Yeah.

4:33 17 20,000 people.

4:34 So close to close to the home, you know, like people over here.

4:41 Some of them lived over there.

4:46 Yeah.

4:46 Do you live here or where do you live?

5:13 Byebye.

5:13 Byebye.

5:14 Imagine kids.

5:15 They would never ever argue, fight disputes about like things like this.

5:20 Don't kids fight over like toys all the time though?

5:23 Oh, true.

5:24 No, that was more you, man.

5:25 Not me.

5:26 Here we share.

5:27 You were a mature child.

5:34 We see a man bird watching.

5:43 So, we're going to slowly and steadily

6:13 Do you feel these islands belong to Japan?

6:20 This is a place that clearly very few people come to.

6:23 There are barely any hotels, restaurants,

6:26 and locals are confused by what we're even doing here.

6:28 And to be honest, I'm not quite sure we even know.

6:32 As we continued searching these eerie, empty streets,

6:35 we suddenly experienced firsthand some

6:39 of the tension that lies in these neighborhoods.

6:46 I have no idea.

6:47 She doesn't like foreigners.

6:48 Maybe very like cute older lady.

6:50 She just like screamed.

6:51 I got so mad.

6:52 just uh yeah, just by just by seeing me and didn't didn't say or do anything.

6:57 Was not in her way or anything.

6:59 Just got like really really mad.

7:01 I wonder if it was because yeah, she thought that I was Russian or or something.

7:11 Ladies and gentlemen,

7:12 we have now reached the absolute eastern point that we could possibly get to.

7:18 And this is the closest to the Carl Islands that we can get.

7:23 And we are at the very final lighthouse at the edge

7:26 of Japan and what feels like the edge of the world.

7:29 And it is pretty wild.

7:30 They're just a few kilometers away.

7:32 You can literally see the coastline.

7:34 We've made our way to the entire U.

7:37 We've been told that Nimro, where we are now,

7:39 is sort of one of the center points of this conflict.

7:42 And everywhere we've been driving,

7:44 there's been signs written in Japanese saying,

7:46 "Give us back the islands." Maybe one day the people

7:50 of this area will be able to return back to their islands.

7:54 Look at how close we are to that those ones.

7:57 Oh, wow.

7:57 You can literally We are right in front of them.

8:00 I can see a house on the other side.

8:02 You can?

8:02 Yeah.

8:03 That's a house on a contested island.

8:05 Yeah.

8:05 We don't know if there's any civilians left there, right?

8:08 As far as I know, it's basically military.

8:11 There were civilians at one point,

8:13 but are there people that actually live on these islands these days?

8:17 It's hard to say, right?

8:18 When you look at Google Maps, there's nothing on these island.

8:21 There's no road.

8:22 There's nothing.

8:23 It's just land.

8:24 Oh, wow.

8:24 Wow.

8:25 It's a house straight by the water that looks towards Japan.

8:29 Yeah.

8:30 We got the dad zoom in this one.

8:33 That's how you know we got a dad on our hands.

8:36 Getting out here to this part of Japan has been one

8:40 of the more logistically wild trips we've done in a while.

8:44 Researching what was even possible.

8:45 Booking things in a language we don't speak.

8:48 Hopping between cafe Wi-Fi and hotel Wi-Fi or whatever

8:51 random network we could find along the way.

8:54 It was a lot.

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9:58 Okay, now let's get back to exploring

10:00 this very strange and unique part of Japan.

10:03 After exploring this entire coastline in search of answers,

10:07 we really only uncovered more questions.

10:09 What was the logic behind this territorial dispute?

10:12 And why did the Japanese still

10:14 believe these islands rightfully belonged to them?

10:16 It felt like we weren't getting very far by approaching strangers.

10:20 So, after returning to the main fishing village,

10:22 we headed to the front desk of our hotel in search of new leads,

10:27 which ended up sending us on a bit of a wild goose chase around town.

10:38 Let's go to this uh place next door.

10:41 Hi, thank you.

10:43 This guy here said there's a city council where we could go and we

10:48 could potentially find someone who actually lived

10:50 on this island before but were sent here.

10:57 Let's do that.

11:02 Until eventually we found a promising lead.

11:11 Wow.

11:12 10 minutes.

11:13 It's like one of those video games where you

11:16 meet one character that introduces you to another character.

11:22 Yeah.

11:22 Slowly, we're making progress.

11:25 Oh, wow.

11:30 We are inside the Northern Territories Museum.

11:40 Where are you born?

11:44 if we can ask.

11:48 He's like, I'm from the Northern Islands that you

11:51 guys are trying to take away from us.

11:55 No, no, we're not Russian.

11:58 We're on your team, sir.

12:01 We're on your team.

12:03 You, too.

12:04 You as well.

12:05 You, too.

12:06 You, too.

12:07 Legend.

12:07 Legend.

12:07 This explains why this woman was pissed at us before.

12:11 She thought we were Russians.

12:12 We have walked into a lecture right now of a man

12:16 who thought we were trying to take these islands.

12:18 This man is dedicated.

12:19 He has waited for this moment, I think, for a while.

12:24 He's had a whole box of things prepared here.

12:28 Though we started to get a general idea

12:30 of the island's history from some of the locals,

12:32 we'd finally found a historian who had

12:34 had firstirhand experience with the conflict who

12:36 could give us a full lecture to explain exactly how these islands ended up.

12:45 the way they did.

12:48 The Coral Islands sit in a geographically strategic

12:51 location and have a long history of habitation, conflict, and colonization.

12:55 The original inhabitants of these islands were

12:58 an indigenous ethnic group known as the Inu people.

13:02 For centuries, their homelands stretch across the northern islands of Japan.

13:06 They lived in fishing and hunting villages while also trading

13:09 with some communities across the seas in Japan and Siberia.

13:13 But by the 1700s, the Inu found themselves caught between two expanding empires.

13:18 Japan pushing northward and Russia expanding eastward.

13:22 Both powers saw the islands as strategically valuable for fishing,

13:29 trade, and military control.

13:36 By the 18th and 19th centuries,

13:39 Russia and Japan were increasingly competing politically and diplomatically

13:42 over control of the Kural Islands and Sackland.

13:45 Eventually, Japan fully incorporated Hokkaido and the Kural

13:49 Islands into the modern Japanese state,

13:51 subjecting the indigenous people to aggressive

13:54 assimulation policies as their land

13:56 was taken and communities displaced by the Japanese settling across the region.

14:15 Wow.

14:16 How many people lived on the island?

14:32 During World War II,

14:33 the islands became a critical part of Japan's military strategy in the Pacific.

14:37 In 1941, ships from the Imperial Japanese Navy gathered in the remote

14:42 waters of the Kurls before launching the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.

14:46 The event that would pull the United States into the war.

14:50 But in the following years, the war turned against Japan and control

14:53 of the islands would once again change hands.

14:56 In the final days of World War II, the Soviet Union invaded the Coral Islands

15:00 as part of its offensive against Japan.

15:03 And following Japan's surrender in 1945, almost immediately,

15:06 tens of thousands of Japanese residents across the region were abruptly

15:11 displaced from their homes and forced to relocate to mainland Japan.

15:34 Today, many decades later, most of the people never got the chance to return

15:38 to the homes they left behind on the islands

15:41 now under Russian control and are forced to live

15:44 with the memory of a homeland still visible on the horizon.

15:48 yet completely out of reach.

15:49 Why did the Russians take these islands?

15:52 Cuz it feels as a set of islands,

15:55 it's a little hard to understand why they would

16:01 siege them when they had so much land already.

16:25 Following the Soviet takeover,

16:27 life on the Coral Islands changed almost overnight.

16:30 Japanese communities that had existed on the islands for generations were

16:34 dismantled as Soviet authorities forced

16:35 the remaining Japanese population to leave.

16:38 Homes were abandoned, villages were repopulated,

16:41 and the islands that had once been a part

16:49 of Japan became absorbed into the Soviet Union.

17:02 So they came in and destroyed people's family homes.

17:07 Yeah.

17:07 Yeah.

17:08 And yet despite the tensions between the two nations,

17:12 there was still one small concession that remained.

17:15 In later years, Japan and Russia agreed to allow

17:18 limited visa-free visits for former residents and their families

17:21 to return to the islands to visit the graves of loved ones they had left behind.

17:25 For many, it was the first time seeing their homeland

17:32 again since being forced to leave as children after the war.

17:43 However, after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine,

17:46 those visits were suspended indefinitely.

17:48 And today, nearly 80 years after the end of World War II,

17:51 the islands remain at the center

17:55 of a dispute that has never truly been resolved.

18:05 Does he hope to one day get to go back?

18:43 What's your name?

18:49 I get very touched by the fact.

18:51 You can tell that we get very touched by the things that he's sharing.

18:55 He has a very beautiful way of seeing life and seeing

18:57 how we shall see each other as brothers and sisters.

19:02 He's the best professor we ever had.

19:06 Thank you very much.

19:08 What a beautiful human being.

19:10 Yeah.

19:11 To think that he didn't seem to have much resentment shows his character.

19:15 And it also shows that he's just focused on what matters,

19:18 which is being able to go home.

19:20 There's no envy or sentiments of revenge.

19:22 It's just as simple as wanting to have his childhood home back.

19:28 That's what it's about for him.

19:32 He wishes you guys were girls.

19:35 Nice.

19:40 Homestead.

20:00 Could be cool to see that.

20:04 That would be amazing.

20:07 Okay.

20:18 Okay, we are getting into the car now.

20:20 Is there anyone in this fishing village that would

20:22 have been better to meet than this man?

20:24 I don't think so.

20:24 He's got photos at the museum.

20:28 I think he's the guy.

20:32 I think he's the one guy.

20:38 Oh my god.

20:44 Oh wow.

20:48 When he said that he has a Russian room, he really does.

20:52 Even though Russia is the country that displaced him from his home,

20:56 he hosted Russians that came to visit here

20:59 and built a room from the souvenirs that they brought.

21:02 That is insane.

21:04 That is incredible.

21:20 and she was his girlfriend.

21:28 Oh man.

21:40 because he likes them.

21:48 Oh, that's the house on the island.

21:53 That's him.

21:55 No way.

21:56 Wow.

21:57 The legend.

21:59 Wow.

22:04 Do you like he doesn't seem to have any resentment at all towards Russians?

22:26 Is there a reason for that?

22:49 You can tell him you wish to be like him when we grew up.

23:01 This is not what I expected at all, but um I feel like I learned a lot.

23:06 My perspective is like totally different.

23:14 Yeah.

23:15 An executive decision have been taken by Mr.

23:18 Peacemaker.

23:18 We're going down to the ocean.

23:19 We're going to look at the water together.

23:22 So, Oh my god.

23:24 To be honest, we weren't fully sure what we

23:27 would find when we first embarked on this journey.

23:29 But Fukus Aawasan opened our eyes to something

23:31 we had never been exposed to so vividly before.

23:35 A compassion despite the pain.

23:38 An acknowledgement of our shared humanity despite disagreements and conflict.

23:42 Pretty amazing that we walked around

23:44 this village looking for someone this morning.

23:47 Yeah.

23:47 And here he stands.

23:49 And here he stands.

23:51 that they said this is the island.

23:53 Yeah.

23:53 There are some moments on certain trips where we don't really

23:56 know what we're looking for, but we know when we found it.

24:00 And sitting in this room with this man,

24:02 hearing about his rare perspective felt like

24:08 finding the diamond that we've been looking for.

24:21 legend.

24:21 We literally picked this town by looking at Google Maps before boarding

24:26 the plane being like this town looks like kind of in the middle.

24:31 Let's go there.

24:32 Well, to all the people asking what well what's your favorite country?

24:37 Well, it's Japan.

24:38 It's Japan.

24:38 So, I've officially decided.

24:40 Me, too.

24:41 This, at least for now, is another story without a happy ending.

24:45 These islands, despite meaning so much for those who were once displaced,

24:49 seem so far down the priority list of both nations.

24:52 But instead, our lesson is one to simply endure, to keep our heads high,

24:59 and to, in our best efforts, build bridges with those we may disagree with.

25:08 Thank you for watching and we'll see you next week.