Japanese evacuation of Karafuto and the Kuril Islands

The evacuation of Karafuto (Sakhalin) and the Chishima (Kuril) islands refers to the events that took place during the Pacific theater of World War II as the Japanese population left these areas, to August 1945 in the northwest of the main islands of Japan.

The evacuation started under the threat of Soviet invasion. As Japanese civilians evacuated Korea and Manchuria, they cleared out of the Karafuto and Kuril Islands according to the terms of the Potsdam Declaration that the terms of the Cairo Declaration would be carried out, and Japanese sovereignty would be limited to the Home Islands of Honshū, Hokkaidō, Kyushu, Shikoku and such minor islands as the Allies determined.