51�Թ�

The group - known as the League of Residents of Chishima and Habomai Islands - organised annual trips to the islands by their former Japanese residents and their descendants, thousands of whom were forced to leave after the war.

The more poetical Japanese call them Chishima, or the "Thousand Islands," meaning that they are numberless, and the nonchalant Ainu of Yezo profess entire ignorance as to their existence, and only some of the better informed give them the name of Krafto, by which they really mean Sakhalin.