Anuchina (, , ) is an uninhabited island in the

Habomai Islands The Habomai Islands (; ) are a group of uninhabited islets (but for the Russian guards stationed there) in the southernmost Kuril Islands. The islands have been under Soviet/Russian administration since the Invasion of the Kuril Islands, 1945 in ...

sub-group of the

Kuril Islands The Kuril Islands or Kurile Islands are a volcanic archipelago administered as part of Sakhalin Oblast in the Russian Far East. The islands stretch approximately northeast from Hokkaido in Japan to Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia, separating the ...

chain in the south of the

Sea of Okhotsk The Sea of Okhotsk; Historically also known as , or as ; ) is a marginal sea of the western Pacific Ocean. It is located between Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula on the east, the Kuril Islands on the southeast, Japan's island of Hokkaido on the sou ...

, northwest

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is ...

. Named after

Dmitry Anuchin Dmitry Nikolayevich Anuchin (Russian: Дми́трий Никола́евич Ану́чин; 27 August 1843 – 4 June 1923) was a Russian anthropologist, ethnographist, archaeologist, and geographer. He was a member of the Russian Geographic ...

, Russian anthropologist, ethnographist and archaeologist. Island's Japanese name is derived from the

Ainu language Ainu (, ), or more precisely Hokkaido Ainu (), is a language spoken by a few elderly members of the Ainu people on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. It is a member of the Ainu language family, itself considered a language family isola ...

History

Anuchina was originally uninhabited. In 1799, under the

Tokugawa shogunate The Tokugawa shogunate, also known as the was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. The Tokugawa shogunate was established by Tokugawa Ieyasu after victory at the Battle of Sekigahara, ending the civil wars ...

of Japan, a trading post and settlement was established on the island by the villages of Akkeshi and Nemuro as a base for fishermen, and for trade with the Ainu, the native peoples of the Kurils,

Sakhalin Sakhalin ( rus, Сахали́н, p=səxɐˈlʲin) is an island in Northeast Asia. Its north coast lies off the southeastern coast of Khabarovsk Krai in Russia, while its southern tip lies north of the Japanese island of Hokkaido. An islan ...

and

Hokkaidō is the second-largest island of Japan and comprises the largest and northernmost prefecture, making up its own region. The Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaidō from Honshu; the two islands are connected by railway via the Seikan Tunnel. The ...

. Administration of the island came under the village of

Habomai The Habomai Islands (; ) are a group of uninhabited islets (but for the Russian guards stationed there) in the southernmost Kuril Islands. The islands have been under Soviet/Russian administration since the 1945 invasion by the Soviet Union nea ...

in Hokkaido during the

Meiji period The was an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868, to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonizatio ...

. The inhabitants of the island were mostly engaged in

commercial fishing Commercial fishing is the activity of catching fish and other seafood for Commerce, commercial Profit (economics), profit, mostly from wild fisheries. It provides a large quantity of food to many countries around the world, but those who practice ...

for

Pollock Pollock or pollack (pronounced ) is the common name used for either of the two species of North Atlantic ocean, marine fish in the genus ''Pollachius''. ''Pollachius pollachius'' is referred to as "pollock" in North America, Ireland and the Unit ...

and harvesting

konbu ''Konbu'' (from ) is edible kelp mostly from the family Laminariaceae and is widely eaten in East Asia. It may also be referred to as ''dasima'' () or ''haidai'' (). Kelp features in the diets of many civilizations, including Chinese and Icela ...

. During the

Invasion of the Kuril Islands The Invasion of the Kuril Islands () was the World War II Soviet military operation to capture the Kuril Islands from Japan in 1945. The invasion, part of the Soviet–Japanese War, was decided on when plans to land on Hokkaido were abandoned. ...

by the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

after the end of World War II, the island was seized without resistance. In 1945, its native inhabitants were

deported Deportation is the expulsion of a person or group of people by a state from its Sovereignty, sovereign territory. The actual definition changes depending on the place and context, and it also changes over time. A person who has been deported or ...

to Hokkaido and the island was uninhabited except for

Soviet Border Troops The Soviet Border Troops () were the border guard of the Soviet Union, subordinated to the Soviet state security agency: first to the ''Cheka''/State Political Directorate, OGPU, then to NKVD/Ministry for State Security (USSR), MGB and, final ...

until they were withdrawn upon the

dissolution of the Soviet Union The Soviet Union was formally dissolved as a sovereign state and subject of international law on 26 December 1991 by Declaration No. 142-N of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. Declaration No. 142-Н of ...

in 1991. The island is now uninhabited and is administered as part of the

Sakhalin Oblast Sakhalin Oblast ( rus, Сахали́нская о́бласть, r=Sakhalinskaya oblastʹ, p=səxɐˈlʲinskəjə ˈobləsʲtʲ) is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast) comprising the island of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands in the Russian ...

of the

Russian Federation Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

. The offshore islets of Kuril islands mostly remained unnamed during the Soviet era. The

Russian Geographical Society The Russian Geographical Society (), or RGO, is a learned society based in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It promotes geography, exploration and nature protection with research programs in fields including oceanography, ethnography, ecology and stati ...

made an expedition to the area in 2012 to generate ideas for naming further five islets which were officially given Russian names in 2017. One of them, Derevyanko, is part of Anuchina's offshore islets.

History

See also

Notes

Further reading