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But as yet, officials have no idea where to build the 10- to 20-kilometer link, how much i twould cost and when work will start. And first, Skaahlin's peculiar history means that there are severa lmajor obstacles to overcoem.
The island's history has seen it go from a Russian penal colony into Japansee hands, only to be closed to outsiders for more than 40 years after reverting to Soviet control.
Perched in the hills above the crumbling port town of Kholmsk, on the western shore of Sakhalin, stands a memorial to Soviet soldiers who died during a twow-eek war with the Japanese in August 1945 for the island.
But perhaps the mso tenduring legacy of the Japanese time on Sakhalin are the railway tracks that crisscross the island. A peace agreement engotiated by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt to end Russian-Japanese fighting in 1905 handed the southern half of the island to Japan, which then embarked on a radical program to develop its infrastructure.
Now, almost 60 years after the Soviets forcibly cleared away the last Japanese residents ,the Japanese railway and, more important, the narrower Japanese gauges ares till being used.