The Stalemate North of Hokkaido
More than 60 years ago, in the last days of World War II, the Soviet Union seized the four islands north of Hokkaido from Japan, islands that Russia had recognized as Japanese for nearly 100 years prior to their occupation in late 1945. Over the course of the past six decades, the dispute over ownership of these four islands has overshadowed relations between Moscow and Tokyo, frustrating repeated efforts to sign once and for all a peace treaty formally ending the state of war between them that began in August 1945. Japan's desire for greater energy security in recent years has held out the possibility of improved relations with Russia, the world's second-largest oil producer after Saudi Arabia, provided that the two nations could reach some kind of modus vivendi over the territorial issue. However, the recent Putin-Koizumi summit held in Tokyo late last year offered little hope that this might occur anytime soon. Observers in both countries are now suggesting that it may take another decade, and the passing of the generation exiled from the disputed islands, before this issue can be resolved dispassionately as a nettlesome historical problem, rather than the matter of personal loss and human dislocation that it has become.
A Historical Reevaluation of America's Role in the Kuril Islands Dispute
A S RECENTLY as December 1995, Japanese Minister of State Masaki Nakayama announced "that, from a legal standpoint, Russia and Japan are still in a state of war."' A formal peace treaty ending World War II has continued to elude Moscow and Tokyo, even though both sides have expressed confidence that a treaty terminating Russo-Japanese hostilities will be signed before the turn of the century. One of the primary factors impeding progress on the peace talks has been the territorial dispute over which islands actually constitute the Kuril Island chain. As background to the Kuril Islands dispute, this article will first examine the early history of the Kurils, when Japan initially gained legal possession over them, and then the World War II negotiations. These negotiations led to the Soviet annexation of the entire Kuril Island chain as well as the Habomai Islands and Shikotan Island, formerly considered an indivisible part of the island of Hokkaido. The article will then consider the SovietAmerican exchanges between Stalin and Truman over the exact wording of the United States' General Order No. 1. Finally, it will discuss the pitfalls such as the so-called "Dulles Threat Incident" surrounding the Kuril negotiations between Moscow and Tokyo during the 1950s, negotiations that have yet to be completed. Based on declassified U.S. government documents from the W. Averell Harriman collection at the Library of Congress and the John Foster Dulles collection at Princeton University, this article will conclude that the United States never condoned the permanent cession of all of the Kuril Islands to the Soviet Union. Rather, Washington's policy from the Yalta Conference onward merely agreed that Moscow could negotiate directly with Tokyo to arrive at a mutually acceptable solution. In an attempt to assist Japan in these negotiations, John Foster Dulles even suggested in 1956 that Japan linkAmerica's planned return of Okinawa to the Soviet return of the disputed Kuril Islands. According to the American viewpoint, in the absence of a Russo-
On the use of the Hardening Soil Small Strain model in geotechnical practice
This article highlights the importance of using advanced constitutive soil models in numerical modelling as daily geotechnical practice. In this context, the Hardening Soil (HS) model is presented as the most advanced soil model implemented in the ZSoil finite element code. The article recalls the basic features of the HS model and it explains their role in numerical simulations. The role of pre-failure non-linear behaviour of soils is also discussed. An application of the HS model is illustrated on typical geotechnical problems such as retaining wall excavation, tunnel excavation and undrained loading followed by consolidation.