Their most widely known ethnonym is derived from the word ainu, which means " human " ( particularly as opposed to kamui, divine beings ), basically neither ethnicity nor the name of a race, in the Hokkaidō dialects of the Ainu language ; Emishi ( Ebisu ) and Ezo ( Yezo ) ( both ) are Japanese terms, which are believed to derive from another word for " human ", which otherwise survived in Sakhalin Ainu as enciw or enju.

# The above, plus Sakhalin Island, which is generally included on Chinese maps as part of Outer Manchuria, even though it is not explicitly mentioned in the Treaty of Nerchinsk.

Sakhalin was claimed by both Russia and Japan in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, which led to bitter disputes between the two countries over control of the island.

Policies of the Qing Dynasty followed a similar pattern to the previous Ming Dynasty, which drew Sakhalin peoples further into the " system for subjugated peoples ".

As a result, many 17th century maps showed a rather strangely shaped Sakhalin, which included only the northern half of the island ( with Cape Patience ), while Cape Aniva discovered by de Vries and the " Black Cape " ( Cape Crillon ) were thought to be part of the mainland.

Japan proclaimed its sovereignty over Sakhalin ( which they called Karafuto ) yet again in 1865 and the government built a stele announcing this at the northern extremity of the island.

Following the Opium War, Russia forced China to sign the Treaty of Aigun ( 1858 ) and Convention of Peking ( 1860 ), under which China lost to Russia all claims to all territories north of Heilongjiang ( Amur ) and east of Ussuri, including Sakhalin.

Sakhalin is separated from the mainland by the narrow and shallow Mamiya Strait or Strait of Tartary, which often freezes in winter in its narrower part, and from Hokkaidō, ( Japan ) by the Soya Strait or La Pérouse Strait.

The clays, which contain layers of good coal and an abundant fossil vegetation, show that during the Miocene period, Sakhalin formed part of a continent which comprised north Asia, Alaska and Japan, and enjoyed a comparatively warm climate.

Numerous whales visit the sea coast, including the critically endangered Western Pacific Gray Whale, for which the coast of Sakhalin is the only known feeding ground.

About 30 % of all inland transport volume is carried by the island's railways, most of which are organized as the Sakhalin Railway ( Сахалинская железная дорога ), which is one of the 17 territorial divisions of the Russian Railways.

However, the Ainu people did have a name for all of their domain, which included Hokkaido along with the Kuril Islands, Sakhalin, and parts of northern Honshu, which was Ainu Mosir (), a name taken by the modern Ainu to refer to their traditional homeland.

Only when coming back from Magadan to Vanino with a low load and in good weather would the ships travel along the shortest route, i. e., via the Amur Liman, Nevelskoy Strait, and the Strait of Tartary proper ( which, incidentally, SASCO calls the " Strait of Sakhalin "-Sakhalinsky Proliv ).

* 1920 – 1922: the Far Eastern Republic, which included Transbakal, Amur, Primorskaya, and Kamchatka Oblasts and northern Sakhalin ;

The Manchu name of the region is Sahaliyan ula ( literally, " Black River "), from which the name of Sakhalin is derived, and the Mongolian name accordingly is Qaramörin.

As a result, Russia lost the part of Sakhalin Island south of 50 degrees North latitude ( which became the Karafuto Prefecture ), as well as many mineral rights in Manchuria.

On September 1, 1983, the Soviet Union shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, a Boeing 747 with 269 people aboard, including sitting Congressman Larry McDonald, when it violated Soviet airspace just past the west coast of Sakhalin Island near Moneron Island — an act which Reagan characterized as a " massacre ".

It contains Japan's northernmost point, Cape Soya, from which the Russian island of Sakhalin can be seen.

Cape Soya is located near Wakkanai, which is on a peninsula jutting towards Sakhalin.

* 1875 – The Treaty of Saint Petersburg between Japan and Russia is ratified, providing for the exchange of Sakhalin for the Kuril Islands.

The Ainu were distributed in the northern and central islands of Japan, from Sakhalin island in the north to the Kuril islands and the island of Hokkaidō and Northern Honshū, although some investigators place their former range as throughout Honshū and as far north as the southern tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula in what is now Cape Lopatka.

The main feeding habitat of the western Pacific subpopulation is the shallow ( 5 – 15 m depth ) shelf off northeastern Sakhalin Island, particularly off the southern portion of Piltun Lagoon, where the main prey species appear to be amphipods and isopods.

Offshore gas and oil development in the Okhotsk Sea within 20 km of the primary feeding ground off northeast Sakhalin Island is of particular concern.

Of this, uses a broad rail gauge of, while a narrow gauge of is used on a 957-km ( 595-mile ) stretch of railway on Sakhalin Island.

The Sea of Okhotsk () is a marginal sea of the western Pacific Ocean, lying between the Kamchatka Peninsula on the east, the Kuril Islands on the southeast, the island of Hokkaidō to the south, the island of Sakhalin along the west, and a long stretch of eastern Siberian coast ( including the Shantar Islands ) along the west and north.

It is connected to the Sea of Japan on either side of Sakhalin: on the west through the Sakhalin Gulf and the Gulf of Tartary ; on the south, through the La Pérouse Strait.

Oceanic water in Avacha Bay and adjacent bays is also warmer than coastal waters of Kuril Islands and Okhotsk sea coast ( except Southern Kuriles and Southern Sakhalin ).

Sakhalin (, ; also known as Kuye (); Japanese: or ) or Saghalien, is a large island in the North Pacific, lying between 45 ° 50 ' and 54 ° 24 ' N.

It is part of Russia, and is Russia's largest island, and is administered as part of Sakhalin Oblast.

Sahaliyan, the word that has been borrowed in the form of " Sakhalin ", means " black " in Manchu and is the proper Manchu name of the Amur River ( sahaliyan ula, literally " Black River " ; see Sikhote-Alin ).

There is some evidence that the Ming eunuch admiral Yishiha reached Sakhalin in 1413 during one of his expeditions to the lower Amur, and granted Ming titles to a local chieftain.

Sakhalin is the largest island in Russia, being long, and wide, with an area of.

One theory is that Sakhalin arose from the Sakhalin island arc.

Nearly two-thirds of Sakhalin is mountainous.

In 1868 there were about 15, 000 Ainu in Hokkaido, 2000 in Sakhalin, and around 100 in the Kurile islands.

The Mongol Empire made some efforts to subjugate the native people of Sakhalin starting in about 1264 CE.

Moneron, the only land mass in the Tatar strait, long and wide, is about west from the nearest coast of Sakhalin and from the port city of Nevelsk.

The capital Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, a city of about 175, 000, has a large Korean minority, typically referred to as Sakhalin Koreans, who were forcibly brought by the Japanese during World War II to work in the coal mines.

Not knowing about the efforts of Japanese navigator Mamiya Rinzō who explored the same area forty years earlier, the Russians took Nevelskoy's report as the first proof that Sakhalin is indeed an island.

Japan retained the northern half of Sakhalin Island until 1925, ostensibly as compensation for the massacre of about 700 civilians and soldiers at the Japanese garrison at Nikolaevsk-na-Amure in January 1920.

The Soviet attack on South Sakhalin started on August 11, 1945, about a month before the Surrender of Japan in World War 2.

In 1891 Anton Chekhov, the Russian writer and playwright, visited the katorga settlements in Sakhalin island in the Russian Far East and wrote about the conditions there in his book Sakhalin Island.

There are about 444, 000 ethnic Yakuts ( Russian census, 2002 ) mainly in the Republic of Sakha ( Yakutia ) in the Russian Federation, with some extending to the Amur, Magadan, Sakhalin regions, and the Taymyr and Evenki Autonomous Districts.

* Baku oil industry workers transfer: During the German-Soviet War, in October 1942, about 10, 000 workers from the petroleum sites of Baku, together with their families, were transferred to several sites with potential oil production ( the " Second Baku " area ( Volga-Ural oil field ), Kazakhstan and Sakhalin ), in face of the potential German threat, although Germany failed to seize Baku.

* Nechaev, V. A ( 1986 )-New information about seabirds on Sakhalin Island-in Morskie Ptitsy Dalnego Vostoka ( Seabirds in the Far East ) pages 71 – 81 USSR Academy of Science, Vladivostok

Models indicate that it rotates 0. 2 deg / Myr about a pole located north of Sakhalin.

Japanese oil fields in Sakhalin and Formosa provided only about ten percent of the petroleum needed to sustain Japanese industry.

For example, the South Sakhalin Mining and Railway Company plant at Naihoro / Oichai in Karafuto perhaps motivated the licensing: the southern Karafuto brown coal with a content of paraffin tar ( about 15 %), and low water content, was suitable for hydrogenation.

Dolinsk () is a town and the administrative center of Dolinsky District of Sakhalin Oblast, Russia, located in the southeast of the Sakhalin Island in the valley of the Naiba River and its tributaries, about north of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk and from the coast of the Terpeniye Bay of the Sea of Okhotsk.