Page 315 - Introduction to Petroleum Engineering

304 MIDSTREAM AND DOWNSTREAM OPERATIONS
and left them burning. Several Japanese residents were taken to Kamchatka as
prisoners. The Japanese returned to Sakhalin Island with a strengthened military
presence. In 1808, members of a Japanese expedition realized that Sakhalin Island
was an island.
Even though Sakhalin Island is one of the largest islands in the world, it only had
a few thousand people living on it when Russian colonization began in the nineteenth
century. A couple of thousand Ghilaks were hunting in the north, and a few hundred
Oroks led a nomadic life in the mountains. The largest race on Sakhalin Island was
the Ainu—a bearded people who also settled in the Kuril Islands.
The Ainu were scattered in a handful of southern settlements. They served a few
Japanese merchants who supplied them with corn, salt, and other necessities. In
exchange, the merchants took all the fish the Ainu could catch in the bays and river
mouths. The Ainu were left with just enough to survive. This servitude was typical
under both Chinese and Japanese domination.
Russians became a permanent part of Sakhalin Island population in the middle of
the nineteenth century. Russia established a military outpost while the Japanese built
fishing and trading villages. The two countries negotiated a treaty that gave Russia
the northern Kuril Islands and Japan the southern Kuril Islands. But the treaty did not
settle the issue of ownership of Sakhalin Island.
The Russian explorer G.I. Nevelskoy explored the eastern coast of Sakhalin Island
and the Amur Firth in 1849. The Amur Firth is a navigable strait between Sakhalin
Island and the Russian mainland. It is adjacent to the northern waters of the Tatar
Strait and was already well known to the Chinese and Japanese.
Russia attempted to consolidate its hold on Sakhalin Island by building military
posts and settlements. The early Russian settlers were either soldiers or exiles. The
first exiles were convicts sent to a penal colony in 1858. The Russian government
declared Sakhalin Island a place of penal servitude and exile in 1869. By the end of
the nineteenth century, Sakhalin Island had become home for many settlements of
Russian convicts that had served their sentences and migrants that had volunteered to
settle on Sakhalin Island.
Some were shipped two thousand miles down the Amur River from the Kara gold
mine. Those from Russia had to travel forty‐seven hundred miles to reach the eastern
mouth of the Amur. Most of the survivors of the journey suffered from scurvy. The
mortality rate in the first few years of colonization was ten percent. Conditions were
so bad that it caused a scandal in the press and the route was changed.
Settlers were sent to Odessa and through the Suez Canal. Even that route was
risky since travelers were exposed to disease like smallpox.
Americans began their expansion into the Far East in the 1840s and 1850s. The
US government sought to negotiate a treaty with the Japanese and failed. As a result,
an American military expedition was sent to Japan. This prompted the Russian
government to increase its military presence in southern Sakhalin Island.
The Russian military presence on Sakhalin Island grew significantly after the
Crimean War (1853–1856), in part as a response to the presence of an Anglo‐French
squadron patrolling Far Eastern waters. Russia was beginning to view Sakhalin
Island as a strategic asset on the Pacific. In addition, colonizing Sakhalin Island also