Soya Straits: a tense frontier

Press, 25 January 1986, Page 18

Soya Straits: a tense frontier

As relations between the Soviet Union and Japan enter a new phase, KEITH STAFFORD, of Reuter, reports from Wakkanai, Japan, on the uneasy border relations between the two countries.

The heaving waters of the Soya Straits are a frontier as crucial to East-West strategy as that between the two Germanies. This small .town on Hokkaido Island is where Japan peters out in a huddle of shops, a weatherbeaten temple and some shabby restaurants. To the north, across 40 kilometres of wind-lashed sea, lies the bristling Soviet fortress of .Sakhalin Island. After World War II the Russians wanted to divide defeated Japan like Germany, taking Hokkaido to add to four small islands nearby which were occupied as the war ended and which are still in Soviet hands. The United States and Britain killed the idea. Later a re-armed Japan stationed its tank division on Hokkaido. The Soya Straits have become strategically important as one of only three gaps through the chain of Japanese islands which the Vladivostok-based Soviet Pacific Fleet could use to reach the open sea. f

On the bleak hills above Wakkanai, radar domes and radio masts track ships and aircraft 24 hours a day. Here sits the equipment which followed the last flight of a Korean Air Lines Boeing 747 with 269 people aboard in September, 1983. It strayed off its flightpath to Seoul above Sakhalin and was shot down with a ’missile by a Soviet Sukhoi fighter from the Dolinsk-Sokol airbase below. Wakkanai recorded the Soviet pilot’s message: “We have fired. The target is destroyed.” Western military sources say the Soviet Pacific Fleet now numbers 835 ships, making 300 passages through the Soya Straits every year. Two aircraft carriers are based at Vladivostok — the Minsk and the Novorossisk, which joined the Pacific fleet last year. The latest additions, two months ago, were the 28,000tonne nuclear-powered battlecruiser Frunze and two destroyer

escorts. The Frunze carries about 250 anti-aircraft and shlp-to-ship missiles, rocket launchers and 130 mm guns. “These new units represent a significant upgrade to the Soviet Pacific Fleet capabilities,” United States Admiral James Lyons told journalists. Western defence experts also say that to the north-east of Wakkanai, in the sea of Okhotsk, more “Delta III” nuclear submarines went into service this year. In the Okhotsk underwater trenches they can lie deep and hidden, well within missile range of the United States mainland. “Their Increasing number is a matter of grave concern, not least to Japan,” says the Research Institute for Peace and Security in Tokyo, a defence think-tank. Of more immediate concern to Wakkanai’s fishermen was an incident last November when a Soviet minesweeper fired three warning shots across the bows of a Japanese fishing boat It was netting yellowtail when it tangled a minesweeper chain. No-one was killed, but it was another incident to add to a long list brushes between Japanese

fishermen and Soviet warships in the fishing grounds between the two countries. “There have been many encounters between Wakkanai sailors and the Russians,” said a Japanese journalist who recently talked to fishermen in the area. “It constantly worries them.” The growth of the Soviet navy and flights by Soviet aircraft near or in Japan’s airspace have prompted Tokyo to strengthen its own defence shield in recent years. The Cabinet of Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, regarded as hawkish on defence, has just decided to boost spending on the armed forces by 6.6 per cent in 1986-87. In an otherwise tight-fisted budget, defence spending in the financial year starting next April will be 3343 billion yen (5NZ32.9 billion). The navy will get 793 billion yen (SNZ7.7 bilffon) to build three new destroyers. The air force will get 10 new antisubmarine patrol planes. Under American pressure Japan has agreed to defend its long sealane approaches and defence experts say it plans to try and seal its vital straits, including Soya, in wartime. Washington hopes this would bottle up the Soviet fleet