The loss of the islands is the one Second World war defeat Japan has never accepted. "The four islands belong to Japan. We will confirm our sovereignty and jurisdiction", states Mayor Hiroshi Fujiwara. It claims Russia took advantage of the nuclear bombings to steal them but Moscow believes it conquered the islands fairly. Caught in the middle are the thousands of expelled Japanese islands desperate to return home. There is one unexpected advantage of the islands' Cold War isolation - wildlife has flourished. But Russian settlers have fared less well. They struggle to prosper in a decaying Cold War outpost while the exiles in Japan grow old and fade away.