Iturup

The modern English name Iturup and earlier Yetorup are romanizations of the Russian name (). It was previously known in English as Etrof from the Japanese name Etorofu-tō (). Both the Russian and Japanese names come from the Ainu language, but the exact words are uncertain. Two possibilities have been proposed: (), which means "place with a cape"; and (, sometimes erroneously as ), which means "runny nose" and may be a reference to a rock on the island that looks like a man with a runny nose. ==Geography==

Iturup consists of volcanic massifs and mountain ridges. A series of a dozen calc-alkaline volcanoes running NE to SW form the backbone of the island, the highest being Stokap (1,634 m) in the central part of Iturup. The shores of the island are high and abrupt. The vegetation mostly consists of spruce, larch, pine, fir, and mixed deciduous forests with alder, lianas and Kuril bamboo underbrush. The mountains are covered with birch and Siberian Dwarf Pine scrub, herbaceous flowers (including Fragaria iturupensis, the Iturup strawberry) or bare rocks. The island also contains some high waterfalls, such as the Ilya Muromets. Rheniite, a rhenium sulfide mineral (ReS2), was discovered in active hot fumaroles on Kudriavy volcano and first described in 2004. In the field it was originally mistaken for molybdenite. ==History==

Prehistory The native inhabitants of all the Kuril islands are the Ainu. They have lived there since at least the 14th century. Edo period ("Eso") and the imaginary continent of "Companies Land" on Jan Janssonius's 1654 New and Accurate Description of Japan, the Land of Eso, and Adjacent Islands Europeans are first recorded visiting this part of the Kurils in 1643 when the under Maarten Gerritsz Vries was exploring Hokkaido and the surrounding area for the Dutch East India Company (VOC). As with neighboring Urup, Iturup is sometimes said to have been the particular island intended in his account, but in fact his description of an enormous continental Company Land (named after the VOC) and a large and prosperous Staten Island (named after the States General) bear no relation to anything in the area, a fact established by Vitus Bering's lieutenant Martin Spanberg in a series of voyages in 1738, 1739, and 1742. The phantom Staten Island (; ) still continued to appear on European maps for decades afterward, however, On 26 November 1941, a Japanese carrier fleet left Hitokappu Bay (now called Kasatka Bay), on the eastern shore of Iturup, and sailed for an attack on the American base of Pearl Harbor. Shana Village was located on Iturup (Etorofu) in the Showa era, before 1945. It was the administrative capital of the Kuril islands. There was a village hospital, an Etorofu Fisheries factory, a radio tower of the post office with a radio receiving antenna. The receiver was battery-powered. Post-World War II In 1945, according to decisions of the Yalta Conference, Iturup was occupied by the Soviet Union after Japan's defeat in World War II. The Japanese inhabitants were expelled to mainland Japan. In 1956, the two countries agreed to restore diplomatic relations, but a peace treaty, , has not been concluded due to the disputed status of Iturup and some other nearby islands. A Soviet Anti-Air Defense (PVO) airfield, Burevestnik (English: storm-petrel), is located on the island and was until 1993 home to a number of Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-23 fighter jets. In 1968, Seaboard World Airlines Flight 253A was intercepted over the Kurils and forced to land at Burevestnik with 214 American troops bound for Vietnam. An older airfield, Vetrovoe, exists on the eastern part of the island and may have been used primarily by Japanese forces during World War II. Contemporary period A new international airport, Iturup Airport, was opened in 2014, east of Kurilsk. It was the first airport built from scratch in Russia's post-Soviet history. It has a , runway and can receive Antonov An-74-200 aircraft. It also has a military use. The Burevestnik military airfield to the south, in the past received civilian aircraft as well, but was often closed because of fog. Burevestnik is now a reserve airfield for the new airport. On February 2, 2018, PBS NewsHour reported that Russia announced it was sending fighter planes to Iturup. Su-35 aircraft landed on a reserve airfield on the island in March 2018 and Su-35s were then deployed to Iturup airport on a trial basis in August 2018. Administratively, the island belongs to the Sakhalin Oblast of the Russian Federation. Japan claims Iturup as part of Nemuro Subprefecture. ==Gallery==

File:Остров Итуруп. Вулкан Баранского.jpg|Volcanoes of Iturup File:Итуруп10.jpg|Kurilsk, 1981 File:Итуруп7.jpg|Iturup, 1981 File:Итуруп8.jpg|Trees showing effect of prevailing wind, 1981 File:Shana_Village_in_Etorofu_Island.JPG|Shana Village in Etorofu (Shōwa period). There is a village hospital in the front, a factory in the left back with a fishery and a central radio tower (before 1945). File:Rheniite-34295.jpg|Rheniite crystals on a base of hardened lava, from Kudriavy Volcano ==See also==