Wakkanai Park

The "Gate of Ice and Snow" (氷雪の門, Hyōsetsu no mon) is a memorial to those who died in Karafuto. At its centre is a statue of a woman with a look of pain and anguish, her face to the heavens and hands to the earth, her back to Sakhalin. An inscription explains that the monument expresses "grief at the loss of everything held dear".^[3] The memorial was built by Sapporo sculptor Hongō Shin (本郷新) in 1963 and has the more formal name of Karafuto Islanders Memorial (樺太島民慰霊碑).^[2] This memorial is flanked to the left, when facing the sea, by a monument to the "Nine Maidens of Maoka" (九人の乙女の像), nine telephone operators at the post office in Maoka, now Kholmsk, who committed suicide on 20 August 1945 during the Soviet Invasion of South Sakhalin, and, to the right, by a monument inscribed with a poem by the Shōwa Emperor, composed when he heard the story during his visit with Empress Kōjun in 1968.^[2][3]

Also in the park is a monument to the Sakhalin huskies, trained in Wakkanai Park, who have served on expeditions to Antarctica. In particular it celebrates a pair of sled dogs named Tarō and Jirō, who survived for a year when the 1958 expedition was abandoned due to bad weather, while a memorial tower comforts the souls of those dogs who have perished along the way.^[2][3]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Wakkanai Park.

• Karafuto 1945 Summer Hyosetsu no Mon (1974 film)
• Antarctica (1983 film)
• Evacuation of Karafuto and Kuriles
• Rishiri-Rebun-Sarobetsu National Park
• Cape Sōya