The Battle of Sakhalin or Battle of Karafuto was a Second World War battle between the Red Army and Imperial Japanese Army which took place beginning on August 11th, 1942, on the island of Sakhalin/Karafuto. The Soviet Union, which controlled the northern part of the island, invaded the Empire of Japan's Karafuto Prefecture, which encompassed the southern part of the island, as part of the Axis offensive against Japan and China.
The 56th Rifle Corps, consisting of the 79th Rifle Division, the 2nd Rifle Brigade, the 5th Rifle Brigade and the 214th Armored Brigade, attacked the Japanese 88th Division. Although the Red Army outnumbered the Japanese by a factor of three, they were unable to advance due to strong Japanese resistance. On August 16th, the Soviet 113th Rifle Brigade and 365th Independent Naval Infantry Rifle Battalion landed at Tōro (塔路), a seashore village of western Karafuto, and the Japanese defenders fell back to prevent encirclement. The Soviet forces advanced as far as Toyohara, the capital of Karafuto, until a Japanese counter-offensive forced them back across the border.
For the remainder of the war, Sakhalin remained in a stalemate - the Soviets did not want to commit more troops to the relatively unimportant island, while the Japanese could not spare any units to reinforce Karafuto and force the Soviets out. Occasionally, Soviet and Japanese troops would skirmish, but the front remained static. At the end of World War II, Sakhalin remained status quo ante bellum. Today, the northern part of the island still makes up Sakhalin Oblast, while the southern area is part of East Japan's Hokkaido Province.