Contested islands and Miss World protests

The History Hour

BBC

History, Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 879 Ratings

🗓️ 3 December 2022

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Max Pearson presents a compilation of this week's Witness History programmes from the BBC World Service.

We hear from a man who was aged six when he was among the Japanese families expelled from his island home, as it was taken over by the Soviet Union after the Second World War. Our guest is Professor Haruko Satoh from Osaka University who analyses recent Japan-Russian relations and the impact of the invasion of Ukraine.

Twenty years after the Mombasa hotel bombing, a survivor recounts her experience. Also, the virologist who smuggled live HIV into Bulgaria in her handbag so she could start testing people.

Plus the flour protests at the 1970 Miss World contest and the history of a keep fit phenomenon.

Contributors: Yuzo Matsumoto - taken from his home on Etorofu in 1947 Professor Haruko Satoh - Osaka University Sally Alexander - protester at Miss World 1970 Kelly Hartog - survivor of the Mombasa hotel bombing Professor Radka Argirova - virologist from Bulgaria Annie Thorisdottir - CrossFit world champion

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the History Hour Podcast from the BBC World Service with me
0:08.8	Max Pearson the past brought to life by those who were there. This week a survivor of the deadly Mombasa
0:15.0	hotel bombing 20 years on. We had a really loud bang and then I remember it going
0:20.8	really really really quiet and I remember thinking where are the birds.
0:26.8	Also a Bulgarian scientist struggling to fight AIDS in the 1980s, the birth of a global workout phenomenon.
0:34.0	I just feel like the crossfit gives people a chance
0:36.0	with a little bit left out.
0:38.0	Either team sport or the sports, the chance to prove themselves.
0:41.0	And the moment the Miss World Beauty pageant was disrupted by feminist protesters in 1970.
0:46.0	We knew that if we could disrupt the visual spectacle of a television program going into everyone's homes,
0:52.0	it would make an impact.
0:54.0	That's all coming up later in the podcast, but we're going to begin with an unresolved hangover
0:58.8	from the Second World War. This is a story yet again of how individual lives can be irrevocably disrupted by big power politics.
1:07.0	In 1947, well after the surrender of Japan at the end of the war,
1:12.0	thousands of Japanese families were expelled
1:14.4	from their island homes by Soviet troops.
1:17.4	They were taken from the Northern Territories, also known as the Southern Curials, after the Soviet Union,
1:22.4	took control of the islands.
1:24.4	Yuzo Matsumoto, who's now 81, has been speaking to Laura Jones.
1:28.6	Let's start on the 15th of August 1945, when Japan's Emperor Hirohito made an unprecedented
1:36.5	radio broadcast. The Emperor who many Japanese had never heard speak until now is ending his
1:46.5	country's involvement in World War II and agreeing to the Allied forces terms.
	...

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