"Matua" in translation from the Ainu language means "Small burning bays". This island is located in the middle part of the Kuril ridge between the islands of Raikoke and Rasshua. During World War II, allied aviation, bombing everything that belonged to Japan in the Pacific Ocean, bypassed Magua. And when the war ended, President Truman turned to Stalin with an unexpected request to provide the United States with only one of the islands in the center of the Kuril Islands occupied by Soviet troops. Why did the small island of Matua so attracted the President of America?
Matua is a small island located in the very center of the Kuril ridge. During the Great Patriotic War, the Japanese turned it into an impregnable fortress, planning to use it as a springboard in case of war with the USSR. The war really began, but in 1945 3811 Japanese soldiers and officers “valiantly” surrendered to 40 Soviet border guards.
The island, which went to the USSR, was dug up and down with ditches, trenches and artificial caves. Numerous pillboxes and hangars were built conscientiously. The entire coast of Matua along the perimeter was surrounded by a dense ring of pillboxes, laid out of stone or hollowed out in the rock. They were made so soundly that members of amateur expeditions, who have been studying the island for many years, argue that even today the pillboxes could be used for their intended purpose. Moreover, their device was not limited only to preparing the point for firing. Each such position had an extensive network of underground passages, also carved into the rock.
The island's airfield was constructed even more carefully. It is located so well and made so technically competently that aircraft could take off and land in winds of any strength and direction. Japanese engineers have provided for an "anti-snow" design. Pipes were laid under the concrete pavement, which received hot water from thermal springs. So the Japanese pilots were not in danger of icing the runway, and the planes could take off and land in winter and summer.
In one of the coastal cliffs, the hardworking Japanese cut down a huge cave, where a submarine could easily hide. Nearby was the underground headquarters of the garrison command, disguised in one of the surrounding hills. Its walls were neatly lined with stone, there is a swimming pool and an underground bath nearby.
One of the secrets of the island is the disappearance of all military equipment without a trace. Despite careful searches since 1945, nothing has been found on the island. Moreover, there is an amazing, downright mystical pattern: people who tried to search, died in fires that often happened on the island, fell into avalanches. In the late 1990s, as a result of an accident, the deputy chief of the frontier post, who was in charge of this search, died. And when they tried to restore the destroyed communications, a volcano suddenly woke up, located in the center of the island. The eruption took place with such force that huge blocks flying out of the vent knocked down the birds that soared hundreds of meters from the crater!
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Here is an opinion about the unsolved mysteries of the island of Matua by enthusiast researcher Yevgeny Vereshchagi: “There is an extraordinary hill on Matua with a height of more than 120 meters and 500 meters in diameter. Nature does not like such correct forms. This involuntarily suggests that this whole hulk was made by human hands. This is an artificial hill that served as a disguised hangar for aircraft. A very wide man-made depression overgrown with trees and shrubs stands out on its slope. Probably, there was a hangar gate, which was first blown up and then covered with ash from an erupting volcano.
By the way, about the volcano. There were many questions where the military equipment disappeared, which, judging by the underground structures, was literally stuffed with the island-fortress. One of the participants in the amateur expeditions made a seemingly incredible assumption: “Perhaps the Japanese threw all their ammunition into the mouth of the volcano, and then blew it up, causing a powerful eruption. This version, at first glance, sounds like a fantasy. But a road is laid up the cone of the volcano, where, even after decades, traces of tracked vehicles can be distinguished. We can only guess what the Japanese drove along it."
But all these striking grandiose structures are only the outer, visible part of the Japanese secret underground fortress. More than half a century has passed since the end of World War II, but no one has managed to unravel the secrets of the dungeons.
The Japanese, referring to the secrecy of this information, stubbornly refused to answer the inquiries of first Soviet and then Russian researchers of Matua Island. The American president also failed to understand the strange interest in the island.
What does the Kuril island hide in its depths? But what if the death of the island's military explorers, the untimely awakened volcano, and the American president's interest in Matua, and the Japanese refusal to provide materials are not a random chain of events? Perhaps, in the secret, not yet found dungeons of the island-fortress, there is not rusted military equipment that is not needed by anyone today, but secret laboratories that developed secret weapons that were never used during the war?
At dawn on August 12, 1945, three days before Japan's declaration of surrender, a deafening explosion sounded in the Sea of Japan, not far from the Korean Peninsula. A ball of fire about 1000 meters in diameter rose into the sky. A giant mushroom cloud appeared after him. According to the American expert Charles Stone, the first and last atomic bomb in Japan was detonated here, and the power of the explosion was about the same as that of the American bombs detonated a few days earlier over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Ch. Stone's statement that during the Second World War Japan was working on the atomic bomb and achieved success was met with great doubts by many US scientists. The military historian John Dower was more cautious about this information. According to this famous scientist, it is impossible to completely exclude the possibility that at dawn on August 12, 1945, the first and last atomic bomb of Japan was detonated in the Sea of Japan off the coast of Korea. This is evidenced by the huge secret military Hinnam complex, located on the territory of the modern DPRK. It was powerful enough and equipped with everything needed to produce an atomic bomb.
The credibility of Charles Stone's unexpected hypothesis is confirmed by the investigations of the former American intelligence officer Theodore McNally. At the end of World War II, he served in the analytical intelligence headquarters of General MacArthur, Commander of Allied Forces in the Pacific. In his article, McNally writes that American intelligence had reliable information about a large Japanese nuclear center in the Korean city of Heungnam, but kept information about this object a secret from the USSR. Moreover, on the morning of August 14, 1945, American aircraft brought air samples taken over the Sea of Japan near the east coast of the Korean Peninsula to their airfields. The processing of the received samples gave stunning results. She showed that an unknown nuclear device had exploded in the aforementioned region of the Sea of Japan on the night of August 12-13!
If we assume that the development of the most terrible weapon of the 20th century - nuclear - was really going on in the underground city on the island-fortress, then this gives an answer to many questions that baffle the organizers of amateur research expeditions.
Why did President Truman, referring to Stalin, ask to transfer the island of Matua to the United States?
Even before the end of World War II, the Americans began to prepare for an armed confrontation with the USSR. After the declassification of materials about the Second World War, a folder was found in the British archives with the inscription "Unthinkable Operation". Indeed, no one could have thought of such an operation! The date on the document is May 22, 1945. Consequently, the development of the operation was started even before the end of the war. The document described in the most detailed way a plan … for a massive strike on Soviet troops!
The main trump card in a military confrontation could be nuclear weapons, available only to the United States. The Soviet tank divisions that went through the Second World War were in the center of Europe. If Stalin had received, in addition to his superiority in the ground forces, nuclear weapons created by Japanese scientists, then in the event of a military clash the outcome of the war would have been a foregone conclusion, and Europe would have become completely socialist.
Why do the Japanese, referring to the secrecy of information, stubbornly refrain from answering the inquiries of first Soviet and then Russian researchers of Matua Island?
But what should they do? If an underground secret center was discovered on the island of Matua, in which nuclear weapons were developed, and not only was it developed, but also the technology for its manufacture was brought to practical implementation, then this would lead to a reassessment of the events of World War II.
3,795 Japanese soldiers and officers surrendered on the island. The trophies were 2,127 rifles, 81 light machine guns, 464 heavy machine guns and 98 grenade launchers. Strange, but among the listed trophies taken on Matua, there were no artillery pieces. Why? In general, there are many questions in the history of the landing of our paratroopers on Matua.
The Japanese garrison on the island of Matua, after the announcement of the surrender of Japan, had enough time to resolve all issues either with the destruction of all the military equipment available there, or very professionally hide it just in case. The only thing that the Japanese could do was to drown the technique and secret equipment in the sea, or hide it underground, blowing up the paths of the approaches to the underground warehouses. There are still disguised units and assemblies of military equipment on the island, strange carved number rods, the purpose of which can only be guessed at. Exploring the island, you can find many things and objects belonging to Japanese soldiers.
In the late 1970s, three border guards disappeared here. Out of curiosity, the sergeant and two privates descended into the Japanese facilities, and no one else saw them. Then they calculated that they were descending into one of the ventilation shafts of the round hill. Then an order was issued strictly forbidding any climbing on Japanese workings. By the way, because of this prohibition, many border guards who were on urgent duty on the islands did not leave the location of the unit during their entire service.
The answer to the Matua Island awaits its explorers …