Yutaka Miyanishi felt a strong sense of gratitude when he discovered, during a visit to the former Soviet Union, that local people were tending the graves and looking after a cemetery where Japanese soldiers who died in labor camps after World War II are buried.

"That was the starting point for what I am currently doing" to repay the gesture, said the 79-year-old Sapporo native, who now runs a Japanese restaurant in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Sakhalin's provincial capital.

Miyanishi decided that starting this summer, he would ensure that the Sakhalin Regional Museum, which dates from when Japan controlled the southern part of Sakhalin before the war, is kept illuminated every night.