Japan has started this year’s services allowing former Japanese residents of Russian-controlled islands off Hokkaido to pay tribute to their ancestors from a ship.

At a ceremony held Saturday afternoon on the vessel Etopirika, which arrived off Kunashiri, one of the islands, a total of 47 people including former residents and their relatives prayed for the souls of their ancestors.

This marks the fifth straight year of such memorial services with former residents being unable to visit their family graves on the disputed islands due to the suspension of a Japan-Russia exchange program related to the islands, known in Japan as the Northern Territories, following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The Etopirika is intended for use for the program.

“It is extremely regrettable that we remain unable to visit our home islands,” Yuzo Matsumoto, 85, who is from the island of Etorofu and who heads an association of former residents, said at the ceremony. He expressed hopes that he and others would be able to visit the graves of their ancestors again as soon as possible.

“I can’t land on the Northern Territories because they were taken by Russia, but I will do my best to pass on my grandfather’s thoughts to the future,” said 12-year-old Tomoki Kimura, a sixth grader from Tokyo. His grandfather lived on one of the Habomai group of islands that form part of the Northern Territories.

Five more rounds of the memorial service at sea are planned to be held by early September.

In addition, there is a plan for former residents to pay respects to their ancestors aboard an aircraft to reduce the physical burden on elderly participants.

The islands, long been claimed by Japan, were seized by the former Soviet Union from Japan at the end of World War II. The territorial dispute has prevented Tokyo and Moscow from concluding a peace treaty to formally end their wartime hostilities.