Project Hula
| Cold Bay | |
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 Cold Bay
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| Coordinates: 55°12′33″N 162°42′51″W / 55.20917°N 162.71417°W |
Project Hula was a program of World War II in which the United States transferred naval vessels to the Soviet Union in anticipation of the Soviets eventually joining the war against Japan in preparation for the Soviet invasions of southern Sakhalin and the Kuril islands. Conducted at Cold Bay in the Territory of Alaska, the project was active during the spring and summer of 1945. It was the largest and most ambitious transfer program of World War II.
The Russian Empire fought a major war with Japan, the Russo-Japanese War, in 1904–1905, Japan sent troops into Siberia during the Russian Civil War in the Siberian Intervention of 1918–1920, and the two countries remained rivals in Northeast Asia after the establishment of the Soviet Union. Japan's increasingly aggressive political and military behavior in East Asia during the 1930s led to border clashes between Soviet forces and Japanese forces in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo in Manchuria in 1937 at Kanchatzu Island in the Amur River and in 1939 in the Khalkhin Gol/Nomonhan Incident. But after 1939 the two countries turned their attention elsewhere – Japan to focus on the Second Sino-Japanese War in China and the Soviet Union to the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Eventually, the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact was signed on 13 April 1941.
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