Volcano Islands uninhabited. The first recorded sighting by Europeans was in October 1543 by Spanish navigator Bernardo de la Torre on board of carrack "San Juan de Letrán" when trying to return from Sarangani to New Spain. Iwo Jima was charted as Sufre, the old Spanish term for sulphur. The islands were uninhabited until 1889, when the two northern islands were settled by Japanese settlers from the Izu Islands. They were annexed by Japan in 1891. The population was about 1,100 in 1939, distributed among five settlements: Higashi, Minami, Nishi, Kita and Motoyama (meaning "East", "South", "West", "North" and "Mountain of Origin",
Japanese occupation of the Andaman Islands for maintaining order. Japanese Army personnel in Andaman and Nicobar The events of the next three years are not easy to establish, as the Japanese destroyed all records when they left. The principal sources are an unpublished report by local resident Rama Krishna: "The Andaman Islands under Japanese Occupation 1942–5", another unpublished account by a British Officer, D. McCarthy: "The Andaman Interlude" (he was sent on a secret mission to the islands in 1944), together with the memories of the older inhabitants interviewed by historians. All these, and the published works that draw upon them, are in agreement that the