* Victory in east long overshadowed by defeat of Germany
* Relations with Japan remain tense over disputed islands
By Vladimir Kovalchuk
VLADIVOSTOK, Russia, Sept 2 (Reuters) - Russia for the first time celebrated the Allied victory over Japan in World War Two with a national holiday on Thursday, holding military parades and re-enacting battles 55 years after Tokyo's surrender.
The celebrations come with no resolution in sight to a territorial dispute that has prevented Moscow and Tokyo from signing a peace treaty formally ending hostilities.
Earlier this year Russian lawmakers approved a bill to make the anniversary of Japan's surrender an official "Day of Remembrance" marking the end of World War Two.
Sailors carrying wreaths goose-stepped to the tomb of the unknown soldier in the port of Vladivostok, on the Sea of Japan, as church bells rang and veterans clutching red carnations looked on under a steady rain.
One veteran with medals on his uniform held up a poster of war-era Soviet leader Josef Stalin, which read: "Glory to the Soviet people who beat facism and the Japanese militarists".
On Sakhalin Island, veterans watched a battle re-enactment set to military music and concluding with a soldier running triumphantly across the field with a Red Army flag.
"Within 23 days we destroyed the highly rated Japanese army and ended the most bloody war on the planet," said Yakov Kan, chairman for Vladivostok's union of veterans.
Russia celebrates Nazi Germany's defeat with a huge military parade on Red Square on the annual Victory Day holiday on May 9, that features vintage tanks, intercontinental missiles and a fly-over by dozens of air force planes.
But the Kremlin has paid far less attention to the fighting against Japan, which has a much less prominent place in the minds of Russians than the defeat of a Nazi force that overran a large swath of the country and killed millions of its people.
Neither Prime Minister Vladimir Putin nor President Dmitry Medvedev attended the celebrations in the far east and there were no major commemorations in Moscow. Sept. 2 is a federal holiday, but unlike May 9, it remains a working day.
At the Yalta Conference of 1945, Stalin agreed to enter the conflict in the Pacific region after the war in Europe ended, and Soviet forces invaded Japanese-held territory on Aug. 9 -- the day the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki.
Japan formally surrendered in a Sept. 2 ceremony aboard a U.S. battleship.
The Soviet Union and Japan never signed a peace treaty, and a dispute over a chain of islands north of Japan that the Soviet Union held at the end of the war still persists.
The islands, which Russia calls the Southern Kurils and Japan calls the Northern Territories, are a frequent topic of high-level talks, but there is no sign a resolution is near.
(Writing by Conor Humphries; Editing by Elizabeth Fullerton) (conor.humphries@thomsonreuters.com; +7495-7751242)
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