Posted on 04/27/2005 1:18:58 PM PDT by jb6
According to my source (Encyclopedia Americana), "On August 14, on the emperor's advice, these [Potsdam] terms were accepted, and hostilities ceased." The formal surrender aboard the Missouri was on September 2, but apparently there was no fighting after August 14.
Not that there was really much fighting with the Russians before that date. According to the same article, "The USSR declared war on Japan on August 8 (effective August 9) and, using a massive force of three strong army groups, invaded Manchuria, Korea, southern Sakhalin, and, later, the Kuril Islands. The Japanese armies in Manchuria, reduced in size and weakened by the need to provide further defense of the homeland, could offer little resistance...."
The Commies were reall brave against defeated enemies.
Stalin had his goal of expanding Communist domination to any place he could get too. There was quite a heavy fighting in Manchuria and other places in Far east between Soviet troops and the remnants Japanese military throughout August and Early September. This is another chapter of WWII that should be explored more in depth.
No, they declared war two weeks before the end. Zukov destroyed a Japanese army in 1939 and then again in the end of 1945's fighting. They took several corps, loaded them on trains and shipped them to Manuchika.
Hardly, the last battalion sized unit in the Phillipines, of the Japanese Imperial Army, was destroyed in mid 1946. Small company level units and Platoon sized units continued to fight and conduct guerrilla warfare till the early 1950s. Some small units continued to fight until the 1970s and the last Japanese soldier surrendered in the early 1980s. You were saying? :0)
Now go read up on Zukov crushing the Japanese in '39.
Actually, the territory recoverd was the areas lost to the Japanese in 1905. You should know that, it's your history after all.
Are you defining the "end" as the formal surrender aboard the Missouri on September 2? Because hostilities ceased on August 14, and even by then the Japanese didn't have much left to defend Manchuria with, because they had needed men and materiel to use against our forces.
I know there were isolated pockets of Japanese soldiers who either didn't get the formal word that the war was over, or didn't believe it. The soldiers in Manchuria in 1945, however, didn't offer much resistance, unless you have some cites to the contrary.
Trading one tyranny for another, I don't blame them.
Thank you, I did. (the following refers to the final battle, not the entire campaign)
Of the 30,000 troops on the Japanese side, 8440 were killed and 8766 wounded. The Red Army committed 57,000 infantry, 498 tanks, and 346 armoured cars to the battle, and claimed total losses (killed and wounded) of 9284 men. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, new documents about the battle changed the numbers considerably. The actual number of losses in the battle was 23,926, of whom 6,831 killed, 1,143 reported missing and 15,952 wounded. While the Red Army did win the battle, it was not a one sided battle as previously believed. Source
State Entry Exit Combat Forces Population Losses
Japan 1938 1939 1000000 77000000 15000
Russia 1938 1939 5000000 170000000 4000
The increased military activities in China--and the Japanese idea of establishing "Mengukuo" in Inner Mongolia and the Mongolian People's Republic--soon led to a major clash over rival Mongolia-Manchukuo border claims. When Japanese troops invaded eastern Mongolia, a ground and air battle with a joint Soviet- Mongolian army took place between May and September 1939 at the Battle of Halhin Gol. The Japanese were severely defeated, sustaining as many as 80,000 casualties, and thereafter Japan concentrated its war efforts on its southward drive in China and Southeast Asia, a strategy that helped propel Japan ever closer to war with the United States and Britain and their allies.
in 1938 and 1939 Soviet and Japanese armies tested each other in two full-scale battles along the border of Manchukuo. But in April 1941 a neutrality pact was signed with the Soviet Union, with Germany acting as intermediary.
The Japanese Kwangtung Army, then occupying Manchuria, attacked Soviet and Mongolian forces holding disputed territory along the Khalkin River (May 1939). The Japanese attacked in divisional strength (15,000 to 20,000); three Soviet and Mongolian divisions, including several armored brigades, in all numbering 60,000 to 70,000 and commanded by General Georgi Zhukov, successfully counterattacked, reoccupying and holding the disputed territory. Their elite forces badly beaten, the Japanese withdrew, ending the undeclared war (September 1939).
After their border war defeat by Soviet and Mongolian forces and their lack of progress in China, the Japanese turned decisively toward the invasion of Indochina and the coming war in the Pacific.
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