If the Japanese had retreated to the main islands, would the Allies still have planned for invasion?

Great Debates
141

According to Anthony Beevors The Fall of Berlin 1945, The Soviets (all the way up to Stalin) knew about the raping and looting but they didnt care. There were even incidents of drunk Soviet troops fragging any officer who tried to stop them. A tragic sidenote in the conquest of Germany is that liberated Soviet citizens were raped at about the same percentage as German women. Slave laborers were seen as politically suspect and many were liberated from a German labor camp to a Soviet Gulag. The same went for the few surviving Soviet POWs.

142

The Soviets did not have the naval logistics or know how to invade Hokkaido in 1945 or anytime soon after. FACT: The Navy Secretly Handed Over 150 Warships to Russia for an Invasion of Japan | The National Interest

143

All true but one cannot discount the1937 visit by Helen Kellerwhere she discussed her fondness for the Japanese people and they seemed to really bond with her.

“She and her companion Polly Thomson arrived at Yokohama in April 1937 and stayed in the Far East until the late summer. They traveled everywhere and were feted by everyone. They were received by Prince and Princess Takamatsu who, in turn, secured invitations for them to attend the Imperial Cherry Viewing Party at the Shinjuku Imperial Gardens in Tokyo. There they were received by the Emperor and Empress of Japan; in Nara, they touched the sacred bronze Buddha, the first women to be allowed to do so.”

144

My cite says they had a plan, and your cite says they were trying to implement that plan.

True, we’re only talking about a couple of thousand troops in the Soviet plan but when the Japanese surrendered, the ships were there.

145

And the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were entertained by Hitler in Berlin six months later, while Hermann Goering gave Charles Lindbergh a medal in 1938. Didn’t mean squat then, doesn’t mean squat now.

146

Yes the Soviets had a entirely viable plan to invade Hokkaido. The various documents are also reproduced in David Glantz’ “The Soviet Strategic Offensive in Manchuria, 1945: ‘August Storm’”. Two Soviet divisions would have been transported to the port of Rumoi in echelon (IOW one at at time) and a third would have done a shore to shore operation in landing craft from from already (and still) Russian held islands just a few miles north of Hokkaido. The IJA 5th Area Army on Hokkaido had two divisions and an independent brigade but spread all over the island. It had no major units at Rumoi, the Soviets could basically have walked in there as far as land opposition. Nor did the 5th Area Army have the strength to then eject the Soviets once they consolidated a bridgehead, under cover of land based Soviet a/c.

In the debate on Hokkaido it’s sometimes posited that the Japanese could respond effectively with (special attack heavy) air power but firstly that would have presented serious logistical difficulties, like getting fuel there to sustain operations (tankers couldn’t run along the coasts of Japan then, not if the US was onboard with a Soviet operation, juicy targets for carrier planes if not tripped up by US mining which extended to northern Honshu ports by then, the regular ferries which supplied Hokkaido were mainly sunk in a July carrier raid). And secondly it’s not clear how much air power the Japanese would have been willing to withdraw from Kyushu and west/central Honshu while anticipating a US invasion there. And that’s where the great bulk was stationed, weak air contingents in northern Honshu and Hokkaido. As of the end of the actual war Japan hadn’t rearranged its forces in the Home Islands to adjust for the rapid Soviet advances in Manchuria, Korea, Sakhalin and the Kuriles.

It would have taken the Soviets some time to build up a force on Hokkaido to secure that island entirely then proceed to northern Honshu, where things things would have gotten more difficult. But ‘The Soviets didn’t have the navy to invade Hokkaido’ while often said, is wrong. They had what they needed given the short distances involved, which allowed land based air support, even allowed field artillery support from Soviet held islands in some cases, and weak Japanese defenses. They laid it out in an entirely plausible plan.

147

Disagree.

Firstly, the Soviets could only have made the attempt in spring/summer. Hokkaido winters are harsh and start early. Their armor and mech infantry would be rather useless on Hokkaido because of weather and terrain. Japanese kamikazes would be far more effective against the small and rarely used Soviet naval force. What port facilities could the Soviets expect to use and how would they survive winter if 45.

The idea if a Soviet invasion before spring of 1946 is a pipe dream imo.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

148

This guy, from Military History Visualized (well, non-Visualized in this case, since he mainly just talks) agrees with you. It’s a YouTube video.

Basically, for those who don’t want to watch it, he makes a case that the Soviets couldn’t have invaded on schedule because of a number of factors, including the fact that the ports they were planning to use in Manchuria were still in Japanese hands. Also, they didn’t have the logistics and fleet assets to move over the number of divisions they were calling for as needed. Additionally, when they took several of the other, northern islands from Japan the defense was pretty fierce and they ended up losing some critical shipping assets early on. Finally, and probably the most damning, they apparently didn’t have the ability to support their invasion using air assets. I’m a bit curious about this one, as it seems they SHOULD be able too fly off of air strips on the conquered islands as well as from Manchuria. I admit I don’t know as much about Soviet air craft and range data, so maybe it was a range issue. I suppose asking the US to provide naval support, especially naval air cover would be out of the question for the Soviets, so I guess on their own resources they didn’t have the capabilities to do the invasion on schedule. That said, they had more than a million troops in the area (Manchuria as well as the northern Japanese islands they did take), and were already moving supplies in. It might have taken them several more months, but they should have been able to build up air support in the region to give them some cover and, hell, maybe buy additional ships from some of the allies. Though this would have thrown off the time table for their own part and maybe allowed the US and other allies the time to force a surrender without the Soviet invasion at all.

149

Japan might have even used what little non-Kamakazi airforces they had remaining to attack the Soviet fleet directly since there was no way their anti-aircraft abilities were going to even be the slightest match for what the US Navy could dish out (and was, hence the reason the Kamakazi was used).

150

Since I linked to the other video, I might as well link to this one by the same guys (Military History Visualized) that goes into Olympic. Basically, it goes into the OOB for the US and the plan for where troops would be hitting, and even why they were going for what they were going for.

151

So what? Coronet (the invasion of Honshu) wasn’t scheduled until March 1, 1946 and no one expected that would end the war in 2 weeks. A spring 1946 invasion would have fit nicely into the battle plan.

And remember, by this point the Japanese weren’t fighting for victory,they were fighting for the U.S. to give up and negotiate a peace. World War II might have ended up as Vietnam, only 30 years earlier.

152

I recommend going old school on this, get Glantz’ book I referred to, review the positions of Soviet and Japanese forces as of mid-late August 1945, read the detailed reproduced Soviet documents of their plan for Hokkaido in the appendices, and go from there. I believe it very likely people Googled up on the internet saying this wasn’t doable are basing it on less accurate info than in that book. David Glantz is arguably the leading English language authority on Soviet military operations The Great Patriotic War. It’s not some guy on the internet proposing or debunking ‘what ifs’. The book “The Soviet Strategic Offensive in Manchuria, 1945-August Storm” is about the actual campaign in Manchuria, Korea, Sakhalin and the Kuriles, but includes info on further Soviet plans. A series of memo’s from around Aug 19 from the Soviet High Command to 1st Far Eastern Front (a Soviet WWII ‘Front’ was equivalent to a US Army Group, a group of armies each composed of several corps each in turn composed of several divisions; not like ‘the Eastern Front’, but a more technical military term) spelled out the plan.

  1. Scheduled for August 24 (called off by Stalin August 22 per Glantz discussion in the text of the book)

  2. Using the 87th Rifle Corps (composed of 3 Rifle Divisions, Infantry Divisions in US parlance, though Soviet ones were smaller formations), supported by the 354th Naval Infantry Battalion, to gain a lodgment in northern Hokkaido.

  3. Two divisions would be transported one at a time to seize the port of Rumoi in northwest Sakhalin, about 260 land miles from the coast of the Soviet Primorsk region, less than that from southern Sakhalin. The transports would sortie from the Vladivostok area or southern Sakhalin depending on variations in the memo’s. The third division of the corps might attack Hokkaido from the Kuriles, or attack the remaining Kuriles from Hokkaido. A bomber and a fighter aviation division (of 3 regiments each equivalent to though smaller than USAAF groups) would advance to bases on Sakhalin, besides large elements of the Tactical Air Forces and Fleet Air Arm which would support the operation from Primorsk and Sakhalin. The distances were quite practical for land based air cover even for generally relatively short legged Soviet fighters.

  4. The IJA 5th Area Army was not capable of stopping or ejecting this Soviet force, consisting of only 2-1/3 divisional equivalents itself on the whole island with no major units at Rumoi. Japanese ability to foil this invasion would have entirely depended on air power, with the IJN surface fleet basically extinct and submarine arm moribund. But the IJN and IJA had almost no operational air units based on Hokkaido by then. It can’t be ruled out that they’d have quickly shifted enough air units from Kyushu and west/central Honshu to defeat such a landing, but far from obvious. For one basic thing Hokkaido was only symbolically equivalent to Kyushu and Honshu as a place to defend, sparsely populated and basically already economically severed from the rest of Japan by August '45 (most commerce by tonnage had been by dedicated ferries which had nearly all be sunk by the USN in July, only small motor and sailing vessels connected it to Honshu, no tunnel at that time obviously).

It’s not 100% clear the Japanese reaction to a Soviet landing would even have been to try to redirect a large number of air units to Hokkaido given the US threat to the much more important islands. And even if they had there’d have been serious logistical constraints: how to transport aviation fuel, support personnel and supplies which even special attack units needed, and conventional fighter units to support them definitely needed those things.

It can be reasonably debated IMO if the Soviets could have gotten to central Honshu before the US did, very possibly not, since that was a far larger task. But the Japanese had left Hokkaido very weakly defended by summer 1945 because the US threat was so pressing, the only direct threat until the last week of the war, and even if the Soviets entered the war Hokkaido was screened from the them by southern Sakhalin and the Kuriles. But that screen disappeared before the Japanese could reinforce Hokkaido. The planned Soviet lodgment in northern Hokkaido was IMO no more likely to have failed than the Soviet operations in the Kuriles, which suffered some losses but were never in danger of failing.

153

I didn’t watch it, but the info as you describe is largely wrong. Firstly the ports on the Sea of Japan across from Hokkaido were/are in the USSR/Russia, not China (including parts called ‘Manchuria’ in 1945). The Soviet maritime province aka Primorsk region is what land locks the northeastern part of China. The only ports in what was then called ‘Manchuria’ are on the Yellow Sea much further south. The Soviets hadn’t finished taking south Sakhalin (the part ceded to Japan after the 1905 war) when these plans were being made, but soon did.

See previous posts, but the Soviets had USSR territory and the had or soon would southern Sakhalin only around 250 miles to the port in Hokkaido they intended to seize, well within range of land based air cover for the large air components of the 1st Far Eastern Front (army group) and Soviet Pacific Fleet under whose purview this operation would have occurred.

The Soviets lost some Lend Lease landing craft (LCI-L type) in the invasion of Shumshu at the northern end of the Kuriles, an interesting episode* but not a significant loss in the big picture, and again we now know what particular port on Hokkaido the Soviets planned to seize, and the Japanese had little if any defense there. Shumshu was a small heavily fortified island, obvious immediate objective of any Soviet attack on Japan. Hokkaido had been stripped of a lot of the IJA force it had as recently as spring 1945 because it just did not rate in priority as a place to defend, not relevant to the US threat, hope that a two front war with the Soviets would not materialize, hope that the Soviets could be seriously delayed in the Kuriles and Sakhalin if it did come to pass.

However, it seems some of those vessels might have been repaired later after all, since a plaque commemorating this action only lists DS-1, DS-5, DS-9, DS-43, and DS-47 as lost, and at least some of the others were returned in the US in 1955.

According to this Japanese site about the artillery on Shumshu, all this damage was done by one Type 38 75mm field gun in a cave/bunker. It claimed to have destroyed 13 landing craft and 3 transports
http://www006.upp.so-net.ne.jp/yamako/h … tuyaku.htm

154

The two links in the previous post are dead, sorry, but not directly relevant to Rumoi operation.

OK listening to that guy in fairness to him he’s not saying ‘Manchurian ports’, he’s talking about southern Sakhalin operation not being complete when Rumoi invasion was planned.

But he does seem to admit at a point that the Soviets would likely have succeeded in seizing Rumoi. Rather he claims the IJA had enough strength on the islands to converge on and destroy this bridgehead. I think he’s wrong there because counting the whole uniformed strength of the Japanese military on the island, and neglecting how little of it was front line combat units. IJA and IJN) personnel in second echelon units were still fierce to-the-death fighters in static defense, at least up to then, but the relevant force for expelling the Soviets would have been the front line combat units of the 5th Area Army, which were barely bigger on paper than the Soviet force. And like all IJA divisions by then in rear areas, which Hokkaido was, were presumably hollowed out by transfer of the best personnel and equipment elsewhere.

Then he like some respondents on the thread simply assumes a strong Japanese air component on Hokkaido. But there wasn’t one. And also ignoring that by then the Japanese had their own serious challenges to logistically support operations on Hokkaido, there was no longer any large tonnage connection to the rest of Japan.

The Soviets air forces (Tactical Air Forces and Pacific Fleet Air Arm) were large and had bases even in the USSR within range, no details are given why the U-tube guy thinks that wasn’t so. And they specifically did plan to send forward two air divisions to Hokkaido.

So again, you can’t ‘win’ arguments about the outcome of military contests which didn’t happen. But I still don’t see any reason to believe the Soviets would have been failed to establish a logment on northern Hokkaido. Taken a long time to build up their forces till they could occupy the whole island? OK perhaps, and invading Honshu from Hokkaido, though a shorter hop as an amphibious operation would have eventually run into larger IJA forces supplied by land with everything the Japanese had left (except insofar as fighting a US land force on another front) so would have required a far larger Soviet force. Then it becomes much more a question if the Soviets had the shipping to support such a force in Japan.