Getting stomped by the Soviets in Manchuria may have been a grave shock for the Japanese—after all, it was their ambitions in China that started this mess—but how would the Soviets have been able to invade Japan, given their near total lack of shipping suitable for carrying out an amphibious assault? I doubt the US at that point would’ve given them a lift. The Soviets would’ve been in a similar position to that of the German Army post Dunkirk, even if they managed to capture or kill the British Army there: that’s great, but how are you going to cross that large body of water and win the war?
I need to read Downfall, but AIUI it answers the OP’s question decisively in favor of dropping the bombs.
Yeah, real “No prisoners!” stuff. Mind, that was what the planners came up with. I doubt production would have been at the state that nine nukes would have been ready by the projected start of Downfall.
My grandfather (paternal) was a tank commander who’d been reassigned to the Army amphibious tractor units in preparation for the Invasion of Japan. In other words, the first vehicles on the beaches.
He was EXTREMELY supportive of the idea of using nuclear weapons on Japan.
Bolding mine. Actually, they did, and why wouldn’t they? The U.S. had been supplying the Soviets with materiel which proved essential for Soviet logistics throughout the war.
On how they’d do it, the Soviets were planning to invade the northernmost of Japan’s home islands, Hokkaido which was left to fend for itself, following their successful invasion and capture of Japanese Sakhalin. As for never intending to fight Japan, Stalin had made it clear that the USSR would join the war against Japan following Germany’s defeat at Tehran, in 1943.
Stalin was an untrustworthy liar who was quick to take advantage of every other nation. Before Hitler invaded Poland, Stalin had signed a non-aggression pact with the Nazi. Stalin then chose to invade Poland two weeks after Hitler did. That cooperation only lasted until Hitler invaded Russia. Stalin then demanded assistance from the Allies, which he had just decided to join. Stalin used the lives of Russians and Allied supplies to conquer, and keep, Eastern Europe for himself.
Stalin said lots-O-shit before, during, and after WWII. IMHO, Stalin’s promise to declare war three months after the VE day was simply political horseshit. Stalin was aware that the U.S. was close to producing a working model of a war-ending atomic bomb and Stalin would invade Japan ASAP after the U.S. had proved they had a working model of this new super weapon.
He didn’t tell Stalin. The British and the French were a part of the program. Not that stalin didn’t know, he learned about it years before Truman did.
Neat cite. I wasn’t aware of it until your mention, so thank you. Silly of the U.S. to do such a thing in April 1945—not like the U.S. needed the Soviet’s help to do anything in the Pacific Theater (except maybe return the B-29s that landed there, before they were taken apart down to the last nut and bolt.), and it’s not like there weren’t cracks becoming apparent in the U.S.-Soviet working relationship. Still, it happened. The remainder of your cite for Operation Hula notes that while theYalta Agreement Regarding Japan contemplates that the Soviets would enter the war against Japan, they were only to get returned to them the Kurile Islands and the remainder of Sakhalin. Invading Hokkaido was not something mentioned in the document. Be interesting to think about what such a hypothetical invasion would have done to the U.S. Soviet working relationship though. If successful, which I think is a pretty big “If.”
Anyway, it however doesn’t materially change my point that the Soviets lacked the shipping to invade the Japanese home islands, even after Hula’s Lend-Lease transfer. For an amphibious assault, the important ships in the list of transferred materiel were the 30LCIs, as they were the only ones on that list that could carry troops and dump them somewhere other than a port. An LCI could carry maybe 200 troops, so all 30 combined mean that the Soviets could dump 6000 troops in one push, assuming all of them could land on the same beach, neglecting added logistics duties, etc… Neither 6000 troops, nor the nearly 9,000 that the Soviets ended up using at Shumshu, are occupying Hokkaido, not when the Japanese had 50,000 troops garrisoned there. (I’ve read 50,000; your cite from Hasegawa mentions 110,000)
The Soviets did manage to pull out a win at Shumshu, against a near identical number of Japanese defenders, at the cost of suffering more casualties than the Japanese defenders and a sixth of those landing craft I mentioned. Which is pretty much how the Soviets did a few years prior when they tried to take the Crimean Peninsula from the Germans via an amphibious assault, Kerch also involved a much shorter supply line than any invasion of Hokkaido would have entailed.
Had the Soviets tried to invade Hokkaido, it may have initially worked, provided they picked a relative undefended area to land. After that? I can’t see five to ten thousand men, without tanks, with little organic naval artillery or initially, seaborne land artillery support, doing well against Japanese defenders that would have outnumbered them five to ten-fold. I am guessing they might have had their Hokkaido beachhead snuffed out, as happened to the southern assault on Kerch. The Soviet commanders on scene had to be aware of the relative balance of forces, even if Stalin had idle daydreams to the contrary. It’s interesting if the Japanese General Staff was aware of Soviet amphibious deficiencies though.
I’ve read a brief part of your cite from Hasegawa, and I have to wonder how he came to his conclusion that a proposed Soviet invasion at Rumoi was going to have any chance of success. Yes, the Fifth Field Army was cut off and left to fend for itself, and yes, Hokkaido’s a large island and the Japanese can’t be everywhere at once. The fact remains that the Soviets weren’t going to be able to muster enough shipping to land a large enough force to stand up to even 1/3 of the 110,000 that Higuchi would be able to send to defend Rumoi post-landing, even though most of those 110,000 were poorly trained reservists.
Heck, the invasion of Southern Sakhalin AIUI was having no end of difficulty until most of the Japanese Fifth Army issued a ceasefire four days later. This is from the wiki, but I’m reading it as the Soviets were stopped at the Karafuto Line, even though they had 3-1 superiority in troops, and had armor. The Soviets presumably had tube artillery support and an adequate logistic stockpile ahead of time, neither of which they were going to have a lot of for a Rumoi landing. Plus, they were attacking from land, not from the sea, and they still were largely stopped until the Japanese, post-Hirohito surrender broadcast, threw in the towel. I’m supposed to believe that their performance on Southern Sakhalin would have translated into a victory on Hokkaido?
Does the theory that the Soviet declaration of war was a greater shock to the Japanese than the atom bombings, require that the Japanese believed the Soviets had a meaningful capability to actually invade the Home Islands? Or did it just require that the Japanese knew that their territorial gains in Manchuria were forfeit? Or something else, like, and I’m just guessing here, that the Japanese had a pipe dream that they would be able to play off the Soviets against the Americans in such a way as to forestall any invasion, and that the Soviets declaring war ripped those hopes away?
As to Japanese fears of a Soviet invasion, why would the Japanese hold the Soviets in greater esteem than the U.S., who by that point had already invaded a score of Japanese held islands and strongholds, eradicated their defenders and mostly did it without pause? What difference does it make if the Soviets now show up to play carrion vulture, when the Japanese already hadn’t been able to stop the U.S. for the last two years? Were they supposed to think the U.S. weren’t going to be able to crack the Home Islands, but now with the Soviets showing up, the U.S. would be able to do it?
Ultimately, I guess I’m having difficulty trying to understand how the Soviets entry into the Pacific War outweighs the psychic effect for the Japanese of having two of their cities scoured by fire by one bomber each, in rapid succession. Hasegawa and, among others, Wade Wilson disagrees, but I’m having a tough time seeing it.
The USSR had little navy or transports. There’s no way they could transport and supply a decent invasion force. Only the few landing craft we gave them, and no shore bombardment to speak of.
I didn’t say Stalin was a good ally, or a good person. And he obviously had ulterior motives for getting involved in the Pacific war. But he DID promise to enter the war against Japan three months after the war in Europe ended, and he DID spend that three months building up a 1.5 million troop battle force, and DID indeed invade Manchuria.
If the Soviet invasion of Manchuria did nothing else, it tied up 600,000 Japanese troops, some percentage of which would have made it back to Japan if the U.S. had tried to invade.
And for anyone who still thinks the Japanese would’ve given up, the Imperial Army in China didn’t surrender until August 22, a full week after the Emperor’s broadcast.
Did the Allies realize Stalin was after territorial expansion?
I have wondered why the first atomic weapon wasn’t used against the Japanese troops in Manchuria. It seems that our Russian “Allies” were there. They sure as hell killed a lot of Germans, though.
To be true, it’s not like a B-29 couldn’t fly that far. Little Boy was around 9200 pounds. Swap out 10,000 pounds of bombs for fuel and I think you can hit a target in Manchuria from Tinian. Especially if you land at Iwo instead of flying all the way back to Tinian on one tank of gas.
The thing is, a 20 kT bomb doesn’t destroy all that much area. And armies have a bad habit of spreading out. Here’s a cite listing infantry frontages—the linear distance a unit is responsible for holding—during WW2. Even a division is holding more of an area than one A-bomb can reasonably be considered to destroy. A division is only 10,000 or so people (less for the Soviets). Let’s say the bomb kills half of them at one go. 5,000 army men dying is a very bad day, and a “WTF was that?!”, but it’s not the same overwhelming psychic shock of 140,000 civilians and military going up in smoke. Delivering overwhelming shock—breaking the enemy’s will to resist—is the point of using the Bomb in the first place.
Also, who is to say the Japanese would even admit to the decision makers what had happened? How would Hirohito even know, in the same way he knew when Hiroshima literally dropped off the map?
Yes Russia was capable of attacking the Japanese in China but I think you’re confusing occupied China with Japan in an argument about Japan’s surrender. Whatever Stalin’s intentions and promises were they didn’t exist without US supplies and his troops weren’t capable of invading Japan.
I am amazed that people think that in wartime in difficult circumstances governments can instantaneously make major decisions like surrendering. E.g., the Japanese government didn’t immediately surrender after Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Um, by any reasonable standard, they pretty much did surrender as fast as was possilbe.
Remember, Hitler killed himself on April 30, 1945. Berlin wasn’t surrendered until May 2. The main German surrender didn’t occur until May 7/8. But some units continued on for several days. And the fact of defeat was much more clearcut in this situation.
The A-bombs were one of the very important factors in Japan surrendering. It was only 9 days from Hiroshima to when the surrender was announced. 9 days is nothing when the home islands weren’t being invaded.
Just how do you think the Japanese would have been able to transport troops back to Japan? There transport fleet and Navy were destroyed. The US had complete air and naval superiority in the entire theater. If anything, having a few hundred thousand more troops in Japan would have accelerated Japans collapse because they couldn’t feed them.
