Russia occupied Manchuria because Japan was occupying Manchuria. Just like they ended up occupying all of Eastern Europe, because Germany was occupying Eastern Europe. Any country that was liberated by the Russians became a Russian puppet state after the war. Why did we allow this to happen? Because the only thing we could do about it was declare open war against the Russians. While some people might have favored that, it was politically inconcievable. So we left them to the Russians.
This is a question that I’ve been waiting for a thread to hijack (:D) to ask for quite some time: What was the domestic situation like in Japan during the war?
The Russians still occupy 4 islands in the Sakhalin chain off of Hokkaido. Negotiations are still on-going and actually it is the major stumbling block for Japanese-Russian relations.
Japan was extremely weak in Manchuria at the end of the war and the Russians marched right through. IIRC they didn’t stay because it was simply too far away from the rest of Russia and the Chinese were too strong. Post Japanese surrender it was quite a race between the Chinese communists in Northern China under Zhu De and the KMT who had logistic support from the US to capture Manchuria.
The Chinese communists won and found that the Russians had looted everything that could be carried. Factories were stripped completely bare.
Also, Outer Mongolia had been a Russian puppet state since the1920’s and it borders Manchuria.
Why of course, how stupid of me!
Perhaps “bad blood” was a poor choice of words. What I meant was the general feeling that the situation in Europe had been volatile for so long that something radical had to be done to prevent another half century of warfare. The situation wasn’t the same in Japan, whose imperialist ambitions were more limited and recent, (and which had actually been on the side of the Allies in WWI.)
You had to have been there to appreciate the way the Japanese were detested in the US during WWII. As I understand the Japanese “warrior code” of the time, surrender was looked upon as a dereliction of duty so they had no inclination to do it. And US troops were glad to oblige that course of action whenever they had the chance.
The Pacific War was fought on both sides as if the enemy were some lower sort of being, maybe a form of vermin, according to a lot of the accounts written at the time.
Call me clueless if you want to, but againts this op, what is IIRC?
Ficer67
If I Recall Correctly
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J Chance said >>>I’ll have to throw a flag on this one, too. ‘Asian culture’ or no…Japan was ruled by foreigners for several years after the war. Unless you think MacArthur and company had become naturalized citizens.<<<<<<<<<<
Yes, but we did not have millions of troops walking throughout their country dictationg how they did things. No way would the Japanese have stood for that. Their code would not allow it. They were perplexed at how easily westerners surrendered, since they believed in fighting to the death. It still amazes me that they actually surrendered to the US. Granted, it took a nuclear bomb blasting 2 of their cities, but that’s about what it would have taken. Anything less and we’d be studying how Cadillac Beach was a huge massacre that made D-Day look like a spitball fight. The Japanese knew we were coming, they knew, when, and where we were coming. Troops were gonna die like never before, and they went and surrendered. Just plain amazes me.
But, back on topic, they might not have been calling the shots in Nippon, but they didn’t have to suffer more than the obligitory shock troops. 
Japan and the USSR had what amounted to an unpublicized and undeclared war along the border between the USSR and the Japanese conquered territories on the mainland, beginning in the early Thirties. This was somewhat of an on again, off again conflict, ranging from fairly peaceful periods to border incidents right up to major battles involving divisions of troops, and in at least one case, major tank forces. Any reasonably exhaustive history of WW2 should include details.
To address the OP:
Japan was occupied much like Germany. The USSR took the imperial territories in Manchuria and 4 islands. Tokyo wasn’t divided because, in essence, the Soviets weren’t close enough to occupy the homeland, having to go through Manchuko/Manchuria, and the US didn’t want to share Japan (already having to share Germany).
To address this:
Well, there weren’t millions of occupation troops in Japan, but neither were ther millions in Germany. The US had about 100,000 troops in Japan on average during the occupation. Compare that with about 300,000 for US occupied Germany. The troops in Germany were partially there to deter the Soviets, so of course there were more. The occupation forces certainly dictated how they did things to the point that SCAP wrote the current constitution (having rejected several Japanese proposed constitutions), redistributed over 5 million acres of farm land, and drastically overhauled the education system (among other acts). Additionally, Japan lost national sovereignty until the the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951, and Okinawa remained a US posesion until 1971.
There was other subdivision going on at some level. Living in Japan (Hiroshima area) in the early 80’s, I noted that the electric grid was 50hz 100v in the south while Tokyo and north was 208/220v (not sure of the cycle). This division was partly responsible for Japanese domestic and exports of electronic equipment to be multi-voltage/cycle. I had though it was due to at least a short term Soviet occupation of the Northern part of Japan. Any light on this subdivision?
MacAurther became virtual dictator in Japan after the war. It certainly was a case of troops wandering around the country and giving orders and the Japanese obeying them. They were not answerable to any Japanese authority, only to Washington.
You have to realize the magnitude of the defeat the Japanese suffered. Yes, they had the bushido code, yes they felt it was more honorable to die than to surrender. But by the end of the war, they were starving. Most of the “die before surrender” crowd had ALREADY gotten their wish. Japan’s industry was destroyed, trade was completely blocked, people were starving, housing was destroyed, there was no fuel for heat, American bombers operated with impunity.
The defeat in WWII was so severe that it thoroughly discredited the militarists for generations. Even now the Japanese Defense Force is very low key. Operations in foreign countries are unthinkable. The whole history of that time is generally ignored, swept away as if it never happened.
This is a matter of extraordinary controversy. I’ll try to give a bit of a thumbnail.
Throughout the 1930s, militarism came to predominate. With the Manchurian Incident in 1931, the Army and Navy effectively ended civilian government, and the most radical leaders thereof ensured the supression of any opposition to expansionism. A very effective control over the press ensured that most ordinary Japanese had little other sources of information; remember, this was at a time when in the United States the number of non-Japanese-descent Japanese speakers numbered perhaps in the dozens, so it’s not like we were broadcasting Radio Free Japan.
Early success in the Pacific war ensured that opposition remained token, but as the largely inevitable losses mounted (for more on this, please see Richard Overy’s masterful Why the Allies Won), a so-called “peace faction” seems to have arisen. Its strength is a matter of controversy: much of what we know is based on interviews conducting during the war crimes investigations immediately after the war - a time when the principals had enormous incentives to exaggerate their efforts to end the war. There’s a detailed analysis included in the endnotes to Richard Frank’s Downfall*. But there certainly were periodic efforts through intermediaries, such as Sweden or Switzerland, to enter negotiations. These, of course, flew in the face of the Allies’ demands for “unconditional surrender,” which began at Casablanca and were reiterated at Potsdam. No one seemed willing to push that unti the last 48 hours or so.
And it was a tiny number of Japan’s elite that even knew of such things. From all available evidence, it seems the vast majority of the public was completely ignorant and in utter shock at the Showa Emperor’s surrender broadcast.
*which has the worst subtitle I have ever seen: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire. I am not joking. I kinda get what they’re taking about, but god, how illiterate can you be?
smithsb, the difference is not in voltage, but in cycles - 100 volts nationwide, but 50 in eastern Japan (Tokyo, Sendai, etc.) and 60 in western (Nagoya, Kyoto, Kobe). I only ever lived in western Japan and never had to deal with the difference. I suspect it has to do with different companies controlling the electrical supply in the two regions, but that’s only a WAG - couldn’t find any explanation.
Oh, drattit. That should have read 50 Hz and 60 Hz. And apparently it only matters in “sensitive equipment” - not sure if that means household electronics or not.
G’day
I think you will find that the reason is that the Soviets were not at war with Japan at the time of the Yalta Summit Conference. It was at Yalta, if I recall correctly, that Stalin buffaloed poor ailing Roosevelt into partitioning Berlin and letting Uncle Joe keep as much of Europe as he could get his hands on. Churchill was opposed, but Britain was a cipher by then.
Even Stalin didn’t have the brass front to demand the right to annex part of Japan when he wasn’t even fighting the Japanese. He was, however, quick enough to swipe a slice of Korea and the island of Sakhalin between the bombing of Hiroshima and the Japanese surrender. I have even heard that he deliberately failed to pass on a Japanese request to surrender to give his armies more time to conquer Korea.
Regards,
Agback
The Allies had divided up Europe long before the Russians were in Germany. Poland, Romania and Bulgaria were give a Soviet Sphere of influence. Hungary and Czechoslovakia were to be neutral (didn’t work that way) and Greece to Britian.
One of the reasons the Americans didn’t race to Berlin was why should they shed blood for some land they would have to give up anyway.
France’s share was carved out of Britian and America’s share. They were not considered at all by the Soviets.