States and Britain, the Japanese now had every reason to doubt a successful
outcome of their aggressive plans against the Soviet Union... The Japanese
Ambassador in Berlin told Ribbentrop on March 6, 1943 that the Japanese
Government "considered it wrong to enter the war against the Soviet Union just now."
The subsequent developments of World War II did not change the situation in
Japan's favour: by 1943 the strategic initiative in the war in the Pacific passed into the hands of the United States forces... By the spring of 1944 the Japanese General Staff began to elaborate defensive plans in the event of a war with the Soviet Union.
[IVOVSS, vol. V, p. 526. Note the much greater credit given to the USA and Britain in this 1963 publication than in earlier Soviet histories of the war.]
There is good reason to suppose that even if the exact words uttered by the Japanese Ambassador in Berlin after Stalingrad were not known to the Russians at the time, they had an excellent idea of the real position: their espionage service in Japan was
exceptionally good. Up till 1942 they enjoyed the invaluable services of Richard Sorge, a German journalist, who had the confidence of Ambassador Ott himself!
The Russians had stored up by then quite a number of grievances against Japan: they had reason to suppose that during the earlier stages of the war the Japanese Embassy in
Moscow or Kuibishev had been transmitting much valuable information to the Germans
and, at least until Stalingrad, the Japanese had created great difficulties for Soviet shipping in the Pacific, especially for ships bringing supplies from the United States. 178
Soviet ships had been stopped and searched by the Japanese between the beginning of the war and the end of 1944 (mostly during the earlier period), and three Russian cargoes had been sunk by submarines which the Russians later claimed were Japanese.
[IVOVSS, vol. V, p. 529. It can, of course, be argued that Japan rendered Russia a great service in not attacking her (and many Russians were fully conscious of this at the time), but this was not a point to stress in 1945!]
For all that, in 1943 and 1944, diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and Japan remained cool but correct, and the Japanese Ambassador continued to be invited to
official receptions. At Teheran and on many other occasions the British and Americans were told that there could be no question of the Soviet Union joining in the war against Japan until after the defeat of Germany. All the same, there were already some curious straws in the wind as early as the middle of 1944; one of them was the publication of a long novel by A. Stepanov called Port Arthur which, without actually justifying the Tsarist government's policy of imperialist expansion in the Far East, nevertheless
represented the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5 as a "national" war, and as a humiliating national defeat which called for revenge. Anything less "Leninist" was hard to imagine.
It was not, however, till Yalta, in February 1945, that the Soviet leaders firmly committed themselves to entering the war against Japan; the Soviet Union was to receive Southern Sakhalin lost to the Japanese in 1905 and the Kurile Islands.
[Under a Russo-Japanese agreement of 1855 Sakhalin was to be administered jointly by the two countries, while the Kurile Islands were divided between them. In 1875 Japan abandoned her claims on Sakhalin, but received all the Kurile Islands. Under the 1905
peace treaty, Japan received the southern half of Sakhalin. The Russians now not only demanded the return of Southern Sakhalin, but all the Kurile Islands which they
considered as Japanese bases interfering with Russian shipping in the Pacific. Maybe they also suspected even then that the USA had an eye on the Kuriles as a potential air base.]
The clauses of the Yalta Protocol on the recognition of the status quo for Mongolia and on Russian privileges in China were subject to "concurrence" by the Chinese Government, i.e. by Chiang Kai Shek. It was agreed, however, at Yalta that in view of its top-secret nature, the Protocol on Japan could not be communicated to Chiang Kai Shek until after the defeat of Germany.
On April 5, 1945 the Russian people were left in little doubt that they would still have to fight Japan. On that day the Soviet Government denounced its Neutrality Pact with Japan; Molotov informed the Japanese Government that, since the conclusion of the Pact in
1941, the situation had "radically changed"; Germany had attacked the USSR and Japan had helped Germany. Moreover, Japan was fighting a war against Britain and the United States, which were Allies of the Soviet Union. "In virtue of Article 3 ... allowing the right to denounce the Pact one year before its expiry, the Soviet Union hereby does so, as from April 13, 1945."
[ Juridically, the Five-Year Neutrality Pact was valid till April 13, 1946, despite this repudiation, and Russia's attack on Japan in August 1945 was in fact a violation of the Pact.]
On May 15, 1945 the Japanese Government annulled its alliance with the now non-
existent German government and other Fascist governments. The Soviet Government
considered this as a preliminary to a new series of peace-feelers the Japanese were about to put out; but there is nothing to show that they intended to respond favourably to them.
While, at the end of May, Harry Hopkins found the Russians extremely sticky on
questions like Poland, he found them perfectly co-operative as regards Japan. He cabled to Washington on May 28 saying that, according to Stalin, the Soviet Army would be
"properly deployed in the Manchurian positions by August 8"; that Stalin repeated the Yalta statement that the Russian people "must have good reason for going to war", and that this depended on the willingness of the Chinese to agree to the Yalta proposals; he therefore asked that T. V. Soong come to Moscow "not later than July 1 ", and urged that the USA (as Roosevelt had promised) take up the matter with Chiang Kai-shek.
Stalin's views on China, as reported by Hopkins, are particularly interesting, in the light of what happened later:
He [Stalin] categorically stated that he would do everything to promote the
unification of China under Chiang Kai-shek. His leadership would continue after
the war, because no one else was strong enough. He specifically stated that no
communist leader was strong enough to unify China. In spite of his reservations
about Chiang Kai-shek, he proposed to back him.
[Sherwood, op. cit., p. 892. None of this is reported in the present-day Soviet History which treats the Chinese Communists as the only force in China at the time not defeatist in its attitude to Japan.]
In another message to Washington Hopkins stated that Stalin was all in favour of the Open Door for the USA in China, since she alone was capable of giving large financial aid to that country, Russia having her own reconstruction to take care of. Stalin also intimated that the Soviet Union wanted an occupation zone in Japan.
The full story of the events that led to the capitulation of Japan is one of the most intricate in the whole of World War II. It is clear that, at Yalta, both Roosevelt and Churchill were still extremely anxious that Russia should join in the war against Japan as quickly as possible. The position becomes much less clear after Truman became President. Judging from the Hopkins' mission to Moscow in May, Truman still wanted Russia in the war—
which was one of the chief reasons why the new President also wanted to meet Stalin at Potsdam. The Russians now argue, however, that even before he had the atom bomb,