On August 8 at five P.M., when Japanese ambassador Naotake Sato visited the Foreign Commissariat in Moscow to continue exploring ways of finding peace without conceding to unconditional surrender, Molotov read him a declaration of war. The Red Army attack was scheduled to begin on August 9, which in Manchuria was only an hour later. On that same day, eleven hours later still, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki. The following day Emperor Hirohito said he was prepared to accept the terms of surrender, with the one reservation that his role be preserved. The Western Allies quickly agreed among themselves that this was less than unconditional surrender and waited for the Soviet response.52
The atomic bomb forced Stalin to take steps sooner than he might have wished in order to get the maximum out of the war in the Far East. At two o’clock in the morning on August 11, Molotov called in the British and American ambassadors. He read them a statement whereby the Soviet Union associated itself with the Americans’ negative response to Japan. He then added that if and when the Japanese surrendered, the Allies should agree “on the candidacy or candidacies of the Allied High Command to which the Japanese Emperor and Japanese Government are to be subordinated.” Molotov thought that two Allied supreme commanders might be ideal, perhaps MacArthur and Vasilevsky.
On hearing this statement, Ambassador Harriman became “fighting mad.” He pointed out that the United States had borne the brunt of the Pacific War for four years and that the Soviet Union had been in it for two days. Therefore it was unthinkable and unjust for anyone but an American to be made the supreme commander in Japan. Molotov said he would have to consult with Stalin and indeed soon called to say that the word “candidacies” should be removed from the Soviet reply.53
This seemingly minor war of words was of considerable importance because the Soviet Union was attempting to assert its influence on postwar Japan. On this occasion Ambassador Harriman headed off what he called another “land grab.” Otherwise, the Soviets might well have tried to occupy Hokkaido and thereby extend their zone of occupation to mainland Japan.54
All this time the Japanese government was shockingly dilatory in ending the fighting and thereby allowed the senseless fighting to continue. The government had signaled on August 10 that it was prepared to surrender, but it was indecisive. To make matters worse, on August 12, it executed eight U.S. airmen who had been captured. Three days later it executed another eight. On the night of August 14, in the heat of hatreds that had been simmering already for years, the U.S. Army Air Forces launched a devastating thousand-bomber raid on Tokyo.55
On that very night young Japanese military officers, intent on carrying on the war, attempted a coup d’état. They had support in the government and the army, but key figures bowed to the emperor’s will, and the revolt collapsed. The attempt itself suggests that military morale was not as broken as often assumed. Even after two atomic bombs, the continuation of American conventional bombing, Soviet entry into the war, and the Red Army’s startling military successes, there were still factions in the Japanese army that were not prepared to surrender.56
The Soviet war against Japan must rank among the most remarkable in all of history. It began on August 9 and ended with a cease-fire of sorts after only ten days, though fighting carried on until September 3. In that short time, the Red Army’s “August Storm” offensive tore through Manchuria, where it faced the Kwantung Army, considered the “most prestigious and powerful force the Japanese army fielded.”57 The attack was along a front of more than three thousand miles, so it was highly mechanized, with plenty of air and naval support. It crossed deserts, major rivers, and mountains. The Red Army put into practice the ultimate blitzkrieg, with a highly successful strategy that incorporated everything it had learned in the war against Germany.58
Invigorated by events in Manchuria, Marshal Vasilevsky sent troops, on August 10, to take southern Sakhalin Island, as planned, with the goal of continuing from there due south toward Japan. Five days later, Vasilevsky launched another attack through the Kurile Islands, beginning in the north and moving southwestward. These islands had been promised to the Soviet Union at Yalta. There was ambiguity, however, for it had not been specified how much of the island chain was covered by the agreement. The chain comprises more than fifty islands in all, and the last ones fade into Japanese Hokkaido. Although not everything went like clockwork for the Red Army, overall the success was remarkable.59
Finally, on August 15, Hirohito broadcast his acceptance of terms laid out by the Allies in the Potsdam Declaration. Inexplicably, it was only on August 18 that Japan’s Imperial General Headquarters issued an order to “suspend all operational tasks and stop all hostilities.” Although a cease-fire was called the next day, some Japanese troops continued fighting. The Red Army took advantage of the confusion and, often ignoring the truce, shot enemy emissaries sent out to negotiate.60
Stalin grew anxious when President Truman on August 15 issued General Order No. 1, which set out how the Japanese forces were to surrender, and to whom, in the entire Pacific theater. The president sent a copy to the Kremlin, with a note to the effect that the order was necessary, even though it would not “prejudice the final peace settlement.”61
Stalin agreed and shrewdly added that at Yalta the Soviet Union was promised all the Kurile Islands and that unless the Red Army occupied part of Japan, public opinion in his country would be outraged.62 Truman accepted the first claim, which was false, but he was adamant that the USSR would not have an occupation zone in Japan. Moreover, the president asked for an air base, for commercial reasons, on one of the Kurile Islands.63 Stalin feigned anger and said that there would be no American base.64 But what was really at stake was how far he was willing to push his claims. In spite of having his army and navy take all necessary steps preparatory to an invasion of Hokkaido, on August 22 he decided to call off the landing. All the same, he ordered Vasilevsky to seize the key cities of Port Arthur and Darien in Manchuria.65
The Red Army also advanced into Korea, which Japan had taken as a colony in 1910. Stalin ordered his troops to stop at the 38th parallel, as specified by Truman’s General Order No. 1. Evidently he did so to avoid further conflict because there were no American forces on the ground there. It was also true that Moscow had only two infantry divisions in Korea, though more would soon arrive.66
The occupation authorities in the North and South generally created systems in their own image. The United States helped into power seventy-year-old Syngman Rhee, an American-educated exile and committed anti-Communist. The Red Army installed Kim Il Sung, who for a decade had been a member of the Chinese Communist Party. He was an established figure in the resistance against the Japanese when in 1942 he came under Soviet influence and was drafted. He emerged from the war an officer of the Red Army and a committed Stalinist. Although no one would have guessed it, the time bomb was already set for the Korean War, which would explode five years later.67
The Red Army carried Stalin’s ambitions on its shoulders as it swept over the Kurile Islands. In spite of complaining to Truman, the Soviet forces “took back” more territory from Japan than Japan had ever seized from Imperial Russia. Although most of the fighting stopped, additional Red Army skirmishes continued right up to September 2 and Japan’s formal surrender aboard the battleship Missouri.68