p Conquest of the Soviet Far East, the Maritime Territory (Primorye), East and West Siberia was high up on the list of the war aims of the Japanese imperialists. Hitler Germany wanted Soviet territory west of the Urals. Japan wanted all the land to the east. That had been the raison d’etre of their anti-Soviet military bloc.

p Yet, for all their recklessness, Japan’s rulers were somewhat more realistic than their German allies, in their estimate of Soviet strength, due probably to the object lessons at Lake Khasan and Khalkhin Gol. They were in no hurry to attack the Soviet Union, waiting until it would weaken under the German onslaught.

p However, preparations for the attack, the plan for which had been nursed for many years, were continuously extended. The Kwangtung Army built up its strength to 1,100,000 by the beginning of 1942,  [248•1  by which time the Japanese General Staff completed a new war plan. Like the nazi plan, it contained full specifications for violence in occupied territories alongside the usual strategic and operational guidelines.

p Though Japan postponed the attack, her rulers extended the maximum aid to Hitler Germany in her war on the USSR, aid of every kind, and, most important of all, compelled the Soviet Command to keep a considerable force (of up to 40 divisions) in the Far East against the Japanese troop build-up in the proximity of the Soviet frontier.

p The hostile attitude of Japan and action by her naval 249 forces impeded Soviet shipping in the Pacific, particularly that bound from the United States. From the summer of 1941 to the end of 1944, the Japanese detained 178 Soviet merchant vessels, including three with resort to arms, while the ships Angarstroi, Kola and Ilmen were sunk by Japanese submarines.  [249•1 

p Her German ally profited from Japan’s economic, political and military intelligence data relating to the Soviet Union gathered in many countries in various ways, including the use of diplomatic machinery. Early in Germany’s war against the Soviet Union, nazi Foreign Minister Ribbentrop thanked Tokyo for providing valuable information and said he hoped Germany could count on more intelligence in the future.  [249•2 

p In the autumn of 1941 Japanese diplomats tried directing nazi raiders over Moscow. In the summer of 1942 the Japanese General Staff supplied Germans with information about the Red Army build-up near Tambov and east of Stalingrad. They also gave figures on Soviet average monthly tank production type by type.  [249•3 

p Japan shipped valuable strategic materials—tin, rubber, and the like—to Germany either by submarine or in neutral bottoms.

p These and many other acts were a gross violation of the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Treaty, which either signatory was entitled to denounce a year before its expiration.

p Hitler’s crushing defeat, achieved mainly by the USSR, was a cardinal premise for victory in the Far East.’The moment Germany surrendered, Japan’s position became all but untenable. Yet the Japanese Government opted for continuing the war, and even protested formally to Germany for capitulating whereupon it demonstratively tore up its treaties with the already non-existent nazi government.

p The decision to carry on was based mainly on the assumption that the real intents of the United States and Britain would present a thousand opportunities for manoeuvre and double-dealing. Even if the Soviet Union were to enter the war, the Japanese thought, they had capacity for long resistance, which would give them time to sound out the chances of an anti-Soviet deal with their capitalist adversaries. In that sense, Tokyo’s policy in the concluding months of the war 250 resembled that of the nazi chiefs, who continued senseless resistance even in beleaguered Berlin. It was true that the perfidious policy of the ruling element in the United States and Britain was drawing out the war, regardless of the unjustified losses. The Japanese, meanwhile, dragged on, relying on the fact that by the summer of 1945 their war-economic potential was still fairly high.

p Nor did the Japanese Government sit on its hands and wait for the expected rifts in the anti-fascist coalition. Japanese agents in neutral countries sought contacts with British and American diplomats and secret agents since April 1945, trying to inveigle them in secret negotiations of a compromise “peace”. The most serious were the talks hi Switzerland between loshira Fudjimura, a Japanese naval attache”, and an operative of Allen Dulles’s agency^ lasting two months.

p Japan’s rulers also tried to initiate negotiations with the Soviet Union. The first attempt was made on March 4, 1945, when Tokyo approached the USSR semi-officially through Tanakamura, a fishing fleet owner, requesting Moscow to mediate an armistice between Japan and the United States. Tanakamura saw Yakov Malik, the Soviet Ambassador to Japan. "Neither America nor Japan can work up the courage to start talking peace,” the Japanese said. "Some divine power should help them, should recommend that they stop fighting."  [250•1  Through Tanakamura, the Japanese Government thus invoked flattery to gain its purpose, styling the Soviet Union a "divine power".

p The Japanese worked doggedly to pull off the projected intricate diplomatic manoeuvre. In requesting the USSR to mediate an armistice, the Japanese did not mean peace. All they wanted was to win time and drive a wedge between their enemies. So the matter was raised once more, but at a much higher level. In June 1945 the Soviet Ambassador in Tokyo was visited several times by ex-Premier Hirota on instructions of the Togo Government. And in mid-July the Japanese embassy in Moscow put in a formal plea with the Soviet Government, asking it to mediate and announcing that Emperor Hirohito had appointed Prince Konoe as chief negotiator. The Japanese assumed that their high-ranking spokesman would be invited to Moscow.  [250•2 

p The USSR turned down the Japanese request and briefed US and British representatives on all details at the conference in Potsdam. Soviet sincerity and honesty in all inter-allied relations spelled the doom of Japan’s hopes of a split in the anti-fascist coalition.

p The conduct of the US and British governments in relation to the USSR was, in that respect, entirely different. This we know also from the proceedings in Potsdam.

p Though they wanted the Soviet Union to enter the war against Japan, the United States and Britain intended to deny it a say in postwar Far East solutions. That the two powers were eager for the Soviet Union to become involved against Japan is borne out by the fact that at Yalta they recognised the status of the Mongolian People’s Republic, consented to the restoration of the legitimate Soviet right to South Sakhalin and the Kuriles and to the lease of Port Arthur, also accepting Soviet pre-eminence in Dairen and joint Sino-Soviet exploitation of the Chinese Eastern and South Manchurian railways.  [251•1 

p Their wish to deny the Soviet Union a say in postwar Far East arrangements, meanwhile, was betrayed by the fact that one of the most important Potsdam documents —the Declaration on Japan—was framed by them separately, without Soviet participation. The USSR was confronted with a fait accompli after its appearance in print.

p However, the public outcry at home and the prestige of the Soviet Union, champion of the just liberative aims of the Second World War, blocked the US and British governments from laying down the terms of an imperialist peace. By and large, the programme set out in the Declaration was consistent with the idea of a democratic peace. It called for Japan’s immediate and unconditional surrender and outlined in the form of an ultimatum the general political principles to be applied to defeated Japan: removal from power and influence of the culprits of the Japanese aggression, punishment of war criminals, democratic guidelines in Japan’s national development, economic and military disarmament, and constitution of a peace-loving government doing the will of the people. Once this was achieved, the Declaration said, Allied occupation troops would withdraw.

p However, the matter of Japan’s frontiers was so worded as to leave unclear the fate of some Japanese islands, seizure of which was contemplated by the US Government. This applies to the Ryukyu islands, Okinawa included, Iwojima, the Bonin and Volcano islands, and others. Nor did the content of the other items in the Declaration accord with the true US intentions. The Declaration referred to Japan’s occupation by Allied troops, whereas the US Government was resolved not to let any troops but its own discharge that mission. The Declaration referred to Japan’s democratisation and remoyal from power of the war culprits, while Secretary of War Henry Stimson explained that in the US opinion a "monarchy under her present dynasty" should be preserved in Japan.  [252•1 

p The Japanese Government rejected the Potsdam Declaration and refused to surrender, set firmly on the course of drawing out the war.

p A unique political situation arose in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. There was a distinct parting of the roads between the exponents of a temporising policy, including the ruling clique in Japan and quarters in the United States and Britain, and the protagonists of a swift victorious conclusion of the war, including the Soviet Union and the Mongolian People’s Republic, the Resistance fighters in Southeast Asia and Pacific, and people throughout the world.

The Soviet entry into the war against Japan Was of extraordinary international importance. None but the Soviet Union could secure for the peoples of Asia genuine liberation from the Japanese imperialist ’yoke and the right of forging their own future.