Many people believed that Project Hula would have given the Soviet Union the ability to invade the Japanese home islands. However, many historians agreed it was still not enough for the Soviets to pose a serious threat to Tokyo. As of 20 December 1945, 3,741 American lend-lease ships were given to the Soviets, 36 of which were capable of mounting an invasion of Japan. This was clearly not enough to pose a large threat to Japanese forces in the mainland.
[42] Given how the Soviets conducted in their invasions of southern
Sakhalin and the
Kuril Islands with limited U.S. Navy ships and landing craft, it was likely that Soviets would not have succeeded in taking entire Japanese-occupied territories, including
Hokkaido.
For example, the Soviets in their invasion of southern Sakhalin on August 11 outnumbered the Japanese by a factor of three but they were unable to advance due to strong Japanese resistance. The Soviet
invasion of the Kuril Islands took place after Japan's capitulation on August 15, and despite this, the Japanese forces in these islands resisted quite fiercely (although some of them were unwilling to fight due to Japan's surrender on August 15). In the
Battle of Shumshu, the Soviets had 8,821 troops unsupported by tanks and without larger warships. The well-established Japanese garrison had 8,500 troops and fielded around 77 tanks. The Battle of Shumshu lasted for five days in which the Soviets lost over 516 troops and five of the sixteen
landing ships (most of these ships were ex-U.S. Navy) to Japanese
coastal artillery while the Japanese lost over 256 troops. At the end, Soviet casualties totaled up to 1,567 while the Japanese suffered 1,018 casualties, making it the only battle in the 1945
Soviet–Japanese War where Russian losses exceeded the Japanese. If the war had actually gone on, the death toll among the Soviets in their invasion of the Kuril Islands would have been far higher and the logistics supply would be severely strained due to lack of Soviet capability to supply its forces and equipment overseas. At the time of Japan's surrender, an estimated 50,000 Japanese soldiers were stationed in Hokkaido
[43][44][
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[45][46]
During World War II, the Japanese had a
naval base at
Paramushiro in the Kuril Islands and several bases in Hokkaido. The
Sea of Japanwas patrolled by the
Imperial Japanese Navyday and night. If there was any Soviet Navy presence on those waters, the Japanese would have been aware of it. Since Japan and the Soviet Union were neutral up until the Soviets' declaration of war on Japan in August 1945, the Port of
Vladivostok and other
seaports in the Soviet Union were constantly watched by Japanese observers based in their own held territories in Manchuria, Korea, Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands.
[47]
The
Yalta Conference gave the Soviet Union the right to invade the southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, but not the Japanese home islands. According to
Thomas B. Allen and
Norman Polmar, detailed Soviet plans for the Far East invasions had been carefully drawn up, except that the landing for Hokkaido "existed in detail" only in Stalin's mind and that it was "unlikely that Stalin had interests in taking Manchuria and even taking on Hokkaido. Even if he wanted to grab as much territory in Asia as possible, he was too much focused on establishing a blockhead in Europe compared to Asia."
[48] Two days before Japan's surrender on August 15, 1945,
Commissar Nikita Khrushchev and
Marshal Meretskov suggested that they should invade Hokkaido, but majority of Soviet diplomats and officers, including
Vyacheslav Molotovand
Georgy Zhukov opposed it on the grounds that they still didn't have enough landing craft and equipment needed for the invasion; thus, if they tried anyway, it would dangerously expose their troops to a fierce Japanese defense, and that it would violate the Yalta agreement with the
Western Allies, which forbade the Soviets from invading the Japanese home islands.
[49]
On September 11, 1947, a memo was written by American leaders[
who?] concerning American troop withdrawal from their
occupation of Japan:
Japan is not likely to present a threat to the security of the United States at any time in the foreseeable future. United States security measures in the Far East are, therefore, designed to primarily to safeguard, without the means available, against Russian armed aggression in the Orient. With respect to Japan, present estimates of Soviet capabilities recognize Russia's lack of adequate naval forces to carry out an amphibious assault on the Japanese Islands...Inasmuch as current United States air and land forces in Japan are considered adequate to disrupt the continued support of such an invasion after the initial surprise assaults, Soviet success would be extremely limited.
[50]