USS Iowa prepares a broadside against Japanese coastal batteries, with USS Indiana offering support.
Entry Five: The Emperor has no Clothes
Many scholars consider the Second World War to have started with the Sino-Japanese War, and the argument does hold water. Instigated by the ambitious Kwantung Army to secure territory north of the Yangtze, the conflict escalated with the maintenance of the United Front, as well as the Yangtze theatre. By 1941, the Empire of Japan was stuck over a 1,000 kilometers deep into central China and opened 1942 at war with every single one of it’s West Pacific neighbors sans the Soviet Union and it’s coerced ally, Siam. Despite having over half of the Imperial Japanese Army held inside China, Japan saw rapid success in its Trans-Pacific campaign, overrunning Burma and the East Indies in a matter of months.
Japanese battle plan into Burma
By the end of 1943 however, the war had turned against the Empire. Halted in Bengal, the Imperial Japanese Navy had been decisively defeated by the Allied (more specifically the US) navies, with their progress steadily being overturned in the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea, along with the steady hammering of the US island-hopping campaign, drawing the Allies ever closer to the Home Islands. However, these damages, at least from the perspective of the Japanese high command, could be seen as negligible compared to the immovable brick wall that was the National Revolutionary Army and the Republic of China. And so in mid-1944, the Japanese developed the Ichi-Go offensive.
Operation Kogo and Togo, two separate formations within the Ichi-Go “Number One” Offensive.
The year of 1944 is, similar to the year of 1916, referred to as the year of offensives. However unfortunately the Number-One Offensive is overlooked amongst the general audience, especially given its importance in the turn of not only the war but also the importance in the post-war arena. While Operation Overlord liberated France, and Operation Bagration liberated Belarus and destroyed German offensive capabilities, Number One was the last major IJA operation, and effectively destroyed the National Revolutionary Army’s capabilities. Designed to seize the US airbases in China, the Japanese saw massive success in the plan, turning the local populous in Henan towards them, in a major breakthrough for the Japanese image in China as well as incapacitating the NRA, encircling dozens of divisions and cutting off millions of troops from their supply bases, as well as capturing Changsha, a feat which the Japanese fought for five years to take. However, Ichi-Go had committed the Japanese irreversibly into Central China, as now it would be not only politically, but also strategically and militarily impossible to withdraw in any organized fashion. Despite the NRA being all but destroyed (With command of NRA divisions placed under US command), resistance in China still continued, now mostly under the ever-growing CCP, and hadn’t stopped the United States from capturing Iwo Jima and later Okinawa the next year. Worse still, the fall of Nazi Germany and the Potsdam conference freed up hundreds of Allied divisions, tens of thousands of airplanes as well as monumental naval assets and set a ticking time bomb for the Kwantung Army in Manchuria.
It is with this context of the Japanese, Allied, and Chinese military situation that the events of the Autumn of 1945 have to be taken into account. With these events in mind, it would be impossible to not observe the Allied war planning entering into the Summer and Autumn of the fateful year. On the beaches of Iwo Jima and the highlands of Okinawa, a startling realization was made that it would be highly unlikely that the Empire of Japan would conventionally surrender. And so a number of plans were drafted.
One of the more popular approaches, especially amongst the USAAF and the US R&D team was the deliverance of the atomic bomb against the Empire of Japan, with strategic targets including Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Tokyo, and Osaka to name a few. However, the use of the atom bomb was repudiated by the new president Henry Wallace, who was against the use of such weapons against civilian populations. This came under heavy flak by the high command, who began seeing the need for a quick end to the war, as Japanese forces continued to rapidly build up in defense of the Home Islands, and war-weariness began reaching the United States. Despite this, Henry Wallace demanded that other solutions be exhausted before the use of the atomic bomb. The refusal to use the atomic bomb, and the results after the fact, would become an incredibly controversial subject, and will likely remain a hotly debated topic for years to come.
Another proposal was supported mostly by the navy. Suggesting that by maintaining the blockade and bombing campaign, Japan would be starved into submission and forced to surrender. The navy suggested operations to take Shanghai and even the island of Jeju, claiming that it would cripple Japanese capabilities to supply China. Compared to the final proposal to defeat the Empire, the navy’s proposal, despite being much less costly on the American manpower pool, didn’t seem tangible, as Japan had been starving for years. Sugar and other basic materials were being rationed since 1940, and the Empire showed no sign of surrender.
The final proposal, spearheaded mostly by leaders within the United States Army, was codenamed Operation Downfall. A gargantuan nightmare scenario operation, the operation called for a large-scale amphibious invasion of the Japanese Home Islands, split into two different smaller operations, Operation Olympic and Coronet. Operation Olympic involved the invasion of the southernmost Japanese island Kyushu, along with the seizure of Yakushima and Tanegashima Islands, and would be launched if the Japanese hadn’t surrendered by November 1st, 1945. Operation Coronet was to be launched around March 1st of 1946, by invading the Kanto Plain south of Tokyo. Despite being almost unanimously dreaded by the United States high command, the plan would be approved by Henry Wallace, under the condition that if either Olympic of Coronet failed to meet their objectives, the atomic bomb would be used, as well as any other unconventional weapon the United States had at her disposal.
Battleplan of the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation
While the United States prepared for its autumn invasion of Japan, the Soviets closed the summer with their own offensive. After the defeat of Nazi Germany, the Soviets agreed to enter the war against the Empire of Japan. And so on August 8, exactly three months after the surrender of the European Axis, the Red Army launched it’s Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation, in effect bringing it into the Pacific War. Almost immediately, the invasion directed by the famed Soviet general Georgy Zhukov melted through the forward defenses of the Kwantung Army, which was positioned in the far North and West of Manchuria. Bypassing strong defense points, the Red Army utilized it’s full technological and numerical supremacy to great effect against the dissolving Kwantung Army. In a matter of days the Manchurian Army was in ruins and the Red Army raced across Manchuria, crossing into Korea and effectively severing the land connection between the IJA in Korea and China.
For the Japanese, this was a nightmare scenario. Caught by total strategic and operational surprise, Japanese defenses resisted fiercely, holding out for weeks after losing their supply lines, however, the Red Army merely bypassed their strongpoints and bombarded their defenses, maintaining their forward units through air supply. Losing 8 divisions in under a month, the IJA launched a panicked and aggressive retreat, ordering a total retreat of any divisions East of Tianjin to attempt to fight their way to Japanese lines in Korea. Across Menjiang, the Mongolian army forced the surrender of Mengjiang forces. A Soviet amphibious landing in South Sakhalin forced a general withdrawal from Sakhalin to Hokkaido, and the Manchukuo government was captured, followed by the capitulation of both Mengjiang and Manchukuo (Although Japanese soldiers still in Manchuria refused to surrender with Manchukuo, rather surrendering individually on a pocket-by-pocket basis)
Eventually, however, the Soviets were stopped at the Yalu River, mostly due to supply issues. This gave the Japanese a crucial time to reinforce and reorganize within Korea while attempting to evacuate Shandong.
Within China, the response to the Soviet intervention was varied. Despite the cutoff of overland routes to China and significant aerial reinforcements, the National Revolutionary Army was still too broken to really attempt any significant counterattack. The liquidation of the Henan pocket and the destruction of the 13 divisions caught inside crippled any NRA hopes of launching a significant counterattack. Despite this, Chiang Kai Shek’s Second Kwangsi Offensive yielded results, retaking vast amounts of land lost in Ichi-Go. The resumption of the Chinese Civil War would, however, cease any further gains into Southern China or along the Yangtze Valley
Arguably the largest beneficiary of the Soviet invasion of Manchuria was the CCP. While the PLA had grown considerably, taking large swathes of territory behind enemy lines, even vital coastal ports like Tianjin, the Japanese army had managed to contain Chinese resistance, bounding their forces to railroads and railroad junctions. With the Soviet-Japanese war, however, the People’s Liberation Army could once again engage in a conventional war, now with Soviet air support and a thin Kwantung line. The PLA set their sights on the Shandong valley, devastated by the Kuomintang flood of 1938, where the CCP enjoyed wide popular support. The Shandong Offensive would see the Japanese position between Beijing and its Yangtze army cut off as the PLA forced the destruction of multiple Japanese divisions which were either evacuated or driven into the sea, with the CCP now in control of Qingdao and Wanghaiwei. The Shandong Offensive was not postponed upon the resumption of the Chinese Civil War
Communist forces during the Battle of Jinan, as part of the September 1945 “Shandong Offensive”
While the Soviets finished off Manchuria and the Chinese Communists swept Shandong, the United States agreed to pass Operation Downfall into action. Despite the entry of the Soviet Union into the war, the Empire of Japan staunchly refused to accept unconditional surrender, hoping to at least hold onto South Korea or Taiwan. And so on November 1st, 1945, after the Japanese position at Pyongyang finally gave out and the Soviets marched to Seoul, the United States launched Operation Olympic.
Beginning with a massive naval and aerial bombardment campaign, the United States unleashed hundreds of thousands of tons of explosives, as well as napalm and other high explosive bombs upon Kyushu and Shikoku, Kumamoto to the ground and bombarding Kagoshima bay. Osaka and Tokyo also received another round of 48 hour firebombing, And the United States soldiers touched ground on midday of November 1st.
United States soldiers on Kushikino Bay, November 1st, 1945.
The 40th Infantry Division, tasked with capturing the Yakushima islands, was held up by a mere battalion for two weeks before a relentless bombing campaign that rendered the island nearly sterile ended resistance. The 158th Regiment stormed Tanegashima Island with fire support from 8 battleships as well as a plethora of cruisers and destroyers. The USS Pennsylvania, the sister ship to the Arizona, shared the fate of her sister and would be destroyed in a violent magazine detonation after being rammed by three human torpedoes and a kamikaze plane, killing nearly her entire crew. The horrific fight to capture the outer islands would only be the beginning of the slaughter, however.
The landing at Kushikino can only be described as a scene from hell. Torrential waves of kamikaze strikes against the landing craft killed thousands before making it to the beaches, and the US 3rd, 4th, and 5th Marine Divisions would fight for hours on the beaches, with suicidal attacks by Japanese soldiers nearly as young as 15 assaulting the LZ. Despite the elan of the Japanese forces, the disciplined US troops (Many of which had been fighting since 1941) pressed on, bringing armor to the beaches and fighting all throughout the night against the Japanese onslaught. Landings at Miyazaki and Ariake were similarly horrible, with the US soldiers pinned to the coast for hours, even longer than a day at Ariake. As one US Marine put it “When the landing craft door opened we were walking on bodies. Getting out we fell on top of bodies. We waded through dead bodies, some of them dead, others moaning and bleeding, many drowning. The waves pulled back, showing more bodies, pushing bodies into the sore, and tugging others away. We crawled on the beach atop bodies. The entire time I was on the beach I never saw the sand.” However, by the Japanese insistence on holding the US at the beaches, they had expended most of their ammunition. Japanese soldiers found themselves running out of ammo, then choosing to either flee or charge the enemy. After X-Day (Olympic’s landing day), the Japanese had failed to push the US into the sea, and with armor and artillery brought into Kyushu, the Empire was attacking US forces mostly to keep the troops from getting rest or regrouping. The first day alone would see roughly 7,500 US soldiers die on the beaches, with over 5,000 soldiers die due to kamikaze strikes, and another 3,400 sailors killed (With 1,000 of that from the USS Pennsylvania alone) due to kamikazes and human torpedoes. Total casualties involved 23,000.
Despite the horrific losses, the Allies had steady movement in the next couple of weeks. With the Japanese having used much of their ammunition on the first couple of days, the US forces began expanding from their beachheads, capturing Kushima and later linking the 1st and 11th Corps on the eastern beachheads, capturing most of the Southeast of Kyushu in a month. Fighting was still barbaric, with Japanese resistance stiffening inland. In a matter of weeks, the United States had over 3 million men deployed into Kyushu, however, it still needed over 100,000 reinforcements simply to replenish casualties, which rose considerably as battlefield exhaustion spiked. Still, the arrival of US soldiers from Europe, veterans of Overlord, and the Ardennes, as well as those seasoned by Okinawa and Iwo Jima, allowed the US to slowly progress. A diversionary assault against Shikoku had seen multiple Japanese divisions stopped for multiple weeks against US commando units, however, casualties were high on both sides. Japanese use of civilians in warfare was expected, but harrowing nonetheless. Japanese civilians would hide behind the lines, attacking night patrols and placing plastic explosives to damage supply columns, while Japanese children would carry satchel charges and kill themselves upon approaching an American tank. Reprisal killings were common, and many US soldiers would be tried for the Kirishima Massacre, where dozens of Japanese citizens were murdered in reprisal for alleged subterfuge.
Hoping to finish the Kyushu campaign in control of the entire southern coastline, the US set its sights on the city of Kagoshima. With the largest port in southern Kyushu, Kagoshima had been the operational goal for Olympic since Day One. Now that Kagoshima was in sight, the United States planned on taking the port before Christmas. The December snows had set, painting Kyushu a brilliant white. It was informally agreed by both sides that the fate of the war, and likely the world, rested in the outcome of the Battle of Kagoshima.
United States Marines moving through Kagoshima, December 28th, 1945.
Although the war had seen the worst of humanity, from the Nanking Massacre to the Siege of Stalingrad and beyond, the battle of Kagoshima ranks among the most atrocious in terms of combat. Launched on Christmas Eve, the United States began with a tremendous bombardment campaign, and cleared the Kagoshima bay of any remaining torpedo boats, dispatched the fleet to provide air cover and naval bombardment, with the USN flagship Iowa leading the bombardment. GIs fought through the snowy bombed-out ruins of Kagoshima, in an effort that took nearly a week of relentless fighting. The entire civilian population of Kagoshima took some effort in the defense of the city, and Kagoshima was completely depopulated by the end of the battle. However, the city itself was little danger compared to the fighting in the outskirts. Clearing out the suburbs and surrounding villages, the remaining Japanese forces found themselves hastily ferried across the Kagoshima strait to mount Sakurajima. By New Year’s, the Battle of Kagoshima had ended, and the Siege of Sakurajima had begun.
American forces march towards Aira to link the fronts. New Year’s 1946.
With the fall of Kagoshima, the United States moved in to connect the eastern and western beachheads in southern Kyushu. Organized Japanese resistance collapsed, and the Americans marched multiple kilometers in a handful of hours, linking the two fronts as the Japanese recalled what forces they had further inland. However, the United States government was unsatisfied. With little recourse left, Wallace would finally approve the use of the atomic bomb, hoping for the bloodshed to finally be over. Fortunately for both the Japanese population and Wallace, the war had truly been decided only 400 kilometers away, across the Tsushima Strait.
After the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation, the Red Army immediately set out on its next main objective- The seizure and liberation of the Korean Peninsula. Almost immediately, the Red Army found itself estranged in the peninsula, fighting in varied, mountainous territory it had only experienced glimpses of in the 1942 Caucasus front, as well as it’s experiences in the Russian Civil War. The Korean Peninsula, dotted with mountains, valleys, and rivers, was a defender’s heaven, with a large mountain range on the east, and urban areas and rivers on the west. Nevertheless, the Soviets spent a chunk of September reorganizing, then continued operations into October. Moving methodically, the Soviets exploited their asset supremacy to destroy entrenched Japanese positions. Despite this, the Red Army found themselves engaged in fierce combat within Korea, as Japanese resilience increased. Even with the fall of Pyongyang in October did the Japanese not show any sign of slackening resistance. This was little worry to the Soviet Union, it had fought against hard resistance during the campaign into Germany, and the veteran Red Army was more than capable of fighting the Kwantung “Remnant” army, who’s elan could only achieve so much.
With the invasion of Kyushu in November, the Japanese defense started to falter, as demoralized Japanese troops requested to fight for their home islands, not for Korea. Their position turned even worse with the formation of the Korean People’s Republic, formed in Pyongyang by Korean Communists, they quickly set about forming a Korean Red Army to liberate the south from decades of Japanese oppression. Quickly forming nearly 4 full divisions, armed and armored by the Red Army, Zhukov used his new allies to take Seoul and confine the Kwantung to Incheon. After that, most Japanese resistance fell back to Busan, as a bridgehead, ostensibly to retake Korea once the Americans had been driven from the Home Islands.
Lyuh Woon Hyung, the first chairman of the National People’s Representative Conference and later leader of the People’s Republic of Korea.
However, despite the delusions of some Kwantung commanders, the fact was that the Soviet Union and the United States had a seemingly endless supply of resources and manpower to draw on and that inevitably Japan would fall. When the first large scale Soviet air raids began on Hokkaido on Christmas day, the Japanese civilian and military government recognized it was only a matter of time before the Red Army was in Northern Japan. With that knowledge, and with the personal fear for his own life, Emperor Hirohito and his cabinet superseded the IJA and declared their unconditional surrender to the Allied Powers just over the finish line on January 2nd, 1946. After over 6 hellish years, the Second World War was finally over.
Official instruments of surrender were signed later in the month, officially bringing World War Two to an end on January 20th, 1946. The war lasted 6 years, 4 months, and 19 days, ending the largest and deadliest conflict in human history.
Map of the Japanese Home Islands at the time of the Surrender of Japan, January 2nd, 1946. Despite the surrender, multiple commanders would refuse or ignore the surrender, continuing insurgent combat well into the American occupation of Japan.
