Rumoi
”It should be clearly made known to Russia that she owes her victory over Germany to Japan, since we remained neutral, and that it would be to the advantage of the Soviets to help Japan maintain her international position, since they have the United States as an enemy in the future.”
~Suzuki Kantarō
”Here they found real war.”
~ Georgy Zhukov, 1944
On August 25th the invasion of the Home Islands began.
To the shock of the Japanese Supreme Council now huddled under the mountains of Nagano, it did not arrive in the area of the ‘Decisive Battle’, where the Japanese had planned and prepared so meticulously, nor was the force carried by the armada the Americans had amassed. Instead, it would be 6 assault craft escorted by the modest 4 destroyers and 6 torpedo boats of the Red Banner Pacific Fleet, carrying the first echelon of the 87th Rifle Corps, as they charged into the port of Rumoi on western Hokkaido. Hours earlier Soviet airborne forces had dropped just outside the area, securing the airfield that would facilitate the hastily planned Soviet conquest .
In the two hours it had taken to land the remainder of the lead rifle division, the small port had already been secured. Of the two Japanese divisions responsible for the defence of the island the first was focused west, preparing for the unlikely prospect of an American invasion. The other was based around the coastal fortress of Wakkanai on the islands northernmost point, in the belief that the Soviets would only have the capacity to transport a force directly across the La Perouse strait that lay between Hokkaido and Sakhalin, blissfully unaware that since the early Spring the the greatest naval transfer in history was taking place between the Americans and the Soviets in the name of greatly increasing the Soviets naval capacity before their planned entry into the war. This fatal ignorance had left the Rumoi region with only a single coastal defence site, based twenty miles away, and now mercilessly trampled by swarms of Pe-2’s and Il-2’s that had brought their European allies such sorrow.
The four Soviet submarines tasked with alerting their comrades to any Japanese naval response were satisfactorily bored as they continuously reported that they saw nothing amiss. Whilst even a year beforehand the Japanese navy would have made any such landing a suicide mission for a Soviet flotilla, the once mighty fleet had been so relentlessly battered by the navies of the Soviets Anglo-American allies, that they remaining ships had all been pulled south, awaiting the expected American invasion, the same went for the Japanese air force, whose few units in the area could offer little resistance to wave after wave of Soviet dive bombers and fighters.Thus the Soviets quickly linked up with their airborne forces. All that was left in defence of the port and region was the militias of the Civilian ‘Volunteer’ Corps, woefully unequipped and inexperienced old men and young boys who had been press ganged to make-up for the deficit in real troops. Most chose to hide at the sight of the battle hardened veterans of the European conflict , others chose to resist with their collection of muskets, shotguns and bamboo spears, and met a predictable fate. On the first day the Soviets had secured the region and continued to land further troops from an array of craft.
The first Allied beachhead had been secured in a decisive battle, but with a whimper of resistance.
From the Fifth Area Army headquarters in Sapporo there was no whimpering, only panic. The Soviets had overestimated the strength of the Japanese, but the Japanese commanders now thrust into combat were aware of exactly how measly their forces were. As the Soviets consolidated their position, frantic calls to Nagano went out, when could reinforcements be sent? The inquiries went unanswered, the Supreme Council had not expected a Soviet invasion, or at least that it would come so quickly with their supposedly tiny naval forces, now that it had arrived there was little that could be done. Since early August the Americans had been heavily mining the Tsushima strait between Honshu and Hokkaido, whilst also hammering the transport links which connected Northern Honshu from the more populous south, and destroying most large Japanese ships in the area. Whilst this had been done in the name of separating the South of Japan from the majority of their domestic food production, it had also rendered any meaningful reinforcement of Hokkaido impossible. To the dismay of, Kiichiro Higuchi, the Fifth Area Army’s Commanding Officer, the eventual reply from the Supreme Council only reiterated these facts. “There can be no meaningful reinforcement of your position until the situation in the South has been resolved.” Hokkaido had been effectively abandoned.
Although the Japanese situation appeared bleak, the fight was not over yet. Whilst striking south to capture the poorly defended Sapporo seemed attractive to Soviet planners it was not yet realistic. The landing in Rumoi had taken place at the very limits of Soviet air cover, if they struck south before squadrons could be established on the island, they would have to go without that critical advantage, supply also raised concerns, unhindered the Soviets would eventually be able to reliably supply three divisions from Rumoi but if the forces already on the island where to advance south too quickly, supply would become dangerously unreliable making the front vulnerable to even a weak Japanese counter-attack. To secure the island as quickly as possible the decision had been made to move North and West, to secure an air presence on the island and improve the supply capability, the strategy that was necessary, but would also put the advance right into the path of the waiting Japanese forces.
In the north the troops of the Japanese 42nd division were little more experienced or better equipped than the civilian militia’s, however their greater knowledge of the land and the time they had to prepare allowed them to delay the Soviet advance until they were eventually broken by the Soviet air force, nonetheless the Wakkanai fortress held out bitterly for several days after resistance in the rest of the island had ceased, and only capitulated after being stormed by Soviet troops in late September. In the west the battle hardened forces of the 7th Division made the fight in the mountains around Toshio and Tomuraushi as nightmarish as they had for the US Marine Corps in the jungles of Guadalcanal, but as they inflicted heavy casualties on the Soviets further forces were landed, whilst they had no means to supplant their own losses, by September 16th they had also buckled. Now there was little else to oppose the Soviets on the island, and they quickly set about occupying the remainder. As they advanced south the defensive position of Sapporo was little better, leaving the Fifth Area Army’s Headquarters to either flee or commit suicide in the face of their collapse. By the end of September effective resistance had ceased.
The Soviets had conquered Japan’s northernmost island, the Soviets had no means yet of landing on northern Honshu, but the shock echoed from Nagano to Washington, as both were now forced to look at the board to see a completely changed game...
