He commanded the 7th panzer division during the battle for France. It was known as the ghost division.
The war continued but the first fractures between Chiang Kai-Shek and Stalin soon appeared as Stalin favoured the communists over the nationalists in spite of differences in opinion between Mao Zedong and Stalin. Nevertheless, the war continued. The Japanese by now were fully on the defensive. They wanted to inflict as many losses as possible to make the Soviets reconsider waging this war. It wasn’t working as Stalin didn’t care about losses as long as the Red Army won. Shortly after the second battle of Tsushima Zhukov and his second in command Timoshenko launched his latest offensive. It was called Operation Suvorov. It was named after the famous Russian general Suvorov who never in his entire career had lost a battle and was the fourth and last generalissimo of the Russian Empire. It would be the largest single offensive in the entire Soviet-Japanese war. Preparations for this offensive had started several months before as the infrastructure in Siberia slowed things down. Around 2.1 million men, 20.000 artillery pieces, 3500 tanks and 5000 planes were gathered for this single offensive. It was preceded by an extensive maskirovka campaign to make the Japanese believe that the next strike would be south. False preparations were made and the troops for Operation Suvorov were well hidden. The Japanese in the meantime sacked Umezu as the leader of the Kwantung Army and executed Kasahara who was held responsible for this war and replaced him with Otozo Yamada. He would prove to be unable to stop the Red tide.
The offensive was launched on August 19th 1943 and met with success. Many Japanese units were battered beyond recognition and were scattered all over the place. The Kwantung army under the leadership of general Yamada regrouped to fight the Soviets. They were forced to retreat due to the massive numbers the Soviets were using. The Soviets advanced towards Harbin and Shenyang and didn’t stop there. The Japanese fought valiantly and resisted the Soviets in every way they could. It was of no use. The Japanese were soundly defeated in the battle for Harbin. Forces in Korea and parts of China which were still in Japanese were brought in to bolster the forces fighting in Manchuria. They arrived late, too late to save Manchuria. The infrastructure in Siberia was also being improved. The Transsiberian railroad was out of range of Japanese bombers by now except for the heavy Ki-67. Japanese fighters however couldn’t go so deep into Soviet territory to escort it. In the meantime construction on the Amur-Baikal line had started. This would improve Soviet supply capabilities. Operation Suvorov officially ended on September 22nd when the Soviet offensive grinded to a halt on the Yalu river in northern Korea. Heavy Japanese resistance had forced the Soviets to stop which had given the Japanese time to build defences on the southern bank of the river. The line was known as the Meiji line. It was considered the most heavily defended line in the world, stronger even than the Maginot line or the Siegfried line. Many thousands of bunkers and casemates had been built on the southern bank. All bridges had been blown up. As many as five million landmines had been laid on the banks of the Yalu river. Heavy air defences consisting of all kinds of anti-aircraft weapons were made. In the hinterland south of the line airfields were built. The line wasn’t entirely finished yet when the Soviets arrived but the Japanese managed to prevent them from crossing the river and would keep on doing so for over three months. This offensive also took away the Daqing oilfield which was Japan’s sole source of fuel. Foreign imports weren’t enough. Because of this the Japanese army would perform under capacity for the rest of the war. This also meant the end of Japan’s puppet, Manchukuo.
Fortunately for the Japanese the Soviets didn’t have any experience in amphibious operations which would be needed to get to the other side of the river. They attempted to cross the Yalu in late September and failed. To make Japan surrender, the Soviet air force on Stalin’s orders started a bombing campaign against Japanese cities. Ilyushin Il-4 and Tupolev Tu-3 bombers were built in increasingly larger numbers and by the end of 1943 air raids on Japanese cities of a thousand planes or more were common. One city was wiped off the map each week in a terrible firestorm. The bombing raids usually consisted of two waves. One of them delivered plain fragmentation bombs while the other bombed the cities with fire bombs. These bombings only strengthened the Japanese’s will to fight on. They increased fighter production to ward off the Red Air Force which sustained heavy losses. Stalin in turn just ordered a further increase in aircraft production and a bigger effort to recruit new pilots. The war was a strain on the Soviet economy which also had to support an atomic bomb project. This was nothing compared to what the Japanese had to face. An entire city were levelled each week and many of these were important industrial centres. The Soviets wouldn’t launch their next offensive until 1944. Soviet supply capabilities were still difficult but manageable since bombings on the Transsiberian railroad had stopped. They would remain so until the completion of the Amur-Baikal line in 1945.
The Soviets also started supporting communist Korean insurgents led by Kim Il-Sung who started a guerrilla war. The Soviets supported them with useful weapons such as rifles, machine guns, grenades, mortars and other weapons that could be carried by one person. The Soviet Union also provided food and clothing which were hard to come by in Korea as Japan needed all the food to feed itself. Clothing would come in handy during the winter. The insurgents mainly operated from the mountains in northern Korea and attacked Japanese supply columns headed for the north in ambushes. The Japanese responded very harshly toward the insurgency by killing innocent civilians and burning entire villages to the ground. Even today mass graves can be found from the time of the Japanese genocide. This only fuelled the insurgency as more and more Koreans flocked under their banner. Their numbers increased every day. By mid-1944 the Japanese only exerted control over the major cities, industrial centres and the main roads. The countryside and the mountains were effectively under control of Kim Il-Sung and Japanese patrols only showed their faces to keep up appearances. The Japanese found it difficult to deal with a guerrilla war, especially in the icy cold winter of northern Korea.
A few days after the start of 1944, on January 5th the Soviets launched their latest offensive. At this time the Yalu was frozen solid which made crossing the river much easier. The Red Army unleashed a massive artillery bombardment and the air force started the largest aerial attack to date in the Soviet-Japanese war. Many thousands of planes bombed Japanese positions and Japanese Zeros took off from their airstrips like bees defending their hive. Many planes’ engines didn’t start because of the cold. Those that did get off the ground inflicted heavy casualties but were outnumbered by stunning numbers of the Yak-1, Yak-9 and MiG-3 fighters. Even after bombardment resistance was heavy. The artillery and aerial bombardment hadn’t softened the target. Only around 15% of the Japanese fortifications on the Yalu river had been destroyed. This resulted in very heavy combat as Soviet forces landed on the southern bank and desperately tried to maintain their foothold. The Japanese counterattacked and managed to push the Soviets back to the northern bank of the river. The Soviets had lost their beachhead but Stalin demanded an immediate counterattack and Zhukov complied. If the Japanese managed to hold on until spring, the ice on the river would melt which would protract the war. Such a reprieve would give the Japanese until winter of 1944-1945 to strengthen their defences. On February 1st the Red Army attempted to establish a foothold once more. The hold was shaky and the Japanese again counterattacked. They managed to contain the Soviets for over a week but wouldn’t repel them a second time. The Soviets ferried in reinforcements as fast as they could and finally broke through Japanese defences on February 9th but not before sustaining heavy casualties. Japanese defence in depth was effective even when facing superior numbers. This was basically trench warfare and the Japanese added bunkers and mine fields. These mines destroyed many tanks and many soldiers in bunkers fought on long after being surrounded or at least until they ran out of ammunition.
The Soviets crossed the Yalu near Sinuiju where Kim Il-Sung proclaimed the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. He formed a government mostly consisting of his brothers in arms and established his provisional capital in the city. Soviet forces next start a large encircling movement aimed at destroying Japanese forces still holding other parts of the line. General Yamada saw the disaster that was about to unfold and retreated against the will of his superiors. He made this decision when Soviet forces under general Vasilevsky crossed the Tumen river near Musan which enabled the Soviets to start a double encirclement like Hannibal had done at the battle of Cannae over two thousand years before but on a much grander scale. Yamada retreated but not without a fight. The Japanese fought fanatically for every square millimetre of ground and slowed the Soviet advanced significantly. The mountain ranges in Korea were excellent for a defensive war and Yamada held onto several defensive lines there. In the end it only slowed the huge Red Army down. The Soviet Union was fully mobilized and the economy was geared to total war. Probably the only country in the world that could defeat the USSR on its own was America. In the end Yamada was forced to retreat to the Taedong river were he established another defence in depth in mid-May. This defensive line stretched along the Taedong river and to the west. General Yamada in the meantime was replaced by general Kimura for his failure to keep the Soviets out of Korea. The people in charge in Tokyo didn’t want to see that the Soviets couldn’t be defeated, not by Japan anyway.
Kimura started to fortify the existing defences on the Taedong river and on the orders of his superiors started preparing for a counteroffensive. The offensive started on June 16th 1944 and met with success as the Soviets were surprised about this sudden attack. Initial gains were big but a Soviet counterattack had retaken back almost all Japanese gains by the end of July. Kimura decided to remain on the defence and made it crystal clear to his superiors that a new offensive would most likely break the Japanese army instead of the Red Army. This latest offensive had cost the army a lot of men and equipment. Now the Japanese army was desperately trying to hold on to its defences on the Taedong river and did so for quite some time. They inflicted heavy casualties on the Soviets and repelled several offensives. This situation couldn’t continue forever and on August 22nd the Soviets broke through Japanese lines but at a high cost. They broke through at two places and again tried a double encirclement. Kimura foolishly obeyed his orders to not retreat and a large part of the Kwantung army was surrounded by the Red Army. The Japanese pocket was centred around Pyongyang. The result was the battle of Pyongyang which lasted for almost a month. By now the Korean guerrilla resistance movement had been transformed into a regular army called the Korean Workers’ and Peasants’ Army, KWPA. This force was about twelve divisions in size and consisted of veteran partisans. These would form the core of Korea’s armed forces. The battle lasted until September 5th 1944. In the end lack of fuel, food and ammunition forced the encircled Japanese forces to give up. This battle had been devastating to the Japanese since they had lost over 700.000 men who were either dead or captured. Most soldiers avoided being captured since they knew how the Soviets treated their prisoners. They usually kept the last bullet for themselves. After the battle for Pyongyang the Red Army quickly expanded its beachhead on the southern bank of the river.
The battle for Pyongyang had been the execution of the Kwantung army as it was intended to be. Soviet casualties were severe too. The Red Army had sustained over 600.000 casualties. The Soviets replaced these losses with new fresh divisions from the west. Very soon Soviet numbers were replenished and a new offensive was launched to deny the Japanese any chance to pull themselves together again and mount an effective defence. Soviet and Korean forces swept the remainder of the Korean peninsula that was still under Japanese occupation clean in three months. Highlights of this campaign were the battle for Seoul in which Stalin had given Korean soldiers the doubtful honour of being the spearhead of the offensive to take the city and the battle for Busan. The battle for Seoul lasted for only a few days as there weren’t that many Japanese forces in the city. Afterwards a column of 60.000 Korean soldiers marched into the city and planted their flag on the Japanese General Government Building. The governor-general who had failed to escape the city was publicly executed for numerous crimes committed against the Korean people. It was in Seoul that Kim Il-Sung established his permanent capital. The Soviet advance continued and on December 9th 1944 Soviet forces surrounded the last pocket of Japanese resistance in Busan. The area around that city was the last bit of Japanese held territory in Korea. In a spectacular operation the Japanese navy evacuated the remaining forces in Busan and safely brought them to Japan. On December 21st 1944 the last Japanese forces left Korea which was now fully independent from Japan. Korea was whole again and very soon the Korean people would find out that the DPRK was only a slight improvement over the Japanese. Kim Il-Sung and his overlord in Moscow were harsh rulers. Now the only bit of land on the Asian mainland was an area half the size of Honshu on China’s east coast which was growing smaller every day as the Chinese advanced. The Japanese had taken many forces away to defend Korea and this was breaking them up. By early 1945 Japanese control only stretched as far inland as the guns of their battleships could reach. Once again the Soviets drove them off by means of their air force. By early February 1945 the last Japanese forces were driven out of mainland Asia.
The Soviets in the meantime stepped up their bombing campaign against Japanese cities. France, Britain and Germany increased their aid to Japan and condemned Soviet terror bombing. Soviet submarines attacked convoys of merchant vessels headed toward Japan and slowly strangled Japan to death. The western powers didn’t declare war over this as they wanted to avoid a major war until they were ready. The Soviets had over 300 submarines available and most of them were deployed east for this single task. Stalin hoped he could beat Japan into submission by bombing their cities and cutting off their lifelines. The Japanese navy at this time was still an effective fighting force which could prevent any invasion attempt by the Soviet navy. Eventually the Zeros stopped coming as the Japanese were short on fuel and the resources to build more planes. The Japanese more often than not were unable to interdict the bomber fleets of the Red Air Force. A lot of machinery and industry had been destroyed in the bombings. Only a few Zeros came off the production lines each month. Japan stubbornly refused to surrender as long there were no Soviet soldiers on Japanese soil. The Japanese, as a propaganda stunt, did conquer northern Sakhalin. They captured Soviet territory but it didn’t do them any good as the Soviets on Stalin’s orders ruthlessly and mercilessly laid waste to Japan regardless. Sakhalin did have oil which helped keep the navy and air force going. It wasn’t enough fuel and many planes were grounded and many ships were kept in harbour and were only used when necessary. Japanese planes would only take off to attack incoming bombers and sometimes not even then. All navy ships except for destroyers which hunted submarines were kept in their harbours. Japan was now fully on the defence and could only hope that the Red Tsar who had his seat in distant Moscow would lose his patience and decide to call it a day and make a compromise peace. Stalin wouldn’t here anything of it however. Bombing raids continued while the Soviet Union built its atomic bomb.
1945 passed this way and Japan started to prepare for an invasion which by now seemed inevitable. As a prelude to the invasion the Soviets occupied several islands near Japan which could serve as staging areas. They first invaded the Kuril islands which made admiral Yamamoto decide to shift a quarter of the fleet to the north. The islands were invaded in a one week campaign in which the Red Air Force made the first ever use of paratroopers in its history. The islands’ tiny garrisons couldn’t match Soviet numbers. It was the first action for many soldiers stationed there as the islands were isolated and hadn’t seen any combat during the war. The Soviets had destroyed telegraph and phone lines to the islands. The Soviets also occupied several islands in the Sea of Japan, most notably Tsushima. This confused the Japanese high command as they now could expect an invasion of Hokkaido in the north or a direct invasion of the main island, Honshu. This frightened many in the Japanese high command as invasion now seemed to be imminent. Contrary to their expectations, invasion wasn’t going to happen for some time. The Soviets now had six modern battleships of the Sovietsky Soyuz-class and six Stalin-class carriers with two more under construction in Leningrad due to be launched in May 1945. The Soviets also had eleven heavy cruisers with three more on the slipways. The Soviet navy also had many older ships including several pre-WW1 dreadnoughts and even pre-dreadnoughts.
The Soviet navy as a whole was still smaller than the Japanese navy which meant that a seaborne invasion would surely fail. The Japanese had eight battleships with another Yamato-class battleship under construction which would be named Kii. This was one at the time was still known as hull number 111. This would become the fourth and last Yamato-class battleship, the others being Yamato, Shinano and Musashi. Work on that one was continuing at a slow rate due to scarcity in resources. A fifth Yamato-class battleship which was give the designation hull number 797 was cancelled with little actual work done and its resources along with parts of the ship that were already finished were assigned to the Kii. The Japanese also had nine carriers, eighteen heavy cruisers and many other ships. The Soviets therefore continued trying to bomb Japan into submission and cut off their lifelines although a trickle of resources from the west still came through in spite of Soviet submarines. This was enough to keep the Japanese’s heads above the water but nothing more. The Japanese in the meantime allocated all available resources to the defence of their country. Several 18.1 inch guns which would have gone to the unfinished hulk that was hull number 797 were installed as coastal artillery on Honshu. By now the Japanese high command had decided that the invasion would come at Honshu and concentrated all of their forces on Honshu. And so 1945 ended and 1946 started with Japan unwilling to surrender and the USSR unable to make them do so. This was a typical situation of the water dragon vs the bear. They couldn’t fight each other outside of each others habitat. Very soon however the bear would learn how to swim.
Chapter 8
The war continued but the first fractures between Chiang Kai-Shek and Stalin soon appeared as Stalin favoured the communists over the nationalists in spite of differences in opinion between Mao Zedong and Stalin. Nevertheless, the war continued. The Japanese by now were fully on the defensive. They wanted to inflict as many losses as possible to make the Soviets reconsider waging this war. It wasn’t working as Stalin didn’t care about losses as long as the Red Army won. Shortly after the second battle of Tsushima Zhukov and his second in command Timoshenko launched his latest offensive. It was called Operation Suvorov. It was named after the famous Russian general Suvorov who never in his entire career had lost a battle and was the fourth and last generalissimo of the Russian Empire. It would be the largest single offensive in the entire Soviet-Japanese war. Preparations for this offensive had started several months before as the infrastructure in Siberia slowed things down. Around 2.1 million men, 20.000 artillery pieces, 3500 tanks and 5000 planes were gathered for this single offensive. It was preceded by an extensive maskirovka campaign to make the Japanese believe that the next strike would be south. False preparations were made and the troops for Operation Suvorov were well hidden. The Japanese in the meantime sacked Umezu as the leader of the Kwantung Army and executed Kasahara who was held responsible for this war and replaced him with Otozo Yamada. He would prove to be unable to stop the Red tide.
The offensive was launched on August 19th 1943 and met with success. Many Japanese units were battered beyond recognition and were scattered all over the place. The Kwantung army under the leadership of general Yamada regrouped to fight the Soviets. They were forced to retreat due to the massive numbers the Soviets were using. The Soviets advanced towards Harbin and Shenyang and didn’t stop there. The Japanese fought valiantly and resisted the Soviets in every way they could. It was of no use. The Japanese were soundly defeated in the battle for Harbin. Forces in Korea and parts of China which were still in Japanese were brought in to bolster the forces fighting in Manchuria. They arrived late, too late to save Manchuria. The infrastructure in Siberia was also being improved. The Transsiberian railroad was out of range of Japanese bombers by now except for the heavy Ki-67. Japanese fighters however couldn’t go so deep into Soviet territory to escort it. In the meantime construction on the Amur-Baikal line had started. This would improve Soviet supply capabilities. Operation Suvorov officially ended on September 22nd when the Soviet offensive grinded to a halt on the Yalu river in northern Korea. Heavy Japanese resistance had forced the Soviets to stop which had given the Japanese time to build defences on the southern bank of the river. The line was known as the Meiji line. It was considered the most heavily defended line in the world, stronger even than the Maginot line or the Siegfried line. Many thousands of bunkers and casemates had been built on the southern bank. All bridges had been blown up. As many as five million landmines had been laid on the banks of the Yalu river. Heavy air defences consisting of all kinds of anti-aircraft weapons were made. In the hinterland south of the line airfields were built. The line wasn’t entirely finished yet when the Soviets arrived but the Japanese managed to prevent them from crossing the river and would keep on doing so for over three months. This offensive also took away the Daqing oilfield which was Japan’s sole source of fuel. Foreign imports weren’t enough. Because of this the Japanese army would perform under capacity for the rest of the war. This also meant the end of Japan’s puppet, Manchukuo.
Fortunately for the Japanese the Soviets didn’t have any experience in amphibious operations which would be needed to get to the other side of the river. They attempted to cross the Yalu in late September and failed. To make Japan surrender, the Soviet air force on Stalin’s orders started a bombing campaign against Japanese cities. Ilyushin Il-4 and Tupolev Tu-3 bombers were built in increasingly larger numbers and by the end of 1943 air raids on Japanese cities of a thousand planes or more were common. One city was wiped off the map each week in a terrible firestorm. The bombing raids usually consisted of two waves. One of them delivered plain fragmentation bombs while the other bombed the cities with fire bombs. These bombings only strengthened the Japanese’s will to fight on. They increased fighter production to ward off the Red Air Force which sustained heavy losses. Stalin in turn just ordered a further increase in aircraft production and a bigger effort to recruit new pilots. The war was a strain on the Soviet economy which also had to support an atomic bomb project. This was nothing compared to what the Japanese had to face. An entire city were levelled each week and many of these were important industrial centres. The Soviets wouldn’t launch their next offensive until 1944. Soviet supply capabilities were still difficult but manageable since bombings on the Transsiberian railroad had stopped. They would remain so until the completion of the Amur-Baikal line in 1945.
The Soviets also started supporting communist Korean insurgents led by Kim Il-Sung who started a guerrilla war. The Soviets supported them with useful weapons such as rifles, machine guns, grenades, mortars and other weapons that could be carried by one person. The Soviet Union also provided food and clothing which were hard to come by in Korea as Japan needed all the food to feed itself. Clothing would come in handy during the winter. The insurgents mainly operated from the mountains in northern Korea and attacked Japanese supply columns headed for the north in ambushes. The Japanese responded very harshly toward the insurgency by killing innocent civilians and burning entire villages to the ground. Even today mass graves can be found from the time of the Japanese genocide. This only fuelled the insurgency as more and more Koreans flocked under their banner. Their numbers increased every day. By mid-1944 the Japanese only exerted control over the major cities, industrial centres and the main roads. The countryside and the mountains were effectively under control of Kim Il-Sung and Japanese patrols only showed their faces to keep up appearances. The Japanese found it difficult to deal with a guerrilla war, especially in the icy cold winter of northern Korea.
A few days after the start of 1944, on January 5th the Soviets launched their latest offensive. At this time the Yalu was frozen solid which made crossing the river much easier. The Red Army unleashed a massive artillery bombardment and the air force started the largest aerial attack to date in the Soviet-Japanese war. Many thousands of planes bombed Japanese positions and Japanese Zeros took off from their airstrips like bees defending their hive. Many planes’ engines didn’t start because of the cold. Those that did get off the ground inflicted heavy casualties but were outnumbered by stunning numbers of the Yak-1, Yak-9 and MiG-3 fighters. Even after bombardment resistance was heavy. The artillery and aerial bombardment hadn’t softened the target. Only around 15% of the Japanese fortifications on the Yalu river had been destroyed. This resulted in very heavy combat as Soviet forces landed on the southern bank and desperately tried to maintain their foothold. The Japanese counterattacked and managed to push the Soviets back to the northern bank of the river. The Soviets had lost their beachhead but Stalin demanded an immediate counterattack and Zhukov complied. If the Japanese managed to hold on until spring, the ice on the river would melt which would protract the war. Such a reprieve would give the Japanese until winter of 1944-1945 to strengthen their defences. On February 1st the Red Army attempted to establish a foothold once more. The hold was shaky and the Japanese again counterattacked. They managed to contain the Soviets for over a week but wouldn’t repel them a second time. The Soviets ferried in reinforcements as fast as they could and finally broke through Japanese defences on February 9th but not before sustaining heavy casualties. Japanese defence in depth was effective even when facing superior numbers. This was basically trench warfare and the Japanese added bunkers and mine fields. These mines destroyed many tanks and many soldiers in bunkers fought on long after being surrounded or at least until they ran out of ammunition.
The Soviets crossed the Yalu near Sinuiju where Kim Il-Sung proclaimed the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. He formed a government mostly consisting of his brothers in arms and established his provisional capital in the city. Soviet forces next start a large encircling movement aimed at destroying Japanese forces still holding other parts of the line. General Yamada saw the disaster that was about to unfold and retreated against the will of his superiors. He made this decision when Soviet forces under general Vasilevsky crossed the Tumen river near Musan which enabled the Soviets to start a double encirclement like Hannibal had done at the battle of Cannae over two thousand years before but on a much grander scale. Yamada retreated but not without a fight. The Japanese fought fanatically for every square millimetre of ground and slowed the Soviet advanced significantly. The mountain ranges in Korea were excellent for a defensive war and Yamada held onto several defensive lines there. In the end it only slowed the huge Red Army down. The Soviet Union was fully mobilized and the economy was geared to total war. Probably the only country in the world that could defeat the USSR on its own was America. In the end Yamada was forced to retreat to the Taedong river were he established another defence in depth in mid-May. This defensive line stretched along the Taedong river and to the west. General Yamada in the meantime was replaced by general Kimura for his failure to keep the Soviets out of Korea. The people in charge in Tokyo didn’t want to see that the Soviets couldn’t be defeated, not by Japan anyway.
Kimura started to fortify the existing defences on the Taedong river and on the orders of his superiors started preparing for a counteroffensive. The offensive started on June 16th 1944 and met with success as the Soviets were surprised about this sudden attack. Initial gains were big but a Soviet counterattack had retaken back almost all Japanese gains by the end of July. Kimura decided to remain on the defence and made it crystal clear to his superiors that a new offensive would most likely break the Japanese army instead of the Red Army. This latest offensive had cost the army a lot of men and equipment. Now the Japanese army was desperately trying to hold on to its defences on the Taedong river and did so for quite some time. They inflicted heavy casualties on the Soviets and repelled several offensives. This situation couldn’t continue forever and on August 22nd the Soviets broke through Japanese lines but at a high cost. They broke through at two places and again tried a double encirclement. Kimura foolishly obeyed his orders to not retreat and a large part of the Kwantung army was surrounded by the Red Army. The Japanese pocket was centred around Pyongyang. The result was the battle of Pyongyang which lasted for almost a month. By now the Korean guerrilla resistance movement had been transformed into a regular army called the Korean Workers’ and Peasants’ Army, KWPA. This force was about twelve divisions in size and consisted of veteran partisans. These would form the core of Korea’s armed forces. The battle lasted until September 5th 1944. In the end lack of fuel, food and ammunition forced the encircled Japanese forces to give up. This battle had been devastating to the Japanese since they had lost over 700.000 men who were either dead or captured. Most soldiers avoided being captured since they knew how the Soviets treated their prisoners. They usually kept the last bullet for themselves. After the battle for Pyongyang the Red Army quickly expanded its beachhead on the southern bank of the river.
The battle for Pyongyang had been the execution of the Kwantung army as it was intended to be. Soviet casualties were severe too. The Red Army had sustained over 600.000 casualties. The Soviets replaced these losses with new fresh divisions from the west. Very soon Soviet numbers were replenished and a new offensive was launched to deny the Japanese any chance to pull themselves together again and mount an effective defence. Soviet and Korean forces swept the remainder of the Korean peninsula that was still under Japanese occupation clean in three months. Highlights of this campaign were the battle for Seoul in which Stalin had given Korean soldiers the doubtful honour of being the spearhead of the offensive to take the city and the battle for Busan. The battle for Seoul lasted for only a few days as there weren’t that many Japanese forces in the city. Afterwards a column of 60.000 Korean soldiers marched into the city and planted their flag on the Japanese General Government Building. The governor-general who had failed to escape the city was publicly executed for numerous crimes committed against the Korean people. It was in Seoul that Kim Il-Sung established his permanent capital. The Soviet advance continued and on December 9th 1944 Soviet forces surrounded the last pocket of Japanese resistance in Busan. The area around that city was the last bit of Japanese held territory in Korea. In a spectacular operation the Japanese navy evacuated the remaining forces in Busan and safely brought them to Japan. On December 21st 1944 the last Japanese forces left Korea which was now fully independent from Japan. Korea was whole again and very soon the Korean people would find out that the DPRK was only a slight improvement over the Japanese. Kim Il-Sung and his overlord in Moscow were harsh rulers. Now the only bit of land on the Asian mainland was an area half the size of Honshu on China’s east coast which was growing smaller every day as the Chinese advanced. The Japanese had taken many forces away to defend Korea and this was breaking them up. By early 1945 Japanese control only stretched as far inland as the guns of their battleships could reach. Once again the Soviets drove them off by means of their air force. By early February 1945 the last Japanese forces were driven out of mainland Asia.
The Soviets in the meantime stepped up their bombing campaign against Japanese cities. France, Britain and Germany increased their aid to Japan and condemned Soviet terror bombing. Soviet submarines attacked convoys of merchant vessels headed toward Japan and slowly strangled Japan to death. The western powers didn’t declare war over this as they wanted to avoid a major war until they were ready. The Soviets had over 300 submarines available and most of them were deployed east for this single task. Stalin hoped he could beat Japan into submission by bombing their cities and cutting off their lifelines. The Japanese navy at this time was still an effective fighting force which could prevent any invasion attempt by the Soviet navy. Eventually the Zeros stopped coming as the Japanese were short on fuel and the resources to build more planes. The Japanese more often than not were unable to interdict the bomber fleets of the Red Air Force. A lot of machinery and industry had been destroyed in the bombings. Only a few Zeros came off the production lines each month. Japan stubbornly refused to surrender as long there were no Soviet soldiers on Japanese soil. The Japanese, as a propaganda stunt, did conquer northern Sakhalin. They captured Soviet territory but it didn’t do them any good as the Soviets on Stalin’s orders ruthlessly and mercilessly laid waste to Japan regardless. Sakhalin did have oil which helped keep the navy and air force going. It wasn’t enough fuel and many planes were grounded and many ships were kept in harbour and were only used when necessary. Japanese planes would only take off to attack incoming bombers and sometimes not even then. All navy ships except for destroyers which hunted submarines were kept in their harbours. Japan was now fully on the defence and could only hope that the Red Tsar who had his seat in distant Moscow would lose his patience and decide to call it a day and make a compromise peace. Stalin wouldn’t here anything of it however. Bombing raids continued while the Soviet Union built its atomic bomb.
1945 passed this way and Japan started to prepare for an invasion which by now seemed inevitable. As a prelude to the invasion the Soviets occupied several islands near Japan which could serve as staging areas. They first invaded the Kuril islands which made admiral Yamamoto decide to shift a quarter of the fleet to the north. The islands were invaded in a one week campaign in which the Red Air Force made the first ever use of paratroopers in its history. The islands’ tiny garrisons couldn’t match Soviet numbers. It was the first action for many soldiers stationed there as the islands were isolated and hadn’t seen any combat during the war. The Soviets had destroyed telegraph and phone lines to the islands. The Soviets also occupied several islands in the Sea of Japan, most notably Tsushima. This confused the Japanese high command as they now could expect an invasion of Hokkaido in the north or a direct invasion of the main island, Honshu. This frightened many in the Japanese high command as invasion now seemed to be imminent. Contrary to their expectations, invasion wasn’t going to happen for some time. The Soviets now had six modern battleships of the Sovietsky Soyuz-class and six Stalin-class carriers with two more under construction in Leningrad due to be launched in May 1945. The Soviets also had eleven heavy cruisers with three more on the slipways. The Soviet navy also had many older ships including several pre-WW1 dreadnoughts and even pre-dreadnoughts.
The Soviet navy as a whole was still smaller than the Japanese navy which meant that a seaborne invasion would surely fail. The Japanese had eight battleships with another Yamato-class battleship under construction which would be named Kii. This was one at the time was still known as hull number 111. This would become the fourth and last Yamato-class battleship, the others being Yamato, Shinano and Musashi. Work on that one was continuing at a slow rate due to scarcity in resources. A fifth Yamato-class battleship which was give the designation hull number 797 was cancelled with little actual work done and its resources along with parts of the ship that were already finished were assigned to the Kii. The Japanese also had nine carriers, eighteen heavy cruisers and many other ships. The Soviets therefore continued trying to bomb Japan into submission and cut off their lifelines although a trickle of resources from the west still came through in spite of Soviet submarines. This was enough to keep the Japanese’s heads above the water but nothing more. The Japanese in the meantime allocated all available resources to the defence of their country. Several 18.1 inch guns which would have gone to the unfinished hulk that was hull number 797 were installed as coastal artillery on Honshu. By now the Japanese high command had decided that the invasion would come at Honshu and concentrated all of their forces on Honshu. And so 1945 ended and 1946 started with Japan unwilling to surrender and the USSR unable to make them do so. This was a typical situation of the water dragon vs the bear. They couldn’t fight each other outside of each others habitat. Very soon however the bear would learn how to swim.