The defeat of the Japanese troops in the region of Lake Khasan in 1938 and in Mongolia in 1939 dealt a serious blow to the propaganda myth about the "invincibility of the imperial army" and the "exclusiveness of the Japanese army." The American historian J. McSherry wrote:
"The demonstration of Soviet power at Khasan and Khalkhin Gol had its consequences, it showed the Japanese that a big war against the USSR would be a disaster for them" (778).
Probably, the understanding of this turned out to be the main deterrent for Japan in the period 1941-1945. and one of the main reasons that with the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the Soviet Union was spared a war on two fronts.
However, this does not mean at all that after its defeat in the "Nomonhan incident" Japan was not preparing for a new attack on the USSR. Even the neutrality pact between the two countries, signed on April 13 and ratified on April 25, 1941, was, in the opinion of the Japanese leadership, temporary in nature, making it possible to secure their northern borders, "monitor the development of the situation" and calmly "gain strength" in order to "in the right moment" to deliver a surprise blow to the Soviet Union (779). Japan's entire foreign policy during this period, especially its active cooperation with its Tripartite Pact allies, Germany and Italy, indicates that it was simply waiting for the most favorable moment. Thus, Minister of War Tojo repeatedly emphasized that the invasion should take place when the Soviet Union "becomes like a ripe persimmon ready to fall to the ground", that is, waging war with Hitler, it will weaken so much that it will not be able to offer serious resistance in the Far East (780 ). However, General Yamashita, who arrived from Europe in early July 1941 and was convinced of the superiority of German forces and its inevitable victory over the USSR, was more determined.
"The time of the theory of "ripe persimmon" has already passed ... - he declared. - Even if the persimmon is still a little bitter, it is better to shake it off the tree" (781).
He feared that Germany would win too quickly, and then cautious Japan might be late to the section of the "pie": the insatiable ally, regardless of the interests of the Land of the Rising Sun, would seize Siberia and the Far East, previously promised to the Asian empire as payment for the opening of the "second front".
However, the war on the Soviet-German front took on a protracted character, and Japan did not dare to take direct military action against the USSR, although, in violation of the neutrality pact, it constantly delayed and even sank Soviet ships. In this regard, in the period from 1941 to 1945, the Soviet government issued 80 statements and warnings about Japanese provocations (782). From experience, knowing the treachery of a neighbor, on the Far Eastern borders of the country it was necessary to keep several armies in full combat readiness, at a time when every fresh division was needed in the west.
In November 1943 in Tehran, at a conference of heads of state of the anti-Hitler coalition, among other things, the question of eliminating the seat of war in the Far East was decided. The Soviet delegation gave the allies consent to enter the war against Japan immediately after the defeat of Nazi Germany. At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, this agreement was secured by a secret agreement, according to which the USSR regained South Sakhalin and the islands adjacent to it, restored the rights to lease Port Arthur and operate the Chinese Eastern and South Manchurian Railway, and received the Kuril Islands (783). Thus, the Portsmouth Peace Treaty of 1905 completely lost its force.
On April 5, 1945, the USSR government denounced the Soviet-Japanese neutrality pact of April 13, 1941. After the surrender of Germany, on July 26, at the Potsdam Conference, an appeal was published on behalf of the United States, Britain and China, in which Japan also called for unconditional surrender. The request was rejected. At the same time, Prime Minister Suzuki stated:
"We will relentlessly continue to move forward to successfully end the war" (784).
On August 8, 1945, fulfilling allied obligations, the Soviet Union announced its adherence to the Potsdam Declaration and informed the Japanese government that from August 9 it would consider itself at war with Japan. The Manchurian offensive began.
In total, the Soviet Union put one and a half million troops on the battlefield, which were opposed by the one and a half million Kwantung Army. By the way, it was commanded by General Otozo Yamada, who had experience in the war of 1904-1905. as a squadron commander (785). Contrary to the forecasts of Western strategists that it would take at least six months, or even a year, to defeat the Kwantung Army of the USSR, Soviet troops finished it off in two weeks (786).
On September 2, 1945, the signing of the act of unconditional surrender of Japan took place on the American battleship Missouri. World War II is over.
In his speech delivered on the radio the same evening, I. V. Stalin recalled the history of the difficult relations between our country and Japan since the beginning of the 20th century, emphasizing that the Soviet people had "their own special account" for her.
"... The defeat of the Russian troops in 1904 during the Russo-Japanese War left painful memories in the minds of the people," said the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. broken and the stain will be eliminated. For forty years we, the people of the old generation, have been waiting for this day. And now, this day has come "(787).
This assessment, given by the leader of the Soviet state in the conditions of his supreme military-political triumph and to a large extent painted in state-nationalist tones, at that moment was completely in tune with the mood of the country in which "proletarian internationalism" was proclaimed the official ideology. This ideology was formally preserved, but the practice of World War II clearly showed that the "proletariat" of hostile countries (fascist Germany and all its satellites, including Japan) was by no means ready to come to the aid of its "class ally". Both in official propaganda and in mass moods, the ideas of protecting and triumphing the national-state interests of the USSR as the successor to the thousand-year-old Russian state were dominant. And this circumstance should be taken into account as the most important part of the general situation of the perception of the enemy in the last Russo-Japanese war of the 20th century.
In general, this situation is distinguished by several important features that characterize both the state of the subject and the object of perception, and its circumstances. First of all, the entire contingent participating in the hostilities in the Far East was clearly divided into two main categories: participants in the battles against Nazi Germany, and "Far Eastern inmates" of a large group that stood on the border for all four years of the Great Patriotic War in case of a Japanese attack. The latter, for the most part, had no combat experience, but witnessed numerous Japanese provocations, were better informed about the potential enemy and his real strength, experience and deceit. They also had a better understanding of natural and climatic conditions, terrain features, etc. Veterans of military operations in the west, on the contrary, had a lot of battle practice, but did not understand local features. They had the highest morale, but it often turned into "hat-captive" moods. After all, the Soviet soldier emerged victorious from the most difficult long-term war in the European theater of operations. After such a powerful adversary as fascist Germany, the Japanese, who, by the way, were "beaten" not so long ago at Khasan and Khalkhin Gol, were not considered as a serious enough enemy in mass army performances. Probably, the latter circumstance had a negative impact more than once during the Far Eastern campaign. In particular, the features of the desert terrain were not sufficiently taken into account, and as a result, in a number of areas, the poor water supply of the army affected the efficiency of movement and the combat effectiveness of individual units.
In general, in the balance of power (although quantitatively it was approximately equal), the superiority of the Soviet side turned out to be unconditional. This was especially evident in the technical support, combat experience and morale of the troops. The army came to the Far East experienced, mobilized, with the mood of a winner and the desire to return to civilian life as soon as possible. However, she had to fight in the depths of foreign territory, overcome fortified areas that had been created for decades, and advance in unfamiliar areas with adverse climatic conditions. Yes, and the enemy was much more experienced than in the late 1930s: for many years the Japanese army had been conducting successful military operations at sea, on land and in the air against American, British and other armed forces. So the "two-week" military campaign was by no means an easy walk for our army, as Western historiography often tries to present today.
The fierceness of this war and its danger to Soviet soldiers is also evidenced by such a fact as the widespread occurrence of the "kamikaze" phenomenon at this particular stage of hostilities. It is no coincidence that it was he who was best imprinted in the memory of the participants in those events and is most often noted by Soviet memoirists.
In our and Japanese interpretations, this phenomenon has a different interpretation. We understood by "kamikaze" any Japanese "suicide bombers", regardless of the type of troops to which they belonged, and the Japanese - only a very certain part of them. And "kamikaze" in the official, narrower sense (like pilots ramming enemy warships, following the slogan "One plane for a warship!"), And in a broader sense (like all suicide soldiers) - a purely Japanese phenomenon, deeply rooted in the history, in the national and religious features of the country. According to legend, at the end of the 13th century, Genghis Khan's grandson Khubilai tried to conquer Japan, but his ships were destroyed by a typhoon - the "sacred wind" ("divine wind"), "kamikaze". Seven years later, the attempt was repeated - and again the typhoon scattered the Mongolian ships. This is how this term arose, and from it in the 20th century - the movement of volunteer suicide bombers (788).
In fact, it fell into a number of categories. The actual "kamikaze" included elite suicide pilots, designed to sink enemy warships. The first sortie "kamikaze" was made on October 21, 1944 in the Philippines. The spread of the phenomenon is evidenced by the fact that during the period of the war in the Pacific, their efforts carried out 474 direct hits on US Navy ships or close explosions near their sides. However, no more than 20% of the kamikaze sorties turned out to be effective. According to American data, they sank 45 warships and damaged about 260 (789).
At the end of the war, the "teishintai" ("shock squad") movement was also widespread, which included manually operated "kaiten" man-torpedoes, "blue" boats filled with explosives, suicide paratroopers, man-mines to blow up tanks, machine gunners , who chained themselves in pillboxes and bunkers, etc. (790) Moreover, our troops encountered mainly "land" categories of Japanese suicide bombers.
However, for the first time, Soviet soldiers encountered this phenomenon as early as July 3, 1939, in the battles for the Bain-Tsagan hill on Khalkhin Gol. The Japanese rushed at the red-star tanks with mines, bundles of grenades, set fire to them with bottles of flammable liquid. Then, from the fire of enemy artillery and suicide bombers in the hardest battle, the Soviet tank brigade lost almost half of its combat vehicles and about half of its personnel killed and wounded (791).
A new, even more difficult meeting with the "shock detachments" was in store for our troops in August 1945 in Manchuria during the battles with the Kwantung Army. Here is how A. M. Krivel, a participant in the battles on Khingan, recalls this:
"Special forces were thrown into battle - Japanese" kamikaze ". They occupied rows of round trenches-holes on both sides of the Khingan highway. Their brand new yellow uniforms stood out sharply against the general green background. A bottle of sake [rice vodka - E.S.] and a mine on a bamboo pole were also obligatory attributes of "kamikaze". We heard something about them, these fanatics, besotted with the idea of "Great Japan" ... But we did not see live "kamikaze". And here they are. Young people, a little older than us A half-open collar showing clean underwear, a matte, waxy face, bright white teeth, a stiff crew cut of black hair and glasses, and they don't look belligerent at all. You won't believe it. But a mine, a big, magnetic mine, which even the dead continue to firmly hold in their hands, dispels all doubts" (792).
It should be noted that the exploits of "kamikaze" were glorified by all means of Japanese propaganda, and the number of such volunteer suicide bombers grew rapidly. In the Kwantung Army, a special brigade was formed from "kamikaze", in addition, their detachments were in every regiment and battalion. The task of the suicide bombers was to explode along with a tank, a self-propelled gun, to kill a general or a senior officer. During the retreat, the Japanese troops often left them behind enemy lines in order to sow panic there.
How do the Japanese themselves describe the actions of the "kamikaze" in Manchuria?
“One tank flared up,” recalls the former Japanese officer Hattori. Others, turning into battle formation, stubbornly moved forward. These were the same T-34s that fanned themselves with glory in battles against the German army. They, using the folds of the terrain, took up defense. It was seen how several Japanese soldiers jumped out of the shelter next to the Russians and ran towards the tanks. They were immediately killed by machine-gun bursts. But instead of the dead, new "kamikazes" appeared. With shouts of "banzai!" They went towards their death. They had explosives tied on their backs and chests, with which it was necessary to destroy the target. Soon, their corpses were strewn with heights. Three Russian tanks set on fire by them were burning in the hollow ... "(793)
It cannot be said that the actions of the "kamikaze" have brought serious results. They never managed to contain the advancing avalanche of Soviet troops. And the method of combating the "sacred wind" was found quickly and turned out to be simple and effective: paratroopers sat on the armor of the tanks and shot suicide bombers rising with a mine at point-blank range (794).
It is interesting how the phenomenon of "kamikaze" was assessed retrospectively, after the war, in their memoirs by the Soviet military:
"Thousands of Japanese became suicide bombers. Suicide bombers are a purely Japanese invention, generated by the weakness of Japan's technology. Where the metal and the machine are weaker than foreign ones, Japan pushed a person, a soldier into this metal, whether it was a sea torpedo designed to explode at the side of an enemy ship, or a magnetic mine with which a soldier throws himself at a tank, or a tankette loaded with explosives, or a soldier chained to a machine gun, or a soldier who remains at the enemy’s location in order to kill one enemy and commit suicide. some one act, for which he is preparing all his life. His feat becomes an end in itself, and not a means to an end ... "(795)
Comparing the actions of "kamikaze" with the exploits of Soviet soldiers, deliberately sacrificing themselves in a difficult moment of battle to save their comrades, the memoirists emphasize that it was important for a Soviet soldier "not only to kill the enemy, but also to destroy as many of them as possible," and if he had any chance to save his life "in the name of future battles", he would certainly try to survive. And here is the conclusion that is drawn from this comparison:
"A Japanese suicide bomber is a suicide. A hero who sacrifices himself. If we take into account that a Japanese suicide bomber receives an increased salary before fulfilling his appointment, it turns out that his death is payment for the expenses incurred on him during his lifetime. This is how the halo that she tried to create around This phenomenon is Japanese propaganda. A suicide bomber is a bullet, it can only work once. Mortality is evidence of adventurousness, defectiveness of Japanese military thought "(796).
But such an assessment by memoirists of the phenomenon of "kamikaze" is somewhat simplified: this phenomenon is associated with the specifics of the national traditions, culture, mentality, religious attitudes of the Japanese, which is not entirely clear to representatives of Russian culture, especially in the Soviet, atheistic period. A mixture of Buddhism and Shintoism, the cult of a warrior in the samurai tradition, veneration of the emperor, ideas about the chosenness of the Land of the Rising Sun - all this created the prerequisites for a special kind of fanaticism elevated to the rank of state policy and military practice.
Only volunteers became suicide bombers, who were gathered into separate detachments and specially trained. Before the battle, they usually wrote wills, putting a nail and a strand of hair in an envelope - in case there was no soldier’s ashes left to bury him with military honors. What motivated these people? One of the testaments of suicide bombers says: "The spirit of high sacrifice conquers death. Having risen above life and death, one must fulfill military duty. One must give all the strength of the soul and body for the triumph of eternal justice." Another "kamikaze" addresses his parents with the words:
"Highly esteemed father and mother! May the news that your son fell on the battlefield for the glory of the emperor fill you with joy. Let my twenty-year life be cut short, I will still remain in eternal justice ..." (797)
So this phenomenon cannot be explained by mercenary considerations, although it is known that the "kamikaze" received increased army allowances, and after his death, the company where he used to work was obliged to pay thirty-three months' salary to his family (798). "Material encouragement" was simply an instrument of the state "social" policy, a manifestation of "care" for national heroes, stimulating the spread of this phenomenon, but it was born by the features of Japanese civilization and was possible only on this national and cultural soil.
The idea of sacrifice, up to the preference for voluntary death, suicide over the acceptance of the defeat of one's country and, even more so, the shame of captivity, became widespread at the end of the war due to the collapse of the Japanese empire and its armed forces. Upon learning of the hopeless situation of the Kwantung Army, Japanese Minister of War Anami stated:
"If we fail to stop the enemy, 100 million Japanese will prefer death to ignominious surrender."
"... To bring to an end the holy war in defense of the land of the gods... To fight steadfastly, even if you have to gnaw clay, eat grass and sleep on bare ground. Life is contained in death - this is taught to us by the spirit of the great Nanko [hero of Japanese mythology - Ye .S.], who died seven times, but each time was reborn to serve the motherland ... "(799)
However, the end was already predetermined. And on September 2, 1945, the signing of the act of unconditional surrender of Japan took place on the American battleship Missouri.
Hundreds of people in the palace square in Tokyo were crying and banging their heads against the stones. There was a wave of suicides. Among those who "fulfilled the testament of Anami" were more than a thousand officers, not counting hundreds of military sailors and civilians. The Minister of War himself and several other major government officials committed suicide.
Even after the announcement of surrender, isolated pockets of resistance by Japanese fanatics remained for a long time. There are cases when Japanese soldiers on abandoned islands continued to remain loyal to their emperor for many post-war years (and even decades), sometimes simply not knowing about the end of the war, and sometimes refusing to admit and accept defeat.
Here, perhaps, it is worth comparing the understanding of heroism in the European, including in the Soviet mind, with the Japanese phenomenon of suicide bombers, including "kamikaze." In both cases, the core of heroism is sacrifice, a conscious choice by a person of readiness to give his life in the name of his country. However, in Japanese culture this concept is expanded. It even includes a senseless, from the point of view of the rationalistic European mind, death by suicide, which from the position of the Japanese was a demonstration of loyalty to duty, to their emperor and contempt for death. Thus, if for Europeans life is a value in itself, which is sacrificed for the sake of other, more significant social values, then for Japanese military traditions, the “correct”, honorable death turned out to be a value in itself. From these positions, the phenomenon of "kamikaze" should be assessed.
If a European soldier goes to his death, obeying an order or making a conscious choice at the moment of action, the motivational field of his choice turns out to be very wide. This can be both an emotional impulse and a sober calculation when assessing the situation, taking into account the expediency of one's own death in order to achieve some significant goal (saving comrades at the cost of one's own life, destroying the maximum possible number of enemies, defending important objects, etc.). The Japanese suicide bomber makes a choice in advance, long before the decision is implemented. He classifies himself as a certain category of voluntarily doomed to death, from that moment depriving himself of a choice and actually turning into a living automaton, looking for a reason to die. At the same time, the real expediency and the cost of his own death become insignificant for him: the very fact of death in battle turns out to be honorable, corresponding to the fulfillment of a higher duty. Moreover, the hero is equally the one who blew up the tank, throwing himself under it with a mine, and the one who did not reach this tank. It is no coincidence that the Soviet soldiers were struck by the senseless stubbornness of the kamikazes who climbed right through under the automatic and machine-gun bursts. They acted routinely, like soulless automata, while conventional troops could have taken much more effective action with significantly fewer losses. Voluntary doom seemed to deprive the suicide bombers of the ability to think.
In general, in a clash with the Japanese armed forces, Soviet military personnel perceived the same enemy, who in the late 1930s was defeated twice by them. What was new was the scale of hostilities, the number of troops involved in them, the depth of penetration into enemy territory, the fierceness of his resistance in a situation of political and strategic doom. So, at that time, the peculiarities of the behavior of the Japanese were often noted, which, in particular, are mentioned in a secret memorandum of the allied forces: "It has been repeatedly observed that in an unforeseen or new situation, many Japanese show such uncertainty that seems almost abnormal to most Europeans. Their behavior in these conditions can range from extreme apathy and physical prostration to unbridled fury directed against themselves or any object in their environment" (800). The military-political collapse and capitulation were just such a situation for which the Japanese, who had been brought up for decades by militaristic propaganda, for the most part were not ready.
The situation of defeat turned out to be especially dramatic for the Japanese mass consciousness also because this national culture was characterized from ancient times by self-perception as exceptional, and its state and people as "chosen ones." In the conditions of the first half of the 20th century, when imperial ambitions were constantly growing, and racial theories became widespread in the world, these cultural and ideological attitudes fell on fertile ground. It is no coincidence that fascist Germany became an ally of militaristic Japan: not only the proximity of geopolitical and strategic interests, but also the ideas of exclusivity and national superiority turned out to be important. The leaders of Japan were flattered that the Nazis called the Japanese "Aryans of the Far East", that is, the highest race of Asia (801).
It was these racist and hegemonic attitudes of the Japanese leaders that became the basis for the disregard for international legal norms, which turned into crimes against humanity. The entry of Soviet troops into the vast territories of the Far East occupied by the Japanese, including Manchuria, North China and Korea, made it possible to uncover many such crimes, from preparations for bacteriological warfare to the virtual extermination of prisoners of war. In May 1946, the International Tribunal for the Trial of Japanese War Criminals was held in Tokyo. The defendants were accused of violating international law, treaties and obligations, the laws and customs of war. Thus, a secret research center of the Kwantung Army operated for ten years in the occupied Chinese territory, 20 km from Harbin, developing bacteriological weapons of mass destruction, which were going to be used in the war against the USSR. Experiments were carried out on living people, including women and children (802).
During the process, the monstrous details of the massacres that were carried out in the Japanese army over the prisoners were revealed:
"People were beheaded, quartered, doused with gasoline and burned alive; prisoners of war were ripped open, their livers pulled out and eaten, which was allegedly a manifestation of a special samurai spirit" (803).
The secret directive of the Japanese command of August 1, 1944 demanded the total destruction of all prisoners who fell into Japanese dungeons. “It doesn’t matter how the liquidation will take place: individually or in groups,” it said, “it doesn’t matter what methods will be used: explosives, poison gases, poisons, sleep drugs, decapitation or anything else - in any case, the goal is to so that not a single one can escape. All must be destroyed, and no traces must remain" (804).
All this, including the facts of the atrocities of the Japanese military in the occupied territories, became known to the Soviet troops already during the offensive, influencing the general perception and assessment of the Japanese as an enemy.
In general, the final campaign of World War II, carried out by the Soviet Army in the Far East, not only brought the end of the war closer, hastening the final defeat of the last satellite of Nazi Germany, not only ensured a fundamentally different alignment of strategic forces in the post-war world, but also contributed to the final elimination of the complex of the defeated country , which was still preserved in the historical memory of the Soviet people, being inherited from tsarist Russia and to some extent reinforced during the period of the Japanese occupation of the Far East during the years of the Civil War and intervention. This complex was struck back in the late 1930s, but the very fact that Japan retained the Russian lands seized at the beginning of the century, as well as the constantly looming threat of a stab in the back during the most difficult moments of the Great Patriotic War, preserved the image of this country in the mass consciousness as the main potential, insidious and powerful enemy after Germany. And this image was quite adequate to the real state of affairs: Japanese strategists were actively preparing for war and did not dare to attack just because the risk was too great due to the balance of power. And the above assessment of Stalin on the significance of the defeat of militaristic Japan was absolutely accurate politically and in tune with the mood of Soviet society.
The perception of other peoples and countries is always reflected in mass culture. One of its manifestations is song creativity and the existence of a song in the folk environment. In this connection, it is perhaps worth noting three songs that are very popular, or at least widely known up to the present time. All of them arose in the wake of historical events that were dramatic for the people's consciousness, and fully expressed its state. That is why they are preserved in the historical and cultural memory of the people. The first song is "Varangian", dedicated to the feat of Russian sailors in the Russo-Japanese War. It reflects not only the dramatic moments of the battle, but also the attitude towards the enemy, moreover, with a clear hint of his race:
"From the pier we are going into battle,
Towards the death that threatens us,
We will die for our homeland in the open sea,
Where the yellow-faced devils wait!" (805)
It is noteworthy that during the performance of "Varyag" already in Soviet times, it was this quatrain from the song that "dropped out": internationalism - one of the key components of the official communist ideology - did not allow the use of such "racist" characteristics even in relation to the enemy, and the ubiquitous censorship "blew out "objectionable lines even from folk songs.
Indirectly, in this series of works that fix Russian-Japanese conflict relations, one can also include the revolutionary-romantic song about the Civil War "Through the valleys and the hills", which was based on folk origin and was born in the Far East. One of its folklore versions speaks not only of the liberation of Primorye, but also directly of the expulsion of the interventionists (806). It was quite clear to the listener that it was primarily about the Japanese, and her prophetic final lines "And in the Pacific Ocean ended their campaign" became especially popular in 1945. There is already a different dominant tone here: this whole song is a kind of epic narration about a powerful human flow that is forcing the enemy out of their native land.
And finally, the third famous song about three tankers from the film of the late 1930s. "Tractors". It constantly mentions the enemy, who treacherously crossed the "border near the river" at night. This enemy, of course, is the samurai, who were defeated by the valiant Red Army:
"Tanks rushed, raising the wind,
Formidable armor was advancing.
And the samurai flew to the ground
Under the pressure of steel and fire."
This song was the result of a direct social order, just like the film itself, for which it was written. The director I.A. Pyryev commissioned the poet Boris Laskin to write a work that would “reflect the theme of defending our borders, the feat of glorious tank heroes, participants in the battles on Khasan” (807). And the song really turned out to be relevant: the appearance of the film on the screens coincided with new complications on the southeastern borders of the country, with the events at Khalkhin Gol. That is why the militant words and marching music of "Three Tankers" were so popular. Here already, unlike the previous songs, the offensive, victorious power of the modern army was affirmed.
During the Great Patriotic War, this song was more often used in a modified form: soldiers at the front reworked its words in accordance with the new situation and the new enemy. And only the parts stationed in the Far East continued to sing it the way it sounded in the film. But in August-September 1945, the song gained a "second life": its traditional, anti-Japanese version became relevant again. It is worth noting the fact that the Far Eastern campaign of 1945 itself, despite all its historical significance, did not give rise to such a popular work as the above-mentioned songs: probably, against the tragic and large-scale background of the Great Patriotic War, the Russian-Japanese clash turned out to be on the periphery of the national consciousness.
It is necessary to say about such a factor influencing the existence of works of mass culture as a form of manifestation of public consciousness, such as foreign policy and interstate relations. For example, in the 1970s, the same song about three tankers was often heard in concerts and on the radio, but censorship made characteristic corrections to the text. Now it featured not quite specific samurai enemies, but an abstract "enemy pack". The replacement of the image of the enemy with a more generalized one obviously had a number of reasons. First of all, there were considerations of a diplomatic nature: the USSR was interested in normalizing relations with its eastern neighbor, whose scientific, technical and economic achievements were becoming increasingly significant in world politics. Given the ongoing problem of the so-called "Northern Territories" (a peace treaty with Japan after the end of World War II was never concluded), any factor that could aggravate tensions was undesirable. Moreover, the propaganda cliches that arose in the 1930s and penetrated into works of mass culture were inappropriate: everyone knew that both artistic creativity and the media were controlled by the Soviet state, and therefore the preservation of these old clichés in the new conditions could be perceived as a sign of hostility in interstate relations. And the image of Japan as an enemy did not meet the objectives of propaganda.
It should also be noted that in the people's memory the events of 1938-1939. were firmly "blocked" by the larger events of the Great Patriotic War, where the main enemy was not Japan, but Germany. So the very concept of "samurai" for the younger generations already required clarification.
Japan in World War II
In the autumn of 1939, when the war broke out and the Western European countries one after another began to suffer defeat and become the object of occupation by Nazi Germany, Japan decided that its hour had come. Having tightly tightened all the screws inside the country (parties and trade unions were liquidated, the Association for Assistance to the Throne was created instead as a paramilitary organization of a fascist type, designed to introduce a total political and ideological system of strict control in the country), the highest military circles, led by the generals who headed the cabinet of ministers, received unlimited authority to wage war. Military operations in China intensified, accompanied, as usual, by cruelty against the civilian population. But the main thing that Japan was waiting for was the surrender of the European powers, in particular France and Holland, to Hitler. As soon as this became a fact, the Japanese proceeded to occupy Indonesia and Indo-China, and then Malaya, Burma, Thailand and the Philippines. Having set as their goal to create a gigantic colonial empire subordinate to Japan, the Japanese announced their desire for "East Asian co-prosperity."
After the bombing of the American base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii in December 1941, Japan found itself at war with the United States and England, which, despite some early successes, eventually led the country into a protracted crisis. Although the Japanese monopolies gained a lot by gaining uncontrolled access to the exploitation of the wealth of almost all of Southeast Asia, their position, like the Japanese occupation forces, was precarious. The population of the occupied countries came out, often with weapons in their hands, against the Japanese occupying forces. The maintenance of troops simultaneously in many countries, the conduct of the ongoing and increasingly obvious futile war in China required considerable funds. All this led to a deterioration in the economic balance and to an aggravation of the internal situation in Japan itself. This manifested itself with particular force at the beginning of 1944, when a certain turning point was outlined in the war in the Far East. American troops landed in one or the other of the island regions and ousted the Japanese from there. Japan's relations with the USSR also changed. In April 1945, the USSR denounced the neutrality pact concluded in 1941 with Japan, and in August of the same year, shortly after the atomic bombing of Japan by the Americans, Soviet troops entered the territory of Manchuria and forced the Kwantung Army to surrender, which meant not only defeat Japan, but also the beginning of revolutionary transformations in Manchuria, and then in the rest of China.
The surrender of Japan in August 1945 led to the collapse of the plans of the Japanese military, the collapse of that aggressive foreign policy of Japan, which for several decades relied on the economic development and expansion of Japanese capital, on the samurai spirit of the past. Like the samurai at the end of the last century, the militarists of the first half of the 20th century. suffered bankruptcy and were forced to leave the historical stage. Japan lost all its colonial possessions and conquered territories. The question arose about the status of post-war Japan. And here the Americans who occupied the country had their say.
The meaning of the transformations that were carried out by the Allied Council for Japan, created by them, was reduced to a radical restructuring of the entire structure of this country. A series of democratic reforms were implemented, including the revival of parties, the convening of a parliament, and the adoption of a new constitution that left the emperor with very limited rights and cut off the possibility of a revival of Japanese militarism in the future. A show trial was held with the conviction of Japanese war criminals, not to mention a thorough purge of the state apparatus, police, etc. The education system in Japan has been revised. Special measures provided for limiting the possibilities of the largest Japanese monopolies. Finally, a radical agrarian reform of 1948-1949 was carried out in the country, which eliminated large land ownership and thus completely undermined the economic position of the remnants of the samurai.
This whole series of reforms and radical transformations meant another important breakthrough for Japan from the world of yesterday to new conditions of existence that corresponded to the modern level. Combined with the skills of capitalist development developed during the post-reform period, these new measures proved to be a powerful impetus that contributed to the rapid economic revival of Japan, defeated in the war. And not only the revival, but also the further development of the country, its vigorous prosperity. The wounds of World War II were healed fairly quickly. In new and very favorable conditions for it, when external forces (such as “young officers” filled with the militant spirit of samurai) did not exert their influence on the development of Japanese capital, it began to increase growth rates, which laid the foundation for the very phenomenon of Japan, which is so good known today. Paradoxical as it may seem, it was precisely the defeat of Japan in the war, its occupation and the radical transformations in its structure related to this that finally opened the doors for the development of this country. All barriers to such development were removed - and the result was amazing ...
It is important to note one more significant circumstance. In its successful advance along the path of capitalism, Japan has taken full advantage of all that the democratization of the European-American model can provide for such development. However, she did not give up much of what goes back to her own fundamental traditions and which also played a positive role in her success. This fruitful synthesis will be discussed in the next chapter. In the meantime, a few words about Korea.
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Asians still cannot forgive Japan for its actions in the occupied territories during World War II. One of the most terrible Japanese crimes against humanity is the biological experiments on people carried out in the "731 Detachment".The current negative attitude towards Japan from China, North Korea and South Korea is mainly due to the fact that Japan - unlike Germany - has not punished most of its war criminals. Many of them continued to live and work in the Land of the Rising Sun, as well as hold responsible positions. Even those who performed biological experiments on humans in the infamous special "Squad 731".
In particular, it was customary to use the Chinese to train Japanese doctors. Japanese doctor Ken Yuasa recalled in the mid-90s, talking with New York Times reporter Nicholas Kristof, how during the war he was once invited to "practical surgery" in a city in Shanxi province. The doctor and his colleagues performed various operations (removal of appendicitis, amputation of limbs, etc.) on two living Chinese for an hour and a half. The Chinese were treated "humanely" - they were given general anesthesia before the operation and killed at the end of the "lesson". Not all test subjects were so lucky. Dr. Ken Yuasa claims that such "practice sessions" were quite common for Japanese doctors working in China.
This is not much different from the experiments of Dr. Josef Mengel. The cruelty and cynicism of such experiments does not fit into the modern human consciousness, but they were quite organic for the Japanese of that time. After all, at that time the “victory of the emperor” was at stake, and he was sure that only science could give this victory.
enlightened emperor
Officially taking the throne in 1926, Emperor Hirohito chose the motto "Showa" ("The Age of the Enlightened World") for the period of his reign. Hirohito believed in the power of science: “More people died in the name of religion than for any other reason. However, science has always been a killer's best friend. Science can kill thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people in a very short period of time.”
The emperor knew what he was talking about: he was a biologist by education. And he believed that biological weapons would help Japan conquer the world, and he, a descendant of the goddess Amaterasu, would fulfill his divine destiny and rule this world.
The emperor's ideas about "scientific weapons" found support among the sober-minded Japanese military. They understood that one cannot win a protracted war against the Western powers on the samurai spirit and conventional weapons alone. Therefore, on behalf of the Japanese military department, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Japanese colonel and biologist Shiro Ishii made a voyage to bacteriological laboratories in Italy, Germany, the USSR and France. In his final report, presented to the highest military officials of the country, he convinced everyone present that biological weapons would be of great benefit to Japan.
“Unlike artillery shells, bacteriological weapons are not capable of instantly killing living force, but these non-exploding bombs - shells filled with bacteria - silently hit the human body and animals, bringing a slow but painful death. It is not necessary to produce shells, you can infect quite peaceful things - clothes, cosmetics, food and drinks, edible animals, you can spray bacteria from the air. Let the first attack not be massive - all the same, bacteria will multiply and hit targets, ”said Ishii. He stated that if Japan does not immediately begin research in the field of creating biological weapons, then it will be almost impossible to catch up with European countries in this direction.
Ishii was indeed a bioweapons fanatic. He conducted experiments on people in his Japanese laboratory. It is not surprising that his incendiary and alarmist report impressed the military, and they allocated funds for the creation of a special complex for the development of biological weapons. Throughout its existence, this complex had several names, the most famous being "detachment 731".
Logs in the unit were called those prisoners on whom deadly strains were tested
not people
The detachment was deployed in 1936 near the village of Pingfang southeast of Harbin (at that time the territory of the puppet state of Manchukuo). It was located on an area of six square kilometers in almost 150 buildings. For the entire surrounding world, this was the Main Directorate for Water Supply and Prevention of Kwantung Army Units. The "detachment 731" had everything for an autonomous existence: two power plants, artesian wells, an airfield, a railway line. It even had its own fighter aircraft, which was supposed to shoot down all air targets (even Japanese ones) that flew over the territory of the detachment without permission. The detachment included graduates of the most prestigious Japanese universities, the flower of Japanese science.
The detachment was stationed in China, and not in Japan, for several reasons. Firstly, when it was deployed on the territory of the metropolis, it was very difficult to maintain secrecy. Secondly, if the materials leaked, the Chinese population would suffer, not the Japanese. Finally, thirdly, in China, "logs" were always at hand. "Logs" officers and scientists of the unit called those on whom deadly strains were tested: Chinese prisoners, Koreans, Americans, Australians. Among the "logs" there were a lot of our compatriots - white emigrants who lived in Harbin. When the supply of "guinea pigs" in the detachment came to an end, Dr. Ishii turned to the local authorities with a request for a new party. If they did not have prisoners of war at hand, the Japanese special services carried out raids on the nearest Chinese settlements, driving captured civilians to the "water treatment plant".
The first thing they did with the newcomers was to fatten them up. The "logs" had three meals a day and even sometimes desserts with fruit. The experimental material had to be absolutely healthy, so as not to violate the purity of the experiment. According to the instructions, any member of the detachment who dared to call a “log” a person was severely punished.
“We believed that the “logs” are not people, that they are even lower than cattle. However, among the scientists and researchers who worked in the detachment there was no one who sympathized with the “logs” in any way. Everyone - both military personnel and civilian detachments - believed that the extermination of "logs" was a completely natural matter, ”said one of the employees.
“They were logs to me. Logs cannot be considered as people. The logs are already dead on their own. Now they were dying a second time, and we were only executing the death sentence, ”said Toshimi Mizobuchi, a training specialist for the 731 Detachment personnel.
In search of a miracle weapon
The profile experiments that were performed on the experimental subjects were tests of the effectiveness of various strains of diseases. Ishii's "favorite" was the plague. Toward the end of the war, he developed a strain of the plague bacterium that was 60 times more virulent than the common one. These bacteria were stored dry, and just before use, it was enough to moisten them with water and a small amount of nutrient solution.
Experiments to remove these bacteria were carried out on humans. For example, in the detachment there were special cells where people were locked. The cages were so small that the prisoners could not move. They were infected with some kind of infection, and then observed for days on changes in the state of the body. There were also bigger cells. The sick and healthy were driven there at the same time in order to track how quickly the disease is transmitted from person to person. But no matter how they infected him, no matter how much they watched, the end was the same - a person was dissected alive, pulling out organs and watching how the disease spreads inside. People were kept alive and not sewn up for days on end, so that doctors could observe the process without bothering themselves with a new autopsy. In this case, no anesthesia was usually used - the doctors feared that it could disrupt the natural course of the experiment.
More “lucky” were those on whom they tested not bacteria, but gases. They died faster. “All the test subjects who died from hydrogen cyanide had purple-red faces,” said one of the squad’s employees. - For those who died from mustard gas, the whole body was burned so that it was impossible to look at the corpse. Our experiments have shown that the endurance of a man is approximately equal to that of a pigeon. In the conditions in which the dove died, the experimental person also died.
Tests of biological weapons took place not only at Pingfan. In addition to the main building itself, "detachment 731" had four branches located along the Soviet-Chinese border, and one test site-airfield in Anda. Prisoners were taken there to practice the effectiveness of the use of bacteriological bombs. They were tied to special poles or crosses driven in concentric circles around a point where ceramic bombs stuffed with plague fleas were then dropped. So that the experimental subjects did not accidentally die from fragments of bombs, they were put on iron helmets and shields. Sometimes, however, the buttocks were left bare, when instead of "flea bombs" bombs were used, stuffed with special metal shrapnel with helical protrusions, on which bacteria were applied. The scientists themselves stood at a distance of three kilometers and watched the experimental subjects through binoculars. Then people were taken back to the facility and there, like all such experimental subjects, they were cut open alive in order to observe how the infection went.
However, once such an experiment, conducted on 40 test subjects, did not end as the Japanese had planned. One of the Chinese somehow managed to loosen his bonds and jump off the cross. He did not run away, but immediately unraveled the nearest comrade. Then they rushed to free the others. Only after all 40 people were unraveled did everyone rush in all directions.
The Japanese experimenters, who saw what was happening through binoculars, were in a panic. If just one test subject escaped, then the top-secret program would be in jeopardy. Only one of the guards was not taken aback. He got into the car, rushed across the fugitives and began to crush them. The Anda polygon was a huge field, where for 10 kilometers there was not a single tree. Therefore, most of the prisoners were crushed, and some were even taken alive.
Field trials
After the "laboratory" tests in the detachment and at the training ground, the scientists of the "detachment 731" conducted field tests. Ceramic bombs stuffed with plague fleas were dropped from aircraft over Chinese cities and villages, and plague flies were released. In his book The Death Factory, California State University historian Sheldon Harris claims that more than 200,000 people died from the plague bombs.
The achievements of the detachment were also widely used to fight the Chinese partisans. For example, wells and reservoirs in places controlled by partisans were infected with typhoid strains. However, this was soon abandoned: often their own troops fell under attack.
However, the Japanese military had already become convinced of the effectiveness of the work of Detachment 731 and began to develop plans for the use of bacteriological weapons against the USA and the USSR. There were no problems with ammunition: according to the stories of employees, by the end of the war, so many bacteria had accumulated in the storerooms of “detachment 731” that if they were scattered around the globe under ideal conditions, this would be enough to destroy all of humanity. But the Japanese establishment did not have enough political will - or maybe enough sobriety ...
In July 1944, only the position of Prime Minister Tojo saved the United States from disaster. The Japanese planned to use balloons to transport strains of various viruses to American territory - from deadly to humans to those that would destroy livestock and crops. Tojo understood that Japan was already clearly losing the war and that America could respond in kind when attacked with biological weapons.
Despite the opposition of Tojo, the Japanese command in 1945 to the very end developed a plan for Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night. According to the plan, several submarines were to come to the American coast and release planes there, which were supposed to spray plague-infected flies over San Diego. Fortunately, by that time, Japan had a maximum of five submarines, each of which could carry two or three special aircraft. And the leadership of the fleet refused to provide them for the operation, arguing that all forces must be concentrated on protecting the mother country.
Fahrenheit 122
To this day, Detachment 731 officials maintain that testing biological weapons on living people was justified. “There is no guarantee that this will never happen again,” one of the members of this detachment, who met his old age in a Japanese village, said with a smile in an interview with the New York Times. “Because in war you always have to win.”
But the fact is that the most terrible experiments conducted on people in the Ishii detachment had nothing to do with biological weapons. Particularly inhuman experiments were carried out in the most secret rooms of the detachment, where most of the service personnel did not even have access. They had exclusively medical purpose. Japanese scientists wanted to know the limits of the endurance of the human body.
For example, soldiers of the imperial army in northern China often suffered from frostbite in winter. By "experimental" doctors from "Squad 731" found out that the best way to treat frostbite was not rubbing the affected limbs, but immersing them in water with a temperature of 100 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit. To understand this, “at temperatures below minus 20, experimental people were taken out into the yard at night, forced to lower their bare arms or legs into a barrel of cold water, and then put under artificial wind until they got frostbite,” said a former employee of the detachment . “After that, they tapped their hands with a small stick until they made a sound like when they hit a piece of wood.” Then the frostbitten limbs were placed in water of a certain temperature and, changing it, they observed the death of muscle tissue on the hands.
Among these experimental subjects was a three-day-old child: so that he would not clench his hand into a fist and violate the purity of the experiment, a needle was stuck in his middle finger.
For the Imperial Air Force, experiments were carried out in pressure chambers. “The test subject was placed in a vacuum pressure chamber and the air was gradually pumped out,” recalled one of the trainees of the detachment. - As the difference between the external pressure and the pressure in the internal organs increased, his eyes first popped out, then his face swelled to the size of a large ball, the blood vessels swelled like snakes, and the intestines, as if alive, began to crawl out. Finally, the man just exploded alive.” So Japanese doctors determined the permissible high-altitude ceiling for their pilots.
In addition, in order to find out the fastest and most effective way to treat combat wounds, people were blown up with grenades, shot, burned with flamethrowers ...
There were also experiments just for curiosity. Individual organs were cut out from the living body of the experimental subjects; they cut off the arms and legs and sewed them back, swapping the right and left limbs; they poured the blood of horses or monkeys into the human body; put under the most powerful x-rays; left without food or water; scalded various parts of the body with boiling water; tested for sensitivity to electric current. Curious scientists filled the lungs of a person with a large amount of smoke or gas, introduced rotting pieces of tissue into the stomach of a living person.
However, from such "useless" experiments, a practical result was obtained. For example, this is how the conclusion appeared that a person is 78% water. To understand this, scientists first weighed the captive, and then placed him in a hotly heated room with minimal humidity. The man was sweating profusely, but he was not given water. In the end, he completely dried up. Then the body was weighed, and it turned out that it weighed about 22% of its original mass.
Fill your hand
Finally, Japanese surgeons simply got their hands on it, training on "beams". One example of such a "training" is described in the book "The Devil's Kitchen", written by the most famous researcher of the "Squad 731" Seiichi Morimura.
Quote: “In 1943, a Chinese boy was brought to the section. According to the employees, he was not one of the “logs”, he was simply kidnapped somewhere and brought to the detachment, but nothing was known for sure. The boy undressed as he was ordered and lay back on the table. Immediately, a mask with chloroform was applied to his face. When the anesthesia finally took effect, the whole body of the boy was wiped with alcohol. One of the experienced members of the Tanabe group who were standing around the table took a scalpel and approached the boy. He plunged a scalpel into his chest and made a Y-shaped incision. A white fat layer was exposed. In the place where the Kocher clamps were immediately applied, blood bubbles boiled up. The autopsy has begun. With dexterous trained hands, employees took out the internal organs from the boy’s body one by one: the stomach, liver, kidneys, pancreas, and intestines. They were dismantled and thrown into buckets standing right there, and from the buckets they were immediately transferred to glass vessels filled with formalin, which were closed with lids. The removed organs in the formalin solution still continued to shrink. After the internal organs were taken out, only the boy's head remained intact. Small, short-cropped head. One of the members of Minato's group secured her to the operating table. Then he made an incision with a scalpel from ear to nose. When the skin was removed from the head, the saw was used. A triangular hole was made in the skull, the brain was exposed. A detachment officer took it with his hand and quickly lowered it into a vessel with formalin. On the operating table there was something that resembled the body of a boy - a devastated body and limbs.
There was no "production waste" in this "detachment". After experiments with frostbite, crippled people went to experiments in gas chambers, and organs after experimental autopsies were made available to microbiologists. Every morning on a special stand hung a list of which department would go to which organs from the “logs” scheduled for autopsy.
All experiments were carefully documented. In addition to a pile of papers and protocols, the detachment had about 20 film and photo cameras. “Dozens and hundreds of times we hammered into our heads that the test subjects were not people, but just material, and still, during autopsies, my head was in a turmoil,” said one of the operators. “The nerves of a normal person could not stand it.”
Some experiments were recorded on paper by the artist. At that time, there was only black and white photography, and it could not reflect, for example, the change in color of the fabric during frostbite ...
Turned out to be in demand
According to the memoirs of the employees of the "detachment 731", during its existence, about three thousand people died within the walls of the laboratories. But some researchers argue that there were much more real victims.
The Soviet Union put an end to the existence of "detachment 731". On August 9, Soviet troops launched an offensive against the Japanese army, and the "detachment" was ordered to "act at its own discretion." Evacuation work began on the night of August 10-11. The most important materials - descriptions of the use of bacteriological weapons in China, piles of autopsy protocols, descriptions of etiology and pathogenesis, descriptions of the process of cultivating bacteria - were burned in specially dug pits.
It was decided to destroy the “logs” that remained alive at that time. Some people were gassed, and some were nobly allowed to commit suicide. The bodies were thrown into a pit and burned. For the first time, the squad members "cheated" - the corpses did not burn to the end, and they were simply thrown into the ground. Having learned about this, the authorities, despite the haste of the evacuation, ordered the corpses to be dug up and the work to be done "as it should be." After the second attempt, the ashes and bones were thrown into the Songhua River.
Exhibits of the “exhibition room” were also thrown there - a huge hall where cut off human organs, limbs, heads cut in various ways, dissected bodies were stored in flasks filled with a special solution. Some of these exhibits were infected and demonstrated various stages of damage to organs and parts of the human body. The exhibition room could be the most obvious proof of the inhuman nature of the “731 Detachment”. “It is unacceptable that at least one of these drugs fell into the hands of the advancing Soviet troops,” the detachment’s leadership told subordinates.
But some of the most important materials were kept. They were taken out by Shiro Ishii and some other leaders of the detachment, handing over all this to the Americans - as a kind of ransom for their freedom. For the United States, this information was of extreme importance.
The Americans began their biological weapons development program only in 1943, and the results of the "field experiments" of their Japanese counterparts turned out to be most welcome.
“At present, the Ishii group, in close cooperation with the United States, is preparing a large amount of materials for us and has agreed to put at our disposal eight thousand slides depicting animals and people subjected to bacteriological experiments,” said a special memorandum circulated among selected persons. State Department and the Pentagon. - This is extremely important for the security of our state, and the value of this is much higher than what we would achieve by initiating a judicial investigation of war crimes ... Due to the extreme importance of information about the bacteriological weapons of the Japanese army, the US government decides not to accuse any member of the detachment of war crimes on preparations for bacteriological warfare by the Japanese army.
Therefore, in response to a request from the Soviet side for the extradition and punishment of members of the detachment, a conclusion was handed over to Moscow that “the whereabouts of the leadership of Detachment 731, including Ishii, is unknown and there are no grounds to accuse the detachment of war crimes.”
In general, almost three thousand scientists worked in Detachment 731 (including those who worked at auxiliary facilities). And all of them, except for those who fell into the hands of the USSR, escaped responsibility. Many of the scientists who dissected living people became deans of universities, medical schools, academicians, and businessmen in post-war Japan. Among them were the governor of Tokyo, the president of the Japanese Medical Association, and high-ranking officials of the National Institutes of Health. The military and doctors who worked with "logs" - women (mainly experimenting with venereal diseases) opened a private maternity hospital in the Tokai region after the war.
Prince Takeda (cousin of Emperor Hirohito), who inspected the "detachment", was also not punished and even headed the Japanese Olympic Committee on the eve of the 1964 Games. And the evil genius of the squad - Shiro Ishii - lived comfortably in Japan and died of cancer in 1959
On August 23, 1939, the notorious Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was concluded between Germany and the Soviet Union. Less than a year later, on April 13, 1941, another treaty was signed in Moscow, now on neutrality between the USSR and Japan. The purpose of concluding this pact was the same as when concluding a treaty with Germany: at least for a while, to delay the involvement of the Soviet Union in World War II, both in the West and in the East.
At that time, it was also important for the Japanese to prevent the outbreak of war with the USSR until the moment that they (the Japanese) would consider favorable for themselves. This is the essence of the so-called “ripe persimmon” strategy. That is, the Japanese always wanted to attack the Soviet Union, but they were afraid. They needed a situation where the USSR would be involved in a war in the West, weaken, withdraw its main forces in order to save the situation in the European part of the country. And this will allow the Japanese, with little bloodshed, as they said, to grab everything that they aimed at back in 1918, when they made the intervention.
The Neutrality Pact with Japan was signed for a reason.
The Japanese logic actually worked: Germany attacked the Soviet Union, there was a clash, but the Japanese never carried out their aggressive plans. Why?
On July 2, 1941, an imperial meeting was held at which the question was decided: what to do next in the conditions of the outbreak of war between Germany and the Soviet Union? Hit the North, help Germany and have time to capture what was planned, that is, the Far East and Eastern Siberia? Or go south, because the Americans, as you know, declared an embargo, and the Japanese faced the prospect of an oil famine?
Japanese infantrymen on the march during the attack on Hong Kong, December 1941
The Navy was in favor of going south, because without oil it would be extremely difficult for Japan to continue the war. The army, traditionally aimed at the Soviet Union, insisted on one in a thousand chances, as it called it, to take advantage of the Soviet-German war in order to achieve its goals against the USSR.
Why couldn't they? Everything has already been prepared. The Kwantung Army, which was located on the border with the Soviet Union, was reinforced, brought to 750 thousand. A schedule was drawn up for the conduct of the war, a date was set - August 29, 1941, when Japan was to treacherously stab the USSR in the back.
But, as they say, it didn't happen. The Japanese themselves recognize this. Two factors intervened...
Japan was afraid to attack the USSR, remembering the lessons of Khasan and Khalkhin Gol
Yes! Why was 29 August set as the deadline? Because then autumn, thaw. Japan had experience of winter warfare, which ended extremely unfavorably for her.
So, firstly, Hitler did not fulfill his promise to carry out a blitzkrieg and capture Moscow in 2-3 months, as planned. That is, "the persimmon is not ripe." And the second, and most important, thing is that Stalin nevertheless showed restraint and did not reduce the number of troops in the Far East and Siberia as much as the Japanese wanted. (The Japanese planned for the Soviet leader to reduce the troops by 2/3, but he reduced them by about half. And this did not allow the Japanese, who remembered the lessons of Khasan and Khalkhin Gol, to hit the Soviet Union in the back from the East).
The leaders of the "Big Three" of the anti-Hitler coalition at the Potsdam Conference: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, US President Harry Truman, Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and Chairman of the State Defense Committee of the USSR Joseph Stalin, July - August 1945
Note that from the side of the allies, that is, from the side of the Third Reich, pressure was exerted on Japan. When Matsuoko, the Japanese Foreign Minister, visited Berlin as early as April 1941, Hitler believed that he could easily deal with the Soviet Union and would not need the help of the Japanese. He sent the Japanese south, to Singapore, to Malaya. For what? In order to pin down the forces of the Americans and the British there so that they do not use them in Europe.
And yet, in February 1945, during the Yalta Conference, Stalin violated the Soviet-Japanese neutrality pact: the USSR entered the war with militaristic Japan at the urgent request of its allies.
Interesting fact. The day after Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt turned to Stalin with a request to help in the war with Japan, to open a second front in the Far East. Naturally, Stalin could not do this then. He very politely explained that, after all, Germany was the main enemy for the USSR at that time, he made it clear that let's first defeat the Reich, and then return to this issue. And, indeed, they returned. In 1943, in Tehran, Stalin promised, after the victory over Germany, to enter the war with Japan. And that really encouraged the Americans. By the way, they stopped planning serious ground operations, expecting that this role would be performed by the Soviet Union.
But then the situation began to change when the Americans felt that they were about to have an atomic bomb. If Roosevelt was completely "for" the second front and repeatedly asked Stalin about it, then Truman, having come to power, was anti-Soviet. After all, it is he who owns the phrase said after Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union: "Let them kill each other as much as possible ...".
But Truman, having become president, found himself in a very serious position. On the one hand, the entry of the Soviet Union into the war with Japan for political reasons was extremely unfavorable for him, since this gave Stalin the right to vote in settling affairs in East Asia. And it's not just Japan. This is a huge China, the countries of Southeast Asia. On the other hand, the military, although they counted on the effect of the atomic bomb, were not sure that the Japanese would surrender. And so it happened.
Soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army surrender. Iwo Jima, 5 April 1945
It is worth noting that Stalin did not know the date of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima. In Potsdam, Truman, outside, let's say, the framework of the conference, somewhere during a coffee break, in agreement with Churchill, approached Stalin and said that the United States had created a bomb of enormous power. Stalin, to the surprise of the American president, did not react at all. Truman and Churchill even thought that he did not understand what was at stake. But Stalin understood everything perfectly.
But the Americans knew very well about the date of entry of the Soviet army into the war against Japan. In mid-May 1945, Truman specially sent his assistant Hopkins to the USSR, instructing Ambassador Harriman to clarify this issue. And Stalin openly said: "By August 8, we will be ready to begin operations in Manchuria."
Stalin did not know the date of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima
A few words about the Kwantung Army. Quite often, politicians and historians use the term "million-strong Kwantung Army". Was it really so? The fact is that the word "million strong" means, in fact, the Kwantung Army, plus 250 thousand troops of the puppet regime of Manchukuo, created on the territory of occupied Manchuria, plus several tens of thousands of troops of the Mongol prince De Wang, plus a rather strong grouping in Korea, troops on Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. Now, if all this is combined, then we will get a millionth army.
In this regard, the question arises: “Why did the Japanese lose? They're not the worst fighters, are they?" It must be said that the victory of the USSR over Japan was the highest manifestation of the operational art and strategy that had been accumulated by the Soviet Union during the years of the war with Nazi Germany. Here we must pay tribute to the Soviet command, Marshal Vasilevsky, who brilliantly carried out this operation. The Japanese simply did not have time to do anything. Everything was lightning fast. It was a real Soviet blitzkrieg.
THE TEXTS OF THE BOOKS BELONG TO THEIR AUTHORS AND ARE PLACED FOR INFORMATIONJapan in World War II .
Japan in World War II
In the autumn of 1939, when the war began and the Western European countries one after another began to suffer defeat and become the object of occupation by Nazi Germany, Japan decided that its hour had come. Having tightly tightened all the screws inside the country (parties and trade unions were liquidated, the Association for Assistance to the Throne was created instead as a paramilitary organization of a fascist type, designed to introduce a total political and ideological system of strict control in the country), the highest military circles, led by the generals who headed the cabinet of ministers, received unlimited authority to wage war. Military operations in China intensified, accompanied, as usual, by cruelty against the civilian population. But the main thing that Japan was waiting for was the surrender of the European powers, in particular France and Holland, to Hitler. As soon as this became a fact, the Japanese proceeded to occupy Indonesia and Indo-China, and then Malaya, Burma, Thailand and the Philippines. Having set as their goal to create a gigantic colonial empire subordinate to Japan, the Japanese announced their desire for "East Asian co-prosperity."
After the bombing of the American base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii in December 1941, Japan found itself at war with the United States and England, which, despite some early successes, eventually led the country into a protracted crisis. Although the Japanese monopolies gained a lot by gaining uncontrolled access to the exploitation of the wealth of almost all of Southeast Asia, their position, like the Japanese occupation forces, was precarious. The population of the occupied countries came out, often with weapons in their hands, against the Japanese occupying forces. The maintenance of troops simultaneously in many countries, the conduct of the ongoing and increasingly obvious futile war in China required considerable funds. All this led to a deterioration in the economic balance and to an aggravation of the internal situation in Japan itself. This manifested itself with particular force at the beginning of 1944, when a certain turning point was outlined in the war in the Far East. American troops landed in one or the other of the island regions and ousted the Japanese from there. Japan's relations with the USSR also changed. In April 1945, the USSR denounced the neutrality pact concluded in 1941 with Japan, and in August of the same year, shortly after the atomic bombing of Japan by the Americans, Soviet troops entered the territory of Manchuria and forced the Kwantung Army to surrender, which meant not only defeat Japan, but also the beginning of revolutionary transformations in Manchuria, and then in the rest of China.
The surrender of Japan in August 1945 led to the collapse of the plans of the Japanese military, the collapse of that aggressive foreign policy of Japan, which for several decades relied on the economic development and expansion of Japanese capital, on the samurai spirit of the past. Like the samurai at the end of the last century, the militarists of the first half of the 20th century. suffered bankruptcy and were forced to leave the historical stage. Japan lost all its colonial possessions and conquered territories. The question arose about the status of post-war Japan. And here the Americans who occupied the country had their say.
The meaning of the transformations that were carried out by the Allied Council for Japan, created by them, was reduced to a radical restructuring of the entire structure of this country. A series of democratic reforms were carried out, including the revival of the party, the convening of a parliament, and the adoption of a new constitution that left the emperor with very limited rights in cutting off the possibility of a revival of Japanese militarism in the future. A show trial was held with the conviction of Japanese war criminals, not to mention a thorough purge of the state apparatus, police, etc. The education system in Japan was revised. Special measures provided for limiting the possibilities of the largest Japanese monopolies. Finally, a radical agrarian reform of 1948-1949 was carried out in the country, which eliminated large land ownership and thus completely undermined the economic position of the remnants of the samurai.
This whole series of reforms and radical transformations meant another important breakthrough for Japan from the world of yesterday to new conditions of existence that corresponded to the modern level. Combined with the skills of capitalist development developed during the post-reform period, these new measures proved to be a powerful impetus that contributed to the rapid economic revival of Japan, defeated in the war. And not only the revival, but also the further development of the country, its vigorous prosperity. The wounds of World War II were healed fairly quickly. In new and very favorable conditions for it, when external forces (such as “young officers” filled with the militant spirit of samurai) did not exert their influence on the development of Japanese capital, it began to increase growth rates, which laid the foundation for the very phenomenon of Japan, which is so good known today. Paradoxical as it may seem, it was precisely the defeat of Japan in the war, its occupation and the radical transformations in its structure related to this that finally opened the doors for the development of this country. All barriers to such development were removed - and the result was amazing...
It is important to note one more significant circumstance. In its successful advance along the path of capitalism, Japan has taken full advantage of all that the democratization of the European-American model can provide for such development. However, she did not give up much of what goes back to her own fundamental traditions and which also played a positive role in her success. This fruitful synthesis will be discussed in the next chapter. In the meantime, a few words about Korea.
