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On Aug. 15, 1945, Emperor Hirohito

broadcast Japan’s surrender to his people—

but on islands to the north and in Manchuria

many Japanese kept fighting to the

death against Soviet invaders

By Sir Max Hastings

JAPAN’SLAST FIGHT

In August 1945 Joseph

Stalin committed Soviet

troops to helping the

Allies defeat Japan. But

the forces the Soviets met

weren’t about to give in.

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The Soviet Union joined the Allied war against Japan on Aug. 9, 1945, just weeks before Tokyo’s formal surrender. The opening of hostilities was in keeping with Moscow’s commitment at the November 1943 Tehran Conference to enter the war in the Pacific once Nazi Germany had been

defeated, and with its further pledge at the February 1945 Yalta Conference to join the campaign against Japan within three months of Berlin’s surrender. The Soviets first invaded Japanese-occupied Manchuria and then conducted amphib- ious landings in Korea and on Sakhalin Island and the Kuril Islands, with the ultimate goal of both gaining control of the territories and winning a role in the occupation of Japan.

Even as Soviet armies completed the occupation of Manchuria, amphibious units were assaulting the Pacific islands promised to Joseph Stalin at Yalta. Eight thousand men were dispatched across 500 miles

of sea to the Kurils, a chain of some 50 islands situated northeast of Japan. The northern Kurils were defended by 25,000 imperial troops, of which 8,480 were deployed on the northernmost, Shumshu, 18 miles in length by 6 wide. Their morale was not high. This was, by common consent, one of the most godforsaken postings in the Japanese empire.

On the night of August 14 Shumshu’s senior officer, Maj. Gen. Fusaka Tsutsumi, was alerted by Fifth Area Army to listen with his most senior staff to Emperor Hirohito’s broadcast next day. Having done so, Tsutsumi awaited the arrival of an American occupation force, whom he had no intention of fighting. Instead, however, at 4:22 a.m. on August 18, without warning or parley, a Russian divi-sion assaulted Shumshu—and met resistance. For all the Red Army’s experience of continental warfare, it knew piti-fully little about the difficulties of opposed landings from the sea. From the outset the Shumshu operation was a shambles, perfunctorily planned and chaotically executed. The landing force was drawn from garrison troops without combat experience.

At 5:30 a.m. Japanese shore batteries began to hit Soviet ships as they approached. Some assault craft were sunk, others set on fire. Those who abandoned founder-ing boats found themselves swept away by the currents. The invaders’ communications collapsed as radios were lost or immersed when their operators struggled ashore. Sailors labored under Japanese fire to improvise rafts to land guns and tanks—the Russians possessed none of the Western Allies’ inventory of specialized amphibious equipment. A counterattack by 20 Japanese tanks gained some ground. What was almost certainly the last kami-kaze air attack of the war hit a destroyer escort. Early on the morning of the 19th the Soviet commander on Shum- shu received orders to hasten the island’s capture. Soon afterward a Japanese delegation arrived at Russian head-quarters to arrange a surrender. Yet next morning some coastal batteries still fired on Soviet ships in the Second Kuril Strait and were heavily bombed for their pains. Tsutsumi’s men finally quit on the night of August 21, having lost 614 dead.

Sakhalin Island represented a less serious challenge, for its nearest point lay only 6 miles off the Asian coast, and its northern part was Soviet territory. But the island was vastly bigger—560 miles long and

between 19 and 62 miles wide. Japan had held the south-ern half since 1905, a source of bitter Russian resentment now to be assuaged. Sakhalin’s terrain was inhospitable—swamp-ridden, mountainous, densely forested.

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For all the Red Army’s experience of continental warfare,

it knew pitifully little about opposed landings from the sea

Marines of the Soviet Pacific Fleet sail to Port Arthur (in Japanese-

occupied China) aboard a U.S.-provided landing ship in 1945. Moscow

sought access to the port as a precondition for joining the Pacific War. RIA

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From the book Retribution, by Sir Max Hastings, copyright © 2008 by Max Hastings, published by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Originally published in Great Britain in 2007 as Nemesis, by Harper Press, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, London.

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For reasons of prestige, the Japanese had lavished precious resources on fortifying the island. The consequence was that when Soviet troops began an assault on August 11, their advance made little headway. Only after bitter fighting did they capture the key Honda strongpoint, whose defenders fought to the last man. The weather was poor for air sup-port, and many tanks became bogged. Russian infantrymen were obliged to struggle through on foot to outflank Japa-nese positions. Early on August 16, however, after the im-perial broadcast, the Japanese obligingly launched “human wave” counterattacks, which enabled the Russians to in-flict much slaughter. Next day, yard by yard, Soviet troops forced passages through the forests, battering the defenders with air attacks and artillery barrages. On the evening of August 17 the local Japanese commander in the frontier defensive zone surrendered.

Elsewhere on Sakhalin, however, garrisons continued to resist. When the Soviets’ Northern Pacific Flotilla landed a storming force at the port of Maoka (present-day Kholmsk) on August 20, the invaders mowed down civilians at the shore-

side. Japanese troops opened fire. Thick fog hampered gunfire observation. Defenders had to be painstakingly cleared from the quays and then the city center. “Japanese propaganda had successfully imbued the city’s inhabitants with fears of ‘Russian brutality,’” declared a Soviet account disingenuously. “The result was that much of the population fled into the forests, and some people were evacuated to Hokkaido. Women were especially influenced by propaganda, which convinced them that the arriving Russian troops would shoot them and strangle their children.” The Soviets claimed to have killed 300 Japanese in Maoka and taken a further 600 prisoners. The rest of the garrison fled inland. Sakhalin was finally secured on August 26, four days behind the Soviet schedule.

Soviet forces began combat operations on August 9,

three months to the day after the German surrender.

They initially invaded Japanese-occupied Manchuria,

then moved against Korea, Sakhalin and the Kurils.

Hutou Fortified RegionFighting persisted the longest at Hutou, a reinforced

concrete fortress complex centered on five hilltop

artillery positions overlooking key roads and rivers.

For more than two weeks Hutou’s 1,500 defenders

held out with their families from deep within the

subterranean stronghold. When combat ceased

on August 26, only 46 Japanese remained alive.

U.S.S.R. vs. Japan

The Soviet Union declared war on Japan on Aug. 8, 1945, three months to the day after the German surrender, in compliance with agree-ments signed at the Yalta Conference that February. Among other preconditions, the Soviets demanded postwar access to Port Arthur

on mainland China, a share in the operation of the Manchurian railways and possession of southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. Soviet forces launched a three-pronged invasion of Manchuria on August 9. Though Emperor Hirohito broadcast his nation’s decision to surrender on the 15th, pockets of Japa- nese troops in Manchuria continued to fight the Soviet invaders, and the Soviets went ahead with amphibious landings on Sakhalin and the Kurils.

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MAPS BY STEVE WALKOWIAK/SWMAPS.COM

Invasion of the Kuril IslandsOn August 18, three days after Japan’s surrender

announcement, Soviet forces invaded the Kurils

from Kamchatka, striking first at Shumshu. The

operation exposed the Soviets’ inexperience with

amphibious landings, costing them 1,567 casualties

to just over 1,000 for the Japanese. Japan and Russia

continue to contest the sovereignty of the islands.

Battle of ShumshuThe Soviets faced a tough fight from the 8,480-man

Japanese force on Shumshu. In the wake of Japan’s

surrender, Shumshu’s garrison commander had

expected a U.S. occupation force and not a Soviet

amphibious invasion on August 18. But his artillery

and tanks inflicted a steep toll on the Soviets before

the last Japanese holdouts surrendered on the 23rd.

Invasion of South ShakhalinJapan had held the southern half of 560-mile-long

Sakhalin Island since the 1905 Russo-Japanese War,

a sore point the Soviets sought to remedy. Invading

the island on August 11, they faced unexpectedly

stubborn Japanese resistance, even after Hirohito’s

broadcast. With superior artillery and air support,

the Soviets finally secured the island by the 26th.

DETAIL AREA

J A P A NC H I N A

U.S.

TOKYO

HUTOU

Kuril I

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Hawaii

P a c i f i c O c e a n

Manchuria

S O V I E T U N I O N

PORTARTHUR

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Stalin harbored more far-reaching designs on Japanese territory. Before the Manchurian assault was launched, Soviet troops were earmarked to land on the Japanese home island of Hokkaido and to occupy its northern

half as soon as north Korea was secure. On the evening of August 18 Marshal Aleksandr Vasilevsky, commander of Soviet forces in the Far East, signaled Moscow, asking permis-sion to proceed with a Hokkaido attack scheduled to last from August 19 to September 1. For 48 hours Moscow was silent, brooding. On August 20 Vasilevsky signaled again, asking for orders. Continue preparations, said Stalin: The assault force should be ready to attack by midnight on August 23.

Meanwhile, the Americans also dallied with possible landings in the Kurils and at the mainland port of Dalian, China, to secure bases—in breach of the Yalta agreement—before the Soviets could reach them. Both sides, however, finally backed off. Washington recognized that any attempt to preempt the Soviets from occupying their agreed terri-tories would precipitate a crisis. Likewise, President Harry S. Truman cabled Moscow, summarily rejecting Stalin’s proposal that the Russians should receive the surrender of Japanese forces on north Hokkaido. At midday on the 22nd Moscow dispatched new orders to Far East Command, cancelling the Hokkaido landings. The Americans confined themselves to hastening Marines to key points on and near the coast of mainland China, to hold these until Chiang Kai-shek’s forces could assume control. A huge American commitment of men and transport aircraft alone enabled the Nationalists to re-establish themselves in the east during the autumn of 1945.

The last battle of World War II was fought at a place few Westerners have ever heard of. Hutou means “tiger’s head” in Chinese. In 1945 there were still some tigers in the Wanda Mountains, where the

town stands beside the great Ussuri River, eastern frontier of Manchuria. On the Rus-sian shore forests stretch for miles across flat country. On the Manchurian side, however, steep bluffs rise from the swamps and railway yard at the waterside. There, beginning in 1933, the Japanese Kwantung Army created the most elaborate defensive system in Asia: Its commanders were rash enough to call it their “Maginot Line.”

Hutou was centered on five forts built on neighboring hills that rise up to 400 feet above the riverbank. The concrete roofs and walls were 9 feet thick, with generators, store-rooms and living quarters sunk deep underground, linked by tunnels. The whole system was almost 5 miles wide and 4 deep, supported by some of the heaviest artillery in Asia, including 240mm Krupp guns and a 410mm howitzer. The

Chinese assert that the 30,000 slave laborers who built the fortress were killed when their work was complete, and indeed many bodies were exhumed after 1945.

To the Japanese, Hutou was an unpopular posting, remote from any pleasures or amenities. For those who occupied its echoing caverns, it was also chronically unhealthy—mois-

ture dripped off the concrete walls, rusted weapons, spoiled food. In winter the bun-kers were icy cold; in summer stiflingly hot. Through the years of war, veteran units had been removed from the fortress garrison and replaced by less impressive human material. Despite evidence of Soviet patrolling and the discovery of pontoons drifting on the Ussuri River, Hutou’s com-mander was absent at a briefing on the night of the initial attack and was never able to return to his post. The defense was therefore directed by the local artillery commander, Captain Masao Oki.

The initial Soviet barrage cut road links and spread terror among the few hundred hapless civilians living behind the for-tress. On August 9 the Chinese inhabitants of Hutou township, a wattle-and-wooden settlement, were awakened in the early morning darkness by the roar of aircraft overhead, the whistle

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1,577,725 troops*

27,086 artillery pieces

3,721 aircraft

3,705 tanks

1,852 self-propelled guns

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Marshal Aleksandr Vasilevsky

commanded Soviet units in

the Far East, preparing his

forces far in advance of the

scheduled August 9 invasion.

*TRANS-BAIKAL FRONT: 654,040; 2ND FAR EASTERN

FRONT: 337,096; 1ST FAR EASTERN FRONT: 586,589

Soviet Forces

of falling bombs and the thud of shells. Some fell on the Japa-nese defenses, others among the houses, killing five Chinese.

After two hours the shelling stopped, and hundreds of villagers ran out into the street. They saw the horizon rip-pling with gun flashes from the Russian shore of the Ussuri and at once understood that the Soviets were coming. Japa-nese soldiers ran into the town. Though some buildings were already blazing after being hit by bombs and shells, they merely claimed that an air-raid practice was taking place. All civilians must move immedi-ately into the nearby woods. There was no time to gather food or possessions.

The defenders exploited a lull in Russian artillery fire to move all the garrison’s family members and nearby immigrant Japanese farmers into the tunnel system. As well as 600 regular troops, there were then shelter-ing underground 1,000 civilians, some with militia training and weapons. An hour later shelling resumed, and at 8 a.m. Soviet infantry started crossing the Ussuri. The Japanese responded with mortar fire. This inflicted some casualties, but within three hours the attackers had secured a bridgehead. Amazingly, Hutou’s biggest artillery pieces did not fire. They were short of gunners, and Captain

Oki was preoccupied with directing the infantry defense. All that day and the next Soviet troops continued to shuttle across the river. The local Japanese army commander, Lt. Gen. Noritsune Shimuzu, telephoned Hutou on the evening of the 9th to deliver a wordy injunction to Oki to hold fast: “In view of the current war situation and the circumstances

of the garrison, you are all requested to fight to the last breath and meet your fate, when it comes, as courageously as flow-ers, so that you may become pillars of our nation.” After this heady torrent of mixed metaphors all contact was lost between the defenders and the outside world.

By nightfall on August 10 the surround-ing area was securely in the hands of the invaders. When darkness came the Soviets began attacks on the bunker system. All failed. It became plain that against such strong defenses subtler tactics would be necessary. Through the days that followed,

artillery was used to keep Japanese heads down, while in-fantry and engineer groups inched forward among the trenches. Soon they had isolated the individual forts and destroyed Japanese artillery observation posts. The condi-tion of the defenders became grim.

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*KWANTUNG ARMY: 713,000; KOREA, SAKHALIN,

KURIL ISLANDS: 280,000; MANHUKUOAN ARMY:

170,000; INNER MONGOLIAN FORCES: 44,000

In their engagements with Japanese forces Soviet

units usually wielded far greater firepower, from

PPSh-41 submachine guns like those above to

rocket launchers, artillery and columns of tanks.

1,217,000 troops*

6,700 artillery pieces

1,800 aircraft

1,215 tanks

Japanese Forces

“After the first [Soviet] salvo we knew the battle could have only one outcome,” wrote one of the few Japanese survivors, gunner Gamii Zhefu. “In the tunnels beneath the fort it was incredibly hot. We were desperate for water. The women were terrified. Then one soldier produced a canteen and gave everyone a sip, which did wonders for our morale. We were also very hungry, however, and started looking for food. We found some cans, ate—and started feeling thirsty again. Soon, for all of us, water became an obsession. It over-came even our fears about the battle and the threat of death. We were reduced to animal needs and desires.”

On August 13, adopting a technique familiar in the Pacific island battles, the Russians poured gasoline down the fortress’ ventilation inlets and ignited it. Hundreds of defenders and their families perished in the conflagrations that followed. Yet the Japanese continued to surprise Russian troops with sal-lies, sometimes dislodging the attackers from newly occupied positions. One Japanese rush was led by a 22-year-old pro-bationary officer brandishing a sword, who fell to a Russian grenade. Hutou’s gunners, unable to use their huge weapons, destroyed them with demolition charges and formed suicide squads. A Japanese artillery piece was destroyed by a round from its neighbor, firing at point-blank range. The central heights of the fortress changed hands nine times.

The wretched defenders of Hutou knew nothing of the emperor’s broadcast on August 15, nor of their country’s surrender. They rejected all Russian calls to lay down their arms. On the 17th a five-man party of local Chinese and captured Japanese carrying a white flag was dispatched from the Soviet lines to tell the garrison that the war was over. The officer who received them dismissed such a notion with contempt. He drew his sword and beheaded the elderly Chinese bearing the Soviet proposals. “We have nothing to say to the Red Army,” he declared, before retiring into his bunker. The Soviet barrage resumed. Conditions under-ground became unendurable. Many of those in the tunnels and casemates suffered carbon monoxide poisoning.

“There were plenty of bodies down there,” wrote Zhefu. “I heard a wounded man crying repeatedly, ‘Water, water,’ but no one took any notice of him. I was momentarily excited by seeing a trickle of fluid running across the floor, until I realized that it was leaking from a corpse. I drank it. Another man said, ‘That stuff will kill you.’ I didn’t care. I was dying of thirst anyway.”

For hundreds of peasants sheltering in the woods in the first days there was nothing to eat save a few berries and wild plants. They drank water from the river and listened to the appalling cacophony of battle on the Hutou hills. A few Japa- nese immigrants huddled among them, but most had sought

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In Harbin, Manchuria,

on Aug. 20, 1945,

a Red Army officer

takes inventory as

Japanese troops

file past to surrender

their small arms.

the shelter of the fortress. On the fourth day, while fighting still raged, Red soldiers appeared and herded the civilians down to the riverbank, which was now secure. The Russians smashed open a big Japanese food store and invited the Chi-nese to help themselves. They were able to make rice soup to sustain them through another 10 days of uncertainty and gunfire on the hills above.

On August 19 a large party of Japanese from the fortress attempted a break for freedom. They were cut down by Russian machine guns. By the 22nd almost all the underground bun-kers had become untenable. Soviet troops probing cautiously down the steps met a ghastly stench of humanity, cordite and death. In one bunker the bodies of men, women and 80 chil-dren aged between 1 and 12 were heaped together. In a cavern beneath Strongpoint “Sharp” lay another pile of women’s corpses. There was also the detritus of the dead—cooking pots, wire-rimmed spectacles, gramophones, a few bicycles, pinup pictures of surprisingly smartly dressed “comfort women.” The Soviets declared the Hutou Fortified Region secure. Yet for four days more one isolated Japanese company continued its resis-tance. Only on August 26 was this remnant snuffed out. Thus, today, a huge Soviet war memorial on the site declares Hutou to be the scene of the final battle of World War II. Almost 2,000 Japanese men, women and children perished in and around the fortress, days after the rest of the world celebrated peace.

Russians told the Chinese fugitives in the woods behind Hutou that it was now safe to come out. In a curious introduction to their new lives these bewildered peas-ants were shown a propaganda film about the Russian

Revolution. A commissar addressed them through an inter-preter: “Red soldiers have made great sacrifices in this battle to bring you liberty, and now it is yours.” The Japanese were all dead, he said. The villagers could go home. Home? They drifted uneasily back to their huts to find only ruins and blackened earth. In the ashes of Jiang Fushun’s family home lay the body of his father, a bullet through his head, the price of his rashness in staying behind. Every Chinese who ven-tured into the village during the battle had met the same fate. Those who had relatives elsewhere began long treks in search of sanctuary, but Jiang’s family had no one to go to. They lingered among the ruins, scrabbling to build themselves a shelter, scavenging for food. The task was made no easier by the fact that Russian soldiers began to remove everything

edible or of value. The Chinese were appalled to see the liberators drive off the horses on which their tiny farms depended. Women were raped in the usual fashion.

Soviet soldiers warned peasants not to approach the forts, which were still littered with mines and munitions. After a few days, however, Jiang and a few others wandered up to the blackened casemates, gazing in revulsion at the un-buried corpses of Japanese soldiers and their women. When the Russians finally departed, taking with them even the tracks of the local railway, the 1,000 or so desolate people left in Hutou found themselves existing in a limbo. The vil-lage headman was dead. For more than two years thereafter no one attempted to exercise authority over them, nor to provide aid of any kind. When the communists eventually assumed control of their lives, “things became a little better.”

Only 46 Japanese are known to have escaped from the fortress with their lives. “The defense was extraordinarily brave,” says Chinese historian Wang Hongbin, “which usu-ally demands respect. But it was also completely futile. It is hard to admire blind loyalty to the emperor at that stage. They all died for nothing.” MH

Sir Max Hastings is the author of 20 books. He has served as a foreign correspondent and as the editor of Britain’s Evening Standard and The Daily Telegraph and has received numerous British Press Awards, including Journalist of the Year in 1982 and Editor of the Year in 1988. He resides outside London.

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Today, a huge Soviet war memorial on the site declares

Hutou to be the scene of the final battle of World War II

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In the wake of the Japanese defeat cheering civilians in Dalian, China,

greet Red Army tank crews. Though liberated, many Chinese returned

to their villages only to find burned-out ruins and blackened earth.