• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1035 0

staff to abandon plans for a final “banzai” charge. They maintained a conventional defence for a time, hampered by the fact that their phone lines were cut and radios almost non-existent. On 16 August, a certain Major Ueda of the 278th Regiment arrived at headquarters before dawn to report that the rest of the division had withdrawn. His commanding officer, Colonel Hajma Yamanaka, said simply: “I shall die here902. I shall not withdraw in the absence of an explicit order.” A few hours later, an overwhelming Russian tank and infantry force attacked their positions. At noon, Colonel Yamanaka respectfully bowed to the east, burned the regimental colour, rallied his survivors and led a counter-attack. When this failed, he and Major Ueda committed hara-kiri. Japanese accounts asserted that the capture of Mudanjiang cost them 4,000 dead, while the Soviets claimed 40,000. The truth is probably somewhere in between. The Red Army reckoned that this one battle accounted for half its total losses in Manchuria, including scores of tanks.

The city was cleared only on the evening of 16 August. Many Japanese never learned that they had been ordered to withdraw, and fought to the death. Over-ambitious Soviet spearheads, racing ahead, suffered severely from local counterattacks, but by 20 August they had reached Harbin. Organised resistance in North Korea, overrun by 1st Far Eastern Front, ended on 16 August. Some Japanese units, however, continued fighting for a further ten days. The Russians were grudgingly impressed by the fashion in which enemy strongpoints refused quarter, and had to be reduced by piecemeal bombardment and infantry attack. In the words of David Glantz, foremost Western historian of the campaign: “The defending troops in the Japanese fortified regions903 put up a tenacious, brave yet meaningless defense…Garrisons fought to the point of exhaustion or extermination.”

BOTH WITHIN and without Manchuria, the Chinese received news of Stalin’s onslaught with mixed feelings. In the first days, local people greeted the Russian armies enthusiastically. Victor Kosopalov’s unit was delighted to be met in each village by peasants proffering buckets of springwater: “It was so hot904 and we were so thirsty—this was the most welcome delicacy they could have given us.” Russian soldiers contemplating a flooded torrent were amazed when Chinese on the far bank leapt into the river and swam across to meet their liberators, carrying ropes to facilitate a crossing. Thousands of others went to work alongside Soviet sappers, repairing dams blown by the Japanese. Peasants gave warnings of ambushes. “When we entered the city of Vanemiao905,” said Oleg Smirnov, “the Chinese welcomed us with cries of ‘Shango!’ and ‘Vansui!’—‘10,000 years of life to you.’ They were waving red flags and almost jumping onto our tank tracks.” In reality, local people were most likely crying “Zhongguo wansui!”—“Long live China!”—but Smirnov and his comrades were not to know that.

On the Pacific coast, Russian naval infantry launched amphibious assaults to take the towns of Unggi and Najin on 11 and 12 August, and at Chongjin four days later. Even after the defenders were forced out, many continued fighting in the surrounding hills. Units of the Soviet 2nd Far East Front still faced heavy counter-attacks on 15–16 August. Russian warships found themselves duelling with an armoured train ashore. Fighting for Chongjin ended only late on 16 August, when troops of the Russian 25th Army arrived overland to meet the naval infantry.

The emperor Pu Yi’s train approached Meheguo on 12 August. The Guandong Army’s commander, Yamada, boarded the imperial carriage to report that Japanese forces were everywhere victorious. His assurances were immediately belied by the spectacle of crowds of screaming Japanese fugitives of all ages and both sexes, brawling soldiers and police, at Jelin station. Next day, the emperor arrived at Dalizikou, a coal-mining community set among beautiful mountains. Here, through two days of terror, Pu Yi and his bedraggled little party waited on events,