Okay, kind of agreed with your first two posts, but this one you've gone off the rails. No, the entry of the USSR was a game changer because they weren't ready for it. In Hokkaido, they only had two reserve divisions for the entire island. The Russians had hundreds of divisions, battle hardened from fighting the Germans, and getting a few of them to Hokkaido wouldn't have been that big of a problem. Japan had no naval assets left (nearly all their aircraft carriers and battleships having been sunk.)
And here we go back to one of the least liked attributes of Japan of the era. Xenophobia and belief in their Racial Superiority.
Hokkaido was kinda like Okinawa and Korea, in that they were both added in the mid 1800's to the Empire, and at that point were still not really seen as "Japanese". These had been completely different countries prior to that, and to most of Japan it was just another conquered territory. And one that they had absolutely no problem offering up if needed, so long as it keeps the Main Island safe.
You know, kinda like Okinawa where they had their own military kill civilians rather than let them surrender. Or Saipan, where they had no problem convincing a huge percentage of the population to kill themselves and their children. Even including famously jumping off of cliffs.
You are making a common mistake, and believing that Japan of today (including those islands) is the Japan of the era. Heck, Japan today is not even close to how it was then. Even when I was first on Okinawa in the 1980s, I was told very clearly to not refer to the older generation as "Japanese". A great many of those who lived through the WWII era hated the Japanese. They were Okinawans, and many got upset if you did not recognize that. Now today, that is almost entirely gone as that generation has largely died off. And Okinawa has seen a great deal of both migration from the main island, as well as becoming essentially their version of Hawaii.
Only 2 Divisions on Hokkaido? Of course, who cares about them, they were barely Japanese anyways. Let the civilians suck up as many bullets as they can, we need the forces on the home island!
The concept that Japan herself might be partitioned like Germany was, with Japanese women getting the kind of treatment that German women had been subjected to in the Soviet Zone, was more horrifying to the very racist Japanese than merely losing Manchuria. **** you, PuYI, you are on your own, buddy!
You have to remember, the entire "GEACPS" was actually not all that different from what Germany had been doing. As the "Asian Master Race", they would jump in and kick out all those "White Foreigners", and "liberate" those nations. Which of course being little but "stupid wogs" would worship the Japanese as their liberators, and recognize their superiority and follow whatever they say.
Naturally.
Myself, I have long wondered if there was some kind of message in their sending Puyi to Manchuria. For those that do not know, Puyi is also known as "The Last Emperor" of China. And he was the last member of the Qing Dynasty.
A Dynasty that is also often thought of by another name, the Manchu Dynasty. Somebody in their Foreign Office thinking "Hey, this guy is an Emperor and descended from Khans in Manchuria. Why not send him to be their new Emperor under our control?"
But no, to Japan the entire rest of their Empire was disposable, so long as the home island remained. And if you change history so there are no Atomic Bombs at all, then all you have is Japan being utterly destroyed by a combined Allied onslaught. Something they were more than happy to have, as they were already teaching children to attack the invaders with spears for goodness sakes.
I think that was exactly my point. They realized they couldn't hold those territories, but again- now they were fighting a two front war. Most of those returned troops were being deployed in Honshu and Kyushu. Everyone assumed that the invastion of Kyushu wouldn't happen until November, and the followup invasion of Honshu wasn't going to happen until the following March.
They already had been! You had 3 main theaters already, and they were being badly beaten in all of them. They had lost in the Pacific, South Pacific, and were being rolled back all over Mainland Asia. So opening yet another front by that point was about as important as attacking Germany from Greece while the Soviets were storming in from the East, and the rest of the Allies from the West.
Two front war, they were already being beaten in 3 fronts (4 if you include their failed attempt in Alaska).
With the USSR in it, if the Japanese hadn't surrendered, they would have had plenty of time to not only take over Japan's holdings in Asia, but launch an invasion of Hokkaido as well. Heck, they might even let the Chinese occupy a chunk of Japan just to make they feel better. (Why not, they let France occupy a chunk of Germany?)
No, that would never have happened. To start with, China was already involved in it's own Civil War. And they had absolutely no interest in doing any kind of occupation anywhere.
With the exception of Taipei, which Japan had annexed from China in 1895. The Republic of China did occupy that from 1945 until 1952, when the island was returned in one of the strangest treaties I have seen when Japan finally formally returned Formosa (Taiwan, Taipei) to Chinese control. Other than reclaiming this lost territory, the Chinese had absolutely no interest in participating in any "Chinese Occupation" of Japan.
If there is one thing that would have destroyed Japan and possibly have led to another war, it might have been an occupation like had been done in Germany. Japan had been a homogenous nation and culture for well over a thousand years, with a single dynasty that literally goes back to biblical times.
Germany on the other hand was a fairly modern hodgepodge that had been kludged together from 39 separate states after the fall of Napoleon. And not unlike Antebellum United States, they thought of themselves by their former names almost as much as they recognized themselves as "German". They were Prussians, Bavarians, Hanoverians, the list goes on and on. So finding them split up yet again under another occupation was nothing new to them.
And we saw what happens when such a conglomeration nation falls apart, just look no farther than Yugoslavia.
In Japan, that would never have happened. Short of turning over their other islands to various nations and leaving the mainland to the US (or at most a US-UK alliance).
Thankfully, MacArthur knew and understood that, and was one of the strongest to fight for a single occupying power. Trying to treat Japan as Germany with multiple occupation zones would have been a disaster. What was done was their former "Mainland Empire" was dissolved, and the Soviets got North Korea to watch over. Since technically Manchuko was a different country, it's occupation was treated as such, not as a part of Japan.
And the occupation of the Japanese islands in the last days? In reality, this was the reverse, and the Soviets were trying to once again grab what they could before the war ended. Earlier at the Yalta Conference, the Soviets had been "invited" to join the war within 3 months of the Surrender of Germany. And they were offered the Northernmost islands in exchange for allowing the US to base bombers in the Soviet Union.
And the Soviets were sure that once the Atom Bombs started dropping that Japan would not remain in the fight for long. So it was jump and grab them as quickly as possible after the first bomb dropped, or forever loose them as the US would not allow them to be separated off after a surrender.
So that is exactly what they did.
People who read a book jacket and think they have become experts...
People who reference cartoons as "proof" of some half-assed, superficial "analysis" of culture or history...
People who can't be bothered to correctly spell the terms they are trying to use. How about "Showa," professor?
