Page 28 - All About History - Issue 16-14

What if…

The Soviets

had invaded

Japan in WWII?

EAST ASIA, 1945

Written by Jack Griffiths

DAYNA BARNES What would have happened if the Soviets had invaded How would it have been different from the Allied
occupation of Japan after the war?
mainland Japan in WWII?
An adjunct The Soviets did invade the Kuril Islands north of Hokkaido in This depends on how far the Soviets would have gotten
professor at The
University of August of 1945. Japanese sovereignty over those islands was moving into the home islands of Japan before the war ended.
San Francisco, agreed between the Russians and the Japanese in the 19th The Allied occupation was dominated by the Americans, but
Barnes is a century, and continued Russian control of these since 1945 is it was a joint project, which included the Soviets (along with
specialist in East
Asian International History. an issue of contention between Russia and Japan today. Had the British and Chinese). These countries had a voice in the
She has a PhD and an MSc the Soviets pushed further south, they would certainly have occupation administration through an advisory body called
in the Theory and History
of International Relations had a larger voice in the occupation administration, perhaps the Far Eastern Commission. As stated above, had the Soviet
from the London School having control of their own zone of occupation as in Korea Union invaded large parts of the Japanese home islands, it
of Economics and a BA in and Germany. The result could have been, as in North and would have had a larger voice in the occupation, perhaps
Politics from the University of
California at Santa Cruz. She South Korea and East and West Germany, the creation of having its own zone of occupation. Under the administration
is the managing editor of the divided and ideologically opposed states in post-war Japan. of very different kinds of states (capitalist and communist), the
electronic journal Asia Pacific The post-war occupation of Korea had the unintended different zones would have developed in very different ways,
Perspectives, which publishes
articles on social sciences and consequence of dividing what had been a whole nation. Korea, as in North and South Korea until that occupation ended in
humanities focusing on the like Japan, was an ethnically and linguistically homogenous 1948. The question of whether Japan should be administered
Asia-Pacific region.
country, with a long national history. It was occupied by the in zones by the major Allies, or whole under the Americans,
Allies who planned to administer the occupation in zones was actually not settled until July and August of 1945, so at
while cooperating with each other to prepare Korea for the time the possibility of a Soviet-controlled zone in Japan
independence. However, as the United States and the Soviet would not have been surprising. Certainly the Americans
Union advocated very different types of government and and British would have wanted the zone line to be drawn to
economic systems, the regimes that emerged from that very deny the Soviets control of Tokyo. Unlike Germany, where the
brief divided occupation were very different from each other. Soviets bore the brunt of fighting, the US had provided most
During the occupation, both occupiers worked to support of the force for the Pacific island-hopping campaign, which led
friendly governments based on their own models. This to Japan’s defeat. US officials and the public therefore expected
helped to create the division between North and South Korea, a larger role in the post-war period.
although both of those new countries hoped for a reunification
of the peninsula. The same might have happened in Japan, How would the US involvement in Vietnam and Korea
with a capitalist and pro-US South Japan, which would have changed?
have included major industrial and population centres like This is a hard question to answer. US support for South Korea
Tokyo and Osaka, and a communist pro-Soviet North Japan. might not have changed, but it is hard to say whether North
Although this divide would at first be artificial, as time went Korea would have been more or less likely to invade South
on, the different governments and continuing events could Korea in an attempt to reunify the country (starting the
have deepened the rift. Korean War), or whether Russia and China would have been
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