September 3 marks the Day of Military Glory in Russia, known as the “Day of Victory over Militarist Japan and the End of World War II.”

The defeat of Japanese militarism eliminated the last major stronghold of the Axis powers in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as Nazi Germany’s ally in the Far East, which had occupied vast territories and subjugated numerous peoples.

Japan’s war in Asia and the Pacific claimed the lives of an estimated 36 million people and caused immense destruction and suffering. In China alone, 10–15 million people were massacred. On the island of Java, 3–4 million were killed, while in Indochina the death toll reached 1–1.5 million. Japan lost 2.1 million military personnel and 800,000 civilians. Some 36,000 Soviet officers and soldiers lost their lives during the liberation of China and Korea from Japanese occupation.

The militarization of Japan began in the 1930s. As early as 1931, the Kwantung Army launched an offensive against China, invading Manchuria without declaring war. On October 8, 1931, Japanese aircraft carried out a bombing raid on Jinzhou, one of the earliest instances of an aerial attack on a civilian city in history.

In 1932 and 1936, representatives of the extremist wing of the Japanese armed forces, drawing inspiration from Nazi Germany, attempted to stage coups d’état aimed at establishing a military dictatorship in Japan. Against the backdrop of the political crisis, liberal reforms were rolled back, while the military effectively seized control of the country’s main levers of power and increasingly brought Emperor Hirohito under its influence.

In June 1937, Japan launched a full-scale war against China. The Soviet Union provided substantial assistance to the Chinese, sending military experts, weapons and equipment. In 1938, Japanese forces attacked Soviet border areas near Lake Khasan, but the assault was successfully repelled. In 1939, Japanese troops invaded Mongolia, prompting the Red Army to come to the country’s aid. Soviet and Mongolian forces inflicted a crushing defeat on the aggressors on the banks of the Khalkhin Gol River, known in some Western accounts as the “Nomonhan Incident.”

With the outbreak of World War II in Europe, Japan expanded across the Asia-Pacific region. In 1940, with the consent of Germany and Italy, Japanese forces invaded Indochina and occupied Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. In December 1941, Japan attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbor and launched military operations across Southeast Asia and the Southwest Pacific. Burma, Malaya, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines were occupied.

The Soviet Union could have become the next target of Japanese militarism. Japan did not rule out the possibility of an attack and was waiting for a favorable opportunity to strike. Under the Kantokuen plan, large military forces intended for a possible attack on the USSR were concentrated in Manchuria in August 1941.

At the same time, Japanese militarists actively developed a biological weapons program, regarding it as one of the key instruments for waging war against the Soviet Union. In the occupied territories of China and Mongolia, Japanese war criminals established secret facilities where inhumane experiments were conducted on prisoners of war and civilians. The most notorious of these was Unit 731, where experiments involved deliberately infecting living people with disease-causing microorganisms in order to study the spread and effects of infectious diseases.

On August 9, 1945, the Soviet Union, fulfilling the commitments it had undertaken at the Yalta Conference of the Allied powers (February 4–11, 1945), entered the war against Japan. The Red Army launched a rapid advance deep into Manchuria. By August 20, after fierce fighting, Soviet forces had reached the Manchurian Plain, split Japanese forces into separate groupings and encircled them. Japanese troops began surrendering in large numbers.

From August 18 to 27, Soviet airborne forces captured Harbin, Mukden, Changchun, Girin, Port Arthur, Dairen, Pyongyang and Kanko. The Soviet Union liberated northeastern China and northern Korea and drove Japanese forces from southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands.

On September 2, 1945, aboard the American battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, with representatives of the Allied powers in attendance, the Instrument of Surrender of Japan was signed, bringing to a formal end the largest conflict in human history, unleashed by fascism and Hitlerism in alliance with Japanese militarism.

In the aftermath of World War II, the victorious powers agreed to establish the International Military Tribunal for the Far East to bring Japanese war criminals to justice. The Tribunal found that Japan had waged an aggressive war against China and had launched the war in the Pacific against the United States, Britain, France and other countries. The Tribunal’s verdict devoted considerable attention to Japanese aggression against the Soviet Union.

In December 1949, the Military Tribunal of the Primorsky Military District of the USSR held the Khabarovsk Trial of 12 former members of the Kwantung Army who were responsible for the development and testing of bacteriological weapons. For the first time, evidence of the production and testing of such weapons on human subjects was presented publicly. The Khabarovsk Trial was comparable in historical significance to the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials. It marked an early major step toward the international prohibition of biological weapons.

The memory of the horrors of World War II and its consequences remains deeply important today. Developments around the world show how easily some countries’ leaders, influenced by Nazi and militarist ideas and pursuing revanchist policies, can forget the tragic chapters of their own history and their past crimes, especially when acknowledging them runs counter to their current political interests.

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Sergei Tolchenov is the Ambassador of the Russian Federation to Indonesia.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author.

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