Back in midsummer I talked about doing one final post in the "The Imperial Japanese Army - What Went Wrong" series about "August Storm", the Soviet invasion of Manchuria in the late summer of 1945.
I spent a fair amount of time finding and reading LTC Glantz' monumental Leavenworth Papers on the thing (and have to say that they are, indeed, amazingly thorough and worthwhile pieces of historical research, and well worth reading...) to try and develop a post out of it and, unfortunately, struggling badly.
I just couldn't find a hook there to hang a post on.
Largely because the whole magilla is so vast. The Soviets mobilized a million and a half, the Kwantung Army defended with about 700,000, and the area of operations included the entire perimeter of Japanese-held Manchuria. Engagements included deliberate attacks in open, wooded, mountainous, and riverine terrain, hasty attacks, movement-to-contact and meeting engagements, and included assaults on fortified positions, amphibious operations, as well as a truly complex and monumental logistical support operation by the Soviet Far East Command.
But also simply because Glantz does such a good job. Anything I could do would simply be a recapitulation of his work. That's ridiculous along with being immense; I don't want to do that.
But I do want to say something about it. It seems to me to sum up the appalling failure of the Imperial Army that caused and led to so much suffering and destruction, including that of the very people and polity that the IJA was supposed to protect. I'm still going through the second of Glantz' publications, the case study paper, to see if there's a piece of this engagement that I can break off and chew on.
And at least it led me to this:
The whole "Taiwanese WW2 re-enactors do Soviets versus Japanese in Manchuria" thing is entirely made of 110% Taiwanese awesome, and I recommend you watch the whole thing while I scramble to come up with something just as worthwhile to entertain you with.
What about the zanryu fujin? We hear a lot about the Japanese men (along with associated war crimes, et al). But there were a lot of Japanese women left behind and nobody seems to care about what happened to them (not even the Japanese government).
ReplyDeleteThat's a part of the story I hadn't heard about, but apparently it was more than just the people left in the former occupied territories. A lot of the Japanese colonists were forced to leave the places they'd been living in, often for generations, and were put into a Japanese society that had been devastated by the war and defeat. These hikiagesha ended up being outsiders in what was supposed to be their homeland as well as being scapegoated for the war and defeat.
ReplyDeleteI'll see what's in there. Not sure if it's a standalone post, but as part of the story of the fall of Japanese Manchuria it seems like a tale that should be told.
I understand your not making that post, sometimes you look at what someone has done and just fall back in awe.
ReplyDeleteAlvin Coox did much the same with Nomonhan 1939, in two volumes.
The Manchuria 1945 Leavenworth papers were some of Glantz's first published work, and he went on to write shelves full of excellent East Front stuff.
I lived in Japan 1990-92 doing the teach-English bit for a school board in southern Honshu, working in middle schools (Grades 7-9).
The second year I was there two twin boys transferred in to one of the schools I was working at.
Their grandparents were Japanese who had gone to Manchuria, then Manchukuo to seek their fortune and were left behind at the end of the war.
They raised children who raised these boys in turn, then they decided to send them to Japan to live with extended family members to complete their education and presumably live in Japan.
I liked these boys (and the English they had already learned, in Chinese schools, was far better than their classmates') and felt sorry for them, trying to adjust to so much in such a short time, and knowing it was nearly certain they would never be accepted as Japanese no matter what their parents thought.