By the end of August 16, while planning further advancement, the command and staff of the 1st Red Banner Army could state the following:
The enemy's pre-prepared defense had been broken through to its full depth, up to the third line along the Mudanjiang River.
The 5th Japanese Army had been defeated. It lost a significant portion, if not the majority, of its rear supply depots and bases with reserves of all types of military supplies.
It is difficult for the enemy to replenish such losses in a short period of time. The introduction of his fresh operational reserves into our sector is doubtful, as not only the 1st (Eastern Manchurian) Japanese front opposing us has been broken, but also other fronts of the Kwantung Army—the Western Manchurian and Korean fronts, as well as the defense of the 4th Separate (Northern Manchurian) Army. The Soviet forces of the 1st and 2nd Far Eastern and Transbaikal fronts, advancing along converging directions towards each other, have split the Kwantung Army into isolated groups, and the right wing of the Transbaikal front, advancing with a deep wedge, has invaded South Manchuria. The complete encirclement and final defeat of the enemy's main forces in Manchuria can be considered a matter of the nearest days.
The 1st Red Banner Army retained full combat effectiveness, but in order to continue the offensive at a good pace, a short pause was necessary—at least for a day. This decision was made not without hesitation. Both military doctrine and personal experience required pursuing the defeated enemy without giving him even an hour's respite. However, the same experience indicated that this general principle must first and foremost be aligned with the specific battlefield situation. The desire to immediately finish off the retreating enemy sometimes conflicts with the capabilities and condition of one’s own troops. If their combat formations have stretched out, the rear has fallen behind, ammunition and fuel have been used up, weapons and equipment need repairs, and, finally, if the senior commander does not provide timely rest for troops exhausted by previous battles—such forces, as a rule, sharply reduce the pace of the advance, and the enemy may slow their progress with limited forces. Conversely, even a short rest with regrouping and other necessary measures can compensate for the pause with higher tempos moving forward.
The army staff calculated that it would take about a day to put the 26th Corps' units in order and concentrate the 59th Corps near Mudanjiang. The calculation proved correct. The troops rested, the tank brigades replenished their losses in equipment with repaired tanks, the 59th Corps was on the way, and the army's overall combat order was becoming its second echelon.
To capture Harbin, we created a strong army mobile group consisting of the 77th and 257th Tank Brigades (64 tanks), two self-propelled artillery divisions (about 20 vehicles), the 60th Anti-tank Brigade, the 52nd Mortar Brigade, seven rifle battalions from various regiments of the 22nd and 300th Divisions, as well as other units. The group was led by the commander of the army's armored and mechanized forces, Colonel A. P. Ivanovich, and a day later, command was taken over by General A. M. Maximov. The group’s task was to capture the Handaohézi station, reach the Central Manchurian Plain, and continue the advance on Harbin until meeting the advanced units of the Transbaikal Front.
By the evening of August 13, the army resumed its offensive, and by the end of the day, advancing west along the China-Eastern Railway, it captured the city of Hailincheng. From there, the road led into the mountains, toward the passes of the Zhangguancailin Range. We had to overcome another mountainous area with elevations up to 1,200 meters. There were two roads: the right one, shorter, which, according to the topographic signs, eventually turned into a mountain path, and the left one, longer, which ran alongside the railway line and followed all its steep and numerous loops. On the map, it was marked as an "improved dirt road," but in reality, it turned out to be much worse than the first. Torrential rains had turned it into a continuous intermountain swamp stretching for 40 km. Dozens of wagons and vehicles, abandoned by the retreating enemy, stuck out of the quagmire as a warning sign. Our attempt to use the road for a tank strike on Handaohézi by the mobile group failed. Even the powerful T-34s got bogged down in it. We had to turn the tanks onto the mountain path, the infantry route of the 26th Corps.
The defeat at Mudanjiang broke the 5th Japanese Army not only physically, with enormous losses in men, equipment, and armament, but also morally. On the way to Handaohézi, in the narrow passes of the Zhangguancailin Range, we faced resistance only from isolated groups and units, including the 1st Motorized Suicide Brigade. But these were dealt with by the vanguards of the 22nd Rifle Division. The pace of the advance was slowed by the poor mountain road, completely destroyed road structures, and the congestion of the army’s forces, advancing to the passes in a single column—infantry and artillery mixed with tanks.
On August 18, when the army’s advanced units reached the Handaohézi station area, we were informed of the capitulation of the Kwantung Army, and soon after, mass surrenders of regiments and divisions of the 5th Japanese Army began. The events leading up to this fact are described fairly fully in our literature. I would just like to note that at the front, we were not entirely clear about the long pause between the Japanese Imperial Government’s announcement that it accepted the terms of capitulation and its practical implementation. After all, the Kwantung Army was losing the remnants of its combat capability right before our eyes, and had the fighting lasted a few more days, there would have been no one left to capitulate—only the staff and rear units would remain.
The diplomatic maneuvers of the Japanese government, attempts to buy time, were apparently connected with an illusory hope in the Kwantung Army, that its forces might temporarily restore the crumbling front. In this regard, I will remind you of a document that characterizes the situation and shows how our command reacted to it:
"From the General Staff of the Red Army
Marshal Vasilevsky, Commander-in-Chief of Soviet Forces in the Far East, on August 17 sent the following radiogram to the commander of the Japanese Kwantung Army:
'The headquarters of the Japanese Kwantung Army has contacted the Soviet Far Eastern Forces Headquarters by radio with a proposal to cease hostilities, without mentioning the surrender of the Japanese armed forces in Manchuria.
At the same time, Japanese forces have launched offensives on several sections of the Soviet-Japanese front.
I propose that the commander of the Kwantung Army cease all combat operations against Soviet forces along the entire front at 12:00 on August 20, lay down their arms, and surrender.
The above deadline is given so that the Kwantung Army headquarters can communicate the order to cease resistance and surrender to all its troops.
As soon as the Japanese forces begin to surrender their weapons, Soviet forces will cease hostilities.
August 17, 1945, 6:00 AM (Far Eastern Time).'"
Since neither on this day nor in the first half of the following day did the commander of the Kwantung Army, General Yamada, respond to this radiogram, on August 18, the commander of the 1st Far Eastern Front sent General G. A. Shelakhov, a special envoy from the Front's Military Council, along with a group of paratroopers, to Harbin by transport planes. General Shelakhov successfully carried out his difficult and dangerous mission. 120 paratroopers captured the Harbin airfield, and after negotiations with the chief of staff of the Kwantung Army, General Hata, and other generals leading the 40,000-strong Japanese garrison, General Shelakhov sent them by plane to the command post of the 1st Far Eastern Front.
Thus, maintaining what is called "a good face in a bad game" in an official sense, the Japanese general staff, while not offering much resistance to capture, also did not put up much of a fight when the opportunity to surrender arose. The verbal tricks and attempts to smooth over the heavy defeat and exonerate the generals responsible for it are clearly visible in the captured documents of the Kwantung Army. Here is Order No. 106, in which the commander of the Kwantung Army, General Yamada, was forced to acknowledge the necessity of complete and unconditional surrender, but he did so in extremely vague terms. The first point read:
"My task is to achieve the goals of ending hostilities through the best use of the entire army in a unified direction and with the strict fulfillment of the emperor’s will..."
The following points and sub-points are filled with so much verbal fluff that, if desired, they could be interpreted in different ways—certainly not as a forced step by a defeated army, but rather as a mutual desire of the warring sides "to strive for a better existence and also to achieve the significant and majestic task of ending hostilities."
It is well known that an order in which the troops do not see clarity or clearly defined tasks often proves ineffective. This was the case with Order No. 106, issued at 10 p.m. on August 16. Therefore, it is not surprising that the following day, August 17, General Yamada had to repeat this order in shorter and more precise terms. Meanwhile, events on the front were unfolding as expected, the Japanese army continued to rapidly disintegrate, its divisions and regiments, under the pressure of Soviet forces, retreated into the hills and taiga, lost contact with their headquarters, and were unable to receive orders. The immediate result of this delay—a multi-step attempt, from the palaces in Tokyo to the army headquarters, to gain something in a hopeless situation—was the death of several more thousand Japanese soldiers on the Manchurian theater of operations.
In the sector of the 1st Red Banner Army, Japanese negotiators appeared at six in the evening on August 18. The reconnaissance of General A. M. Maximov’s mobile group encountered two Japanese vehicles with white flags affixed to them. Alexander Mikhailovich radioed that he had sent the negotiators to us under escort, led by Captain V. M. Efimenko. They arrived in Mudanjiang by morning, and the senior among the negotiators was the chief of staff of the 5th Japanese Army, General Kawagoe Shigesada. I received him, announced the terms of surrender, and asked:
— Is everything clear?
— Everything, — he replied, — except the word "capitulation." It is not in our military vocabulary, our army will not understand it.
— It will understand, — I said. — Life will teach it.
The conversation was drifting away from the matter at hand, so I reminded General Kawagoe why he was here. He nodded and went back to his point.
— There is no such word, — he said, — in the entire Japanese language.
I looked at my comrades — Ivan Mikhailovich Smolikov and Konstantin Petrovich Kazakov — they were sitting and smiling. I said to Kawagoe:
— General, I find it hard to discuss the Japanese language. But my comrades — they’ll be happy to discuss it with you. And they’ll also explain to you the written order that you will pass along with your messenger to your commander. Today, your army must fully disarm and, under escort, march in regimental columns to the prisoner-of-war collection points. To avoid any misunderstandings, each unit must have a flag bearer with a large white flag at the front.
With that, our conversation ended. My comrades clarified the necessary details with him about the locations of the units and formations of the 5th Japanese Army, as well as its combat and numerical composition.
In the evening, we received a combat report from the commander of the 26th Corps, General A. V. Skvortsov. He wrote:
"...On August 19, 1945, units of the 5th Army conducted a mass surrender and disarmament in the area of Handaohadzy. The following surrendered: the staff of the 5th Army, the 126th and 135th Infantry Divisions, part of the 124th Infantry Division, and the remnants of the defeated 125th Infantry Division, as well as other units and supply divisions of the 5th Army." By 7:00 PM on August 19, about 22,000 prisoners had been taken, and their reception was ongoing. 63 ammunition depots, about 80 vehicles, four tanks, and a large quantity of other weapons had been captured. Even a quick glance at these figures confirmed the view in the staff of the 1st Red Banner Army over the past few days that the 5th Japanese Army had lost its combat capability — only a third of its soldiers and officers surrendered as prisoners. Therefore, two-thirds were out of action.
In general, the enemy was finished, and on this day, other problems began to trouble us. The front headquarters requested that we take Harbin as soon as possible, ensure the protection of numerous industrial enterprises and other important facilities in the city, including two major railway bridges on the main communication line between the north and south of Manchuria. But General A. M. Maximov’s mobile army group was delayed. The dirt road along the KVZhD from the Yablonya station to Harbin, after the rains and after the retreating Japanese columns had passed, had become impassable, and the bridges had been destroyed. The chief of staff of the group, General Yusternik, who was with the advanced detachment, made the right decision. On the evening of August 19, he radioed: "I am boarding the train, I will be in Harbin by the morning of August 20."
Early in the morning, Yusternik’s tanks, having unloaded at the Old Harbin station, entered the city. This was significant support for the special envoy of the Front Military Council, General Shelakhov, who had already been guarding the bridges, power stations, airfield, and some other objects with his small paratrooper detachment for more than a day and a half. The Japanese garrison — two infantry divisions and other units — remained disarmed, and numerous military depots and enormous arsenals had not yet been taken under control.
The 26th Corps of General Skvortsov continued its forced march towards Harbin, to its temporary location. General Ksenofontov’s corps concentrated in the Mudanjiang area, at the Handaohaczi station. We had to ensure the accommodation of the troops, proper supplies, sanitary inspections, and processing of new deployment areas. Additionally, we were tasked with setting up temporary camps for prisoners of war, providing them with food, medical care, etc. In short, with the end of military operations, the work did not decrease for the army rear commander, General Ivan Vasilyevich Sidyak, nor for the member of the Military Council, General Fyodor Kondratievich Prudnikov, who was overseeing the rear services.
The command of the 5th Japanese Army — five generals and several senior officers of the staff — arrived in Mudanjiang on the morning of August 20, but urgent matters did not allow us to interrogate them immediately. They looked exhausted — the long trip along the broken mountain roads had taken its toll. Colonel Shioshvili handed them a list of questions so they could prepare in advance. The written answers of Army Commander Lieutenant General Noritsune Shimizu, as well as his oral testimony, have been preserved in our archives. This helped me recall the course of the interrogation. It began at 10 AM in the building of the Japanese military mission — a very peculiar institution, two-faced like the ancient Janus. The official face of this mission was to represent Japan at the "Great Emperor of Manchukuo," Henry Pu Yi, while its second and main face was to manage this puppet under its senior officials. At the same time, the mission and its branches, including in Mudanjiang, were in charge of all intelligence and counterintelligence operations. In the gray squat building on the main street of the city, many punitive expeditions were planned, such as the one that destroyed 85,000 Chinese peasants along with their families near Tsayamus. And the executors of these bloody plans in the Mudanjiang province were the troops of General N. Shimizu. I believe both he and the other generals must have inwardly shuddered when the convoy of Soviet machine gunners led them into the military mission, where our army headquarters was located.
The prisoners bowed and smiled obsequiously. This contrast between cold, brutal cruelty toward the defeated and the sycophantic behavior toward the victors was characteristic of the upper echelons of the Japanese military. Even during their reign in Manchuria, when a Japanese officer fell into the hands of Chinese partisans, he would shamelessly resort to servility. Now, they had completely lost their dignity. It was an unpleasant sight. "Please sit down!" — I said.
Noritsune Shimizu was an elderly, short, stocky man with a crew cut. Despite his summer general's uniform with a combat order and high yellow cavalry boots with spurs, he did not give the impression of a seasoned military officer. There was a certain inner lethargy in his responses. Perhaps this condition was the result of defeat and capitulation, but I felt it was natural for him. The chief of staff, Kawagoe, although visibly nervous, was more composed and, whenever Shimizu faltered, would assist him with precise answers.
There were many military correspondents present at the interrogation: Evgeny Krieger from the "Izvestia" newspaper, Boris Slutsky from the "Red Star," and others. They asked us to pose a series of questions intended for a wide audience. We did so, but began with specific questions:
— What is the combat and numerical composition of your army? Shimizu and Kawagoe answered that before the war, the 5th Japanese Army consisted of three infantry divisions — the 124th, 126th, and 135th, two border units, two heavy artillery regiments, a signal regiment, and other units, with a total of more than 60,000 men. After the war began, the 122nd Infantry Division and the 1st Motorized Kamikaze Brigade from the reserve front, as well as the 125th and units of the 11th and 128th Japanese Divisions and the 1st Manchurian Infantry Division, were incorporated, driven back into its area by the strikes of our neighboring armies, commanded by Generals N. D. Zakhvatayev and N. I. Krylov. According to the prisoners, command of the troops was disrupted from the very first days, and the situation later became so complicated that the army staff could no longer operate effectively.
— Your losses?
Simidzu could not provide a definite answer. He gave the number 40,000 and added, "Including the killed, wounded, and those who ran away." The losses were significant, but there were relatively few wounded in the 5th Army’s hospitals.
— Where are your wounded?
A pause fell. The eyes of all those present at the interrogation turned to General Satoo, the head of the army’s medical service.
— I don’t know,— he replied.
— Then who knows? Weren’t you dealing with the wounded?
— We couldn’t,— he said, and then quickly corrected himself:— We couldn’t deal with them. Once the connection with the units was lost, how could we evacuate the wounded? They went on their own. Those who could walk went. Those who couldn’t, stayed behind.
— To bleed to death? Like that?
— Yes, General.
This answer, this revelation from the head of the medical service of the 5th Japanese Army, somewhat clarified the discrepancy between the high number of killed and the small number of wounded in the total losses of the enemy.
— What was the task set for the army? — I asked Simidzu.
— Defensive,— he answered. — The army was covering the most important of all Manchurian operational directions — the Harbin direction. We were ordered to delay you at Mudanjiang.
— How do you explain the army's formation: strong flanks and a weak center? The strike on it, on Mulin, Mudanjiang, brought us directly to the Harbin direction.
The question was rhetorical, that is, the answer was already known. But it was interesting to hear it from the enemy’s mouth. Simidzu replied:
— We didn’t expect the Russian army to go through the taiga and such a formidable force to appear from the difficult terrain. Your advance was lightning-fast, we didn’t manage to organize the defense in time.
— Was there any thought of a counterstrike?
— A counterstrike? — he sighed.
— There was! — said Kawagoe. — From Linkou to the south, to the flank of your forces. But… well, you know.
— The combat actions stopped, the weapons were surrendered,— said Simidzu.
— That’s good!
— Yes,— he said,— last night there was still the 5th Army, but today…
— You’re an optimist, General,— I said.
— What?
— You’re an optimist. We thought your army had exhausted itself as a fighting force during the battles for Mudanjiang.
— No,— he said.— My army was combat-ready.
— After losing two-thirds of your personnel and almost all your artillery?
He looked at General Kawagoe, but he remained silent.
— We had twenty thousand loyal imperial soldiers,— said General Simidzu.— They would have fought to the last man.
— Let’s assume that’s true. How many soldiers were in the infantry divisions before they surrendered?
— About six thousand,— Kawagoe suggested.— And from the two divisions, the 125th and 135th, only a few remained: sappers, signalers, and the transport troops.
He turned to the commander of the 135th Division, General Hitomi.
— Yes,— he confirmed.— One of my regiments was cut off somewhere in the mountains. We had too many supply trains. We hadn’t finished reorganizing the division according to the new regulations. It would have become more mobile.
— Perhaps it would have,— I said.— But let’s return to the Han Dao He Zi station. Who would have met us at that line? Who would have been holding the defense and going on counterattacks? The transport troops?
— From that point of view, you’re right,— General Simidzu agreed.
— What caused the reorganization of the infantry divisions earlier this year?
— Necessity,— he explained weakly.— We were preparing for war with you.
— We studied your experience,— added Kawagoe.— We were falling behind the times. We all saw and understood this, and we kept repeating aloud that a Japanese division is equal in combat capabilities to three German and six American infantry divisions. Our divisions were 25,000-strong, and their artillery… In short, they were at the level of the 1930s.
— Including anti-tank? Your anti-tank troops were poorly prepared for direct fire.
— We hoped for them until we encountered your famous T-34,— said Kawagoe.
The conversation then shifted to another topic — the documentation and flags of the 5th Japanese Army. Simidzu said that all secret documents were destroyed by the army’s headquarters on higher orders during your advance on the Eha station. Two regimental flags were left somewhere near Mulin, and nothing was known about them. One flag was burned by the regimental commander when he was in a hopeless position. The other flag, as General Simidzu put it, was destroyed along with the regimental commander.
Were there many suicides? — I asked.
— No,— he replied.— We weren’t captured, we simply carried out the Emperor’s order. To carry out His Majesty’s orders is the duty of a Japanese officer. It’s not shameful, it doesn’t lead to hara-kiri.
A member of the Military Council, Ivan Mikhailovich Smolikov, asked:
— Hara-kiri — is that the law of the samurai?
— Yes, it’s the law of honor.
— A male law?
— Yes, the highest law of a Japanese nobleman.
— And what about women and children?
— What?
— Wives, mothers, children of your officers and settlers.
— I don’t understand,— said Simidzu.
Then Ivan Mikhailovich slowly, so the interpreter could keep up, read a political report from the 365th division. While marching from the city of Zisi to Linkou, the division’s units discovered two groups of dead Japanese women and children. 10–12 kilometers south of Zisi, at a railroad crossing, there were trucks. In the truck beds, sitting with their legs bent or lying in the same positions, were women and children, their heads wrapped in white, apparently ritual, cloths. Most had gunshot wounds, a smaller number were killed with knives. Another group was found on the highway near the Didaohe station. In total, over 400 women and children were counted in both groups. Prisoners captured nearby testified that the killings were carried out by Japanese soldiers and officers; they couldn’t take the women and children into the hills, and, according to the prisoners’ statements, the women and children were killed with their consent.
After hearing Ivan Mikhailovich, Simidzu said:
— Every nation lives and dies by its own laws. You — by yours, we, the Japanese — by ours.
— They weren’t afraid of you, of the Russians,— added Kawagoe.— They were afraid that their women and children would fall into the hands of the Chinese. The Chinese are angry, they take cruel revenge on us.
— I see,— said General Smolikov.— What’s unclear is why the hara-kiri law is carried out by women and children, but the generals don’t do it. Translate exactly,— he said to the interpreter.
Simidzu remained silent, his head lowered, and once again, Kawagoe answered for him.
— This was before the Emperor’s order to cease hostilities,— he said.— After this order, there will be no such thing.
Of course, there won’t be. After receiving several similar alarming signals, the command, staff, and political department of the 1st Red Banner Army immediately took the necessary measures. Japanese refugees, elderly, women, and children, were flocking to meet the Soviet troops and begging for protection. We gathered all of them, about 11,000 people, into a Japanese military settlement and provided strong security. It’s strange how it turned out; for decades, Japanese newspapers and other mass propaganda outlets hammered into people's heads all sorts of nonsense about “barbaric Bolsheviks,” but we arrived, and all that dirty foam was swept away. They rushed to us looking for protection. And not only the refugees. When the interrogation ended, I said that we would send the captive generals to Khabarovsk, but before that, if they wanted, they could say goodbye to their headquarters and troops.
— No, don’t! — suddenly Simidzu brightened up, shaking off his previous lethargy. — Send us to Khabarovsk.
— Why the hurry? Just recently, you claimed that if not for the Emperor’s order, your army would have fought to the last soldier, that these soldiers faithfully carried out their duty. But you don’t want to thank them for their service?
— No, no! — he replied. — It’s dangerous. There may be excesses.
— Don’t worry. We’ll provide you with strong security. A heavy self-propelled artillery regiment with infantry is already heading to Han Dao He Zi.
However, both Simizu and the other Japanese generals insisted so strongly that they be sent by plane to Khabarovsk as soon as possible (they didn’t even want to have lunch) that their request had to be fulfilled. To jump ahead, I will say that other groups of prisoners from the senior command of the Japanese forces also wanted to separate themselves from their assigned troops as quickly as possible and as far as possible. They knew that "Russian captivity" was nothing like the tales they had been feeding their subordinates. At the same time, they were very concerned not with the essence of the matter—being in captivity—but with its formal side. As I already mentioned, Kawagoe, upon coming to surrender, began the conversation with an objection to the word "capitulation." And General Simizu, while bidding us farewell, returned to the same topic. I quote his words as they are recorded in the interrogation protocol: "However, we find it unpleasant to hear the word 'prisoners'; we do not consider ourselves prisoners because we ceased military operations due to the highest rescript. We have never suffered a defeat. If the war with the Soviet Union had continued, all of our military would have perished on the battlefield. In view of the above, I ask you to pay serious attention to the use of the word 'prisoners'."
Well, how would you respond to this verbal quibble? A prisoner is a prisoner, Mr. Simizu. And you ended up in captivity not because the emperor commanded it, but because your army, like all Japanese armed forces in Manchuria, suffered immense losses during ten days of fighting against Soviet troops and turned into isolated, leaderless crowds of soldiers and officers driven into the mountains and swamps, without heavy weaponry, ammunition, or food supplies. And no formal phraseology can change that fact.
By August 20, the reception of prisoners from the 5th Japanese Army was essentially completed. A total of about 26,000 soldiers and officers surrendered, including the commanders of the 124th and 135th Infantry Divisions. The latter was stationed before the war in the Mishan defensive district, and its command, during the interrogation, provided a series of numbers and facts that clearly illustrated the reason for the failure of the enemy’s planned counteroffensive from Linkou to the south. The regrouping failed at the very beginning. During the march, the 135th Division, like the 125th Division, which was discussed in previous chapters, suffered very heavy losses in battles with the vanguard of General Ksenofontov’s troops. By the time of capitulation, there were just over 2,000 men left, and out of 64 guns of various calibers (artillery regiments, infantry regimental artillery, and the assault battalion), only six remained in action. All mortars were lost.
The assault battalion, essentially suicide troops, numbered about 1,000 men, and its infantry companies were officially called "partisan" and were primarily intended for the destruction of our military equipment. During the retreat, one company of suicide troops was left in a specific area where, on August 12–13, the mass murder of Japanese refugees—women and children—took place. According to the data we were able to gather, this atrocity was carried out by the "assault troops" of the 135th Infantry Division.
In the afternoon of August 20, I flew with the operational group of the 1st Red Banner Army headquarters to Harbin. Two hours of flight, and the large city appeared in the distance. Dozens of dirt roads and a few railroads meandered through the green fields and patches of forest. Steam engines, looking like toys from above, puffed out smoke and pulled trains—on open platforms, tanks were standing. This marked the end of the concentration of General Maksimov’s mobile army group near Harbin. We passed a freight station, with a jumble of railway tracks and branches leading to large fenced yards where long buildings under iron roofs were packed—an arsenal and engineering supply warehouses of the Kwantung Army. We flew over the racecourse, which was still empty, though, according to the information we had, the Japanese garrison had already received General Shelahov’s order to deliver and move all weaponry and military equipment to the racecourse.
The plane made a circle and landed on the grassy field of the Madziagou airfield. We were met by paratroopers. Everything was in order. Japanese fighters and bombers stood in a row, their engines covered, with guards around them. Trophy vehicles were waiting at the edge of the airstrip, and without delay, we headed into the city. It was already evening, and our small convoy circled around the dark, narrow alleys, passed the Nursery Grove, and finally arrived in the center. There was plenty of electric light, the streets were filled with people, red flags everywhere, and from the sidewalks, we heard a unified Russian "hurrah," Chinese "shango," and other welcoming exclamations from the diverse and multilingual crowd. No, no one was specifically waiting for us. This was how every car with Soviet soldiers, every soldier with a red star on his cap, was greeted in Harbin at that time. At the intersections, we saw groups of armed young people—also with red armbands. The officer accompanying me explained that these were local self-defense groups made up of Chinese, Koreans, and Russian emigrants. At night, there was anxiety in the city. The gangs of scoundrels, armed and used by the Japanese gendarmerie for their dark purposes, were looting stores, warehouses, and individuals. "At least the sailors and tankers have arrived," the accompanying officer said. "Otherwise, you'd never be able to keep an eye on the city from outside."
Near the "Shanghai" cabaret stood a Japanese staff bus, with drunken Japanese soldiers around it. They were waving their arms, arguing about something, and shouting; passersby scattered. We slowed down, the paratroopers quickly jumped out of the car, shoved the suddenly sober soldiers into the bus, confiscated their weapons, and sent them on their way. While we were on our way to the "Yamato" hotel, we encountered quite a few such aimless groups of drunken soldiers.
I found General G.A. Shelahov at his workplace. One hotel room had been turned into a reception area, and another into an office. There were many people. After sending off another delegation—some clergymen in brown robes (not Orthodox, that was clear)—Shelahov said with relief:
"Take over, Afanasiy Pavlantevich. I haven’t slept for three nights, my head is spinning. Who hasn’t been here: Buddhists, Muslims, former White Guards, a delegation of Harbin barbers, delegates from the Churin Universal Store, doctors, rickshaw drivers, tram conductors, the owner of a gambling house at the Pier, some nervous individual who introduced himself as the uncle of the famous fortune teller Vera Grozina, a businessman who whispered that [172] he could supply paper with watermarks for printing Chinese yuan for a reasonable price, and so on, and so on. I’m tired. Here are the documents you need, and I’ll try to sleep for an hour. Wake me up if needed."
I looked through the documents, in which the command of the 4th Japanese Separate Army, in response to General Shelahov’s inquiry, provided information about the composition of the Harbin garrison and how disarmament was proceeding. The 4th Army had been struck by flanking attacks from the Zabai-kalian and 2nd Far Eastern Fronts in the early days of the war and, heavily damaged, retreated to Harbin. By the time of the surrender, the following units had been concentrated in the city and its outskirts: the 149th and 119th Infantry Divisions, the 131st Mixed Brigade, and thirty-four separate units: five guard detachments, a armored train detachment, a gendarmerie detachment, artillery, engineering, and sapper regiments, many battalions of airfield service, a training detachment for learning Russian at the Kwantung Army’s information bureau (military intelligence), and so on. But the most interesting thing I read was in a second document, dated August 18th, provided by the headquarters of the 4th Japanese Army. It reported that "by this evening, the concentration of guns and most of the ammunition for them has been completed," and that the location for disarmament of the army "was in the southern outskirts of Harbin, at the Harbin racecourse." The final sentence was evidently meant to convince that disarmament was proceeding quickly and as planned: "At present, all our forces are mobilized for inspection, so that we will be able to immediately inform you of the situation on the next day or the days following," wrote the Japanese Army headquarters in their usual convoluted style, where the end of the sentence tends to obscure the beginning, capable of stretching the energetic "within the next day" into an endless "subsequent days." In fact, we had already observed this "stretching" as we flew over the empty racecourse.
That same night, I had to summon the senior command staff of the 4th Japanese Army to the hotel. I asked:
— Has the army order for capitulation been given?
— Yes, they reply, we received the order from the command of the Kwantung Army to cease hostilities and disarm. [173]
— I am not asking about the order of the Kwantung Army. Have you given the order for your 4th army?
— We, they reply, have prepared a disarmament plan.
It's difficult to have a conversation with them. You talk to them about one thing, and they answer something completely different. I say to the translator:
— Please tell the generals: tomorrow by evening I order that disarmament be completed and all weapons and equipment be gathered at the Harbin racetrack. This is the first thing. Second: immediately enforce strict discipline in the troops. From tomorrow, the presence of Japanese soldiers and officers with weapons in the city will be punishable by military law.
On the morning of August 22, I handed the commander of the 4th Japanese Army, General Uemura Mikio, the order from the Military Council of the 1st Red Banner Army. This document stated: "... You are required to:
Give the order to the army to cease hostilities, surrender the battle flags and weapons to the units of the Red Army.
Move the units and parts with supply trains, kitchens, and medical units out of Harbin and concentrate them in the prisoner of war camp in Old Harbin...
Maintain strict military discipline along the way. Do not create roadblocks or hinder the movement of Red Army units.
Immediately instruct the rear units of the Red Army to cease hostilities and surrender their weapons.
Cease all individual and group movements of military personnel in the city. Movement should only take place in formation, under the command of an officer.
Instruct the army quartermaster to hand over the warehouses, bases, and other military property to the Red Army units.
Submit a copy of your order, in compliance with these requirements, to me by 10:00 AM on 23.8.45 in both Russian and Japanese." [60]
Of course, we could have disarmed the 4th Japanese Army without bureaucratic delays and long negotiations. The Amur River Fleet’s monitors and gunboats were stationed at the Sungari docks, and our tanks were concentrated in the suburbs. A conversation in this language would have convinced the generals in about an hour. But then there would have been casualties among the Japanese garrison soldiers, and why would anyone need that when the war was over?
By the end of August 22, disarmament was mostly completed. Tanks, armored vehicles, artillery, and small arms were collected at the Harbin racetrack. The regiments and divisions of the 4th Army marched orderly to the prisoner of war camps. Around 43,000 soldiers and officers surrendered in Harbin. These were the remnants of the 4th Separate Army, as well as units directly subordinate to the Kwantung Army's headquarters. However, the capture of a large enemy grouping near Harbin did not mark the end of the operation. For another two weeks, our units continued to catch groups of Japanese soldiers hiding in the mountain taiga. From August 22 to September 1, the 1st Manchurian Infantry Division, led by its command (over 2000 people), the 386th regiment of the 135th Japanese Infantry Division (around 1500 people), and other units of the 5th Army were disarmed in the vicinity of the Handaohatzi station. During the same period, our troops, combing the outskirts of Harbin, captured up to 2000 Japanese soldiers and officers, and in the mountains near the Ehe station—1200 people from the 124th and 126th Infantry Divisions. [61]
Separate squads—mostly suicide soldiers—carried out sabotage acts on the railroad and even attempted to attack Soviet military commandants in small towns. For instance, on August 28, south of Handaohatzi, near the Russian village of Romanovka, a squad consisting of suicide soldiers and soldiers from a non-commissioned officer school was eliminated in a battle. Three days later, our rifle company surrounded around 300 suicide soldiers in the same area. They refused to surrender their weapons and were all destroyed. On September 2, a armored train at the Shihe junction was heavily machine-gunned and shelled with mortars from the nearest hills. Colonel M. K. Gvozdikov of the 365th Rifle Division had to send a detachment of infantry with artillery to the area. The enemy suffered heavy losses, and those who survived retreated deeper into the taiga. [175] Prisoners showed that their group consisted of around 2000 soldiers and officers.
In the Mishan fortifications, the elimination of small suicide squads continued until the beginning of September. Its vast area, many well-hidden shelters, barracks, warehouses with food and ammunition buried deep underground in the forested mountains, and in general the concrete labyrinths—all of this made fighting the suicide squads difficult. On September 2-3, several of their groups were destroyed near Mount Nanshan, and on September 5, up to 150 people were killed when they tried to attack our commandant office in Pingyanjhen.
Thus, combat operations in the 1st Red Banner Army’s sector in certain areas only ended a few days after the official signing of the act of Japan’s capitulation on September 2.
By early September, we could already draw the final conclusions of our army’s offensive operation in Manchuria. Breaking through the enemy front in an area about 16 km wide, the army then expanded the breakthrough to 170 km and advanced 450 km into Manchuria. Sixteen cities and many other settlements were liberated. We captured a large amount of military equipment and weapons, including guns of various calibers (up to 240mm howitzers), 190 tanks, 49 armored vehicles, 8 armored cars, 1100 machine guns, 40,000 rifles, 16 aircraft, and more than 120 major warehouses of military supplies.
The total number of prisoners was 87,000, including 19 generals. Irrecoverable enemy losses (killed and those who died from wounds), according to captured documents and confirmed by the interrogation of commanders and staff officers of Japanese units, exceeded 30,000. The irrecoverable losses of the 1st Red Banner Army were 598 men, including 98 officers, 162 sergeants, and 338 soldiers. In total, including the wounded, 2888 men were out of action.
Even a cursory glance at these figures speaks volumes. By comparing the losses on both sides, one can see that our superiority over the enemy in all aspects of military skill was overwhelming. However, I must again emphasize that a quick victory is not always equivalent to an easy victory. In describing the battle for Hualin station and the city of Mudanjiang, I aimed to show the reader how fierce the enemy’s resistance was and, accordingly, how difficult the path of the 1st Red Banner Army to victory was. The fighting situation was similarly tough in the sector of our left neighbor—the 5th Army of General N. I. Krylov. And while we managed to destroy the opposing 5th Japanese Army with joint efforts and in a short time, the reason for our success cannot be found in the weak resistance of the enemy. On the contrary, the figure of the enemy’s irrecoverable losses, the large number of killed, and the relatively small number of wounded testify to the fact that the enemy fought until the end. But, as the poet said, "strength proved superior to strength." Yes, our Soviet military power decisively and quickly broke the enemy’s power, but when evaluating victory, we should not indulge in self-congratulation. A strict and sober assessment of the past is necessary and important not only for history but for the tasks of today.
Throughout the narrative, I have often talked about the enormous role the party-political work played in ensuring the fulfillment of combat tasks by the army’s troops, about many political officers who led soldiers by example in particularly tense battles, who, through personal feats, repeatedly affirmed the tradition that has existed since the Great October Socialist Revolution and the Civil War—this glorious tradition that on the battlefield was usually expressed in the short command: "Communists, forward!" And if we talk about the distinctive features of party-political work in the Manchurian operation, they were closely related to the operation’s overall characteristics, especially the actions of the advanced detachments. The success of these detachments, including the 257th Tank Brigade, was largely predetermined by prior systematic party-political work in the units, the correct placement of communists and Komsomol members when the advanced detachments were formed, and the effective concentration of efforts by the party-political apparatus during various combat episodes. In general, our political officers, led by Ivan Mikhailovich Smolikov, member of the Military Council, effectively and successfully handled all planned and unexpected combat tasks. [177]
For their combat distinction during the operation, 25,746 soldiers, sergeants, officers, and generals of the 1st Red Banner Army were awarded. Major General Korniliy Georgievich Cherepanov and Private Vasiliy Stepanovich Kolesnik were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Fourteen units and formations received the honorary title of Harbin, and thirteen units and formations were awarded the Order of the Red Banner. [62]
These are the main results of the army's participation in the Manchurian strategic offensive operation. The general figures and facts characterizing the combat activity of all Soviet fronts and armies in this operation are well-known from many publications, so I will not repeat them. I will only note that in the history of World War II, it is hard to find an analogy to the Manchurian operation, both in terms of its spatial scale, the rapid development of events, and its final results. [178]
关于维基条目苏军击毙日军人数的条目
这个出处在此:
https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/%E4%BE%B5%E5%8D%8E%E6%97%A5%E5%86%9B
在这一段里附了个材料来源【2】
http://militera.lib.ru/memo/russian/beloborodov/09.html
这是一个回忆录的第9章。作者Afanasy Beloborodov上将，时任远东第一红旗集团军司令员，负责哈尔滨方向的进攻。利用GP通把俄文翻译成英文，全部如下:
Capitulation of the Kwantung Army
By the end of August 16, while planning further advancement, the command and staff of the 1st Red Banner Army could state the following:
The enemy's pre-prepared defense had been broken through to its full depth, up to the third line along the Mudanjiang River.
The 5th Japanese Army had been defeated. It lost a significant portion, if not the majority, of its rear supply depots and bases with reserves of all types of military supplies.
It is difficult for the enemy to replenish such losses in a short period of time. The introduction of his fresh operational reserves into our sector is doubtful, as not only the 1st (Eastern Manchurian) Japanese front opposing us has been broken, but also other fronts of the Kwantung Army—the Western Manchurian and Korean fronts, as well as the defense of the 4th Separate (Northern Manchurian) Army. The Soviet forces of the 1st and 2nd Far Eastern and Transbaikal fronts, advancing along converging directions towards each other, have split the Kwantung Army into isolated groups, and the right wing of the Transbaikal front, advancing with a deep wedge, has invaded South Manchuria. The complete encirclement and final defeat of the enemy's main forces in Manchuria can be considered a matter of the nearest days.
The 1st Red Banner Army retained full combat effectiveness, but in order to continue the offensive at a good pace, a short pause was necessary—at least for a day.
This decision was made not without hesitation. Both military doctrine and personal experience required pursuing the defeated enemy without giving him even an hour's respite. However, the same experience indicated that this general principle must first and foremost be aligned with the specific battlefield situation. The desire to immediately finish off the retreating enemy sometimes conflicts with the capabilities and condition of one’s own troops. If their combat formations have stretched out, the rear has fallen behind, ammunition and fuel have been used up, weapons and equipment need repairs, and, finally, if the senior commander does not provide timely rest for troops exhausted by previous battles—such forces, as a rule, sharply reduce the pace of the advance, and the enemy may slow their progress with limited forces. Conversely, even a short rest with regrouping and other necessary measures can compensate for the pause with higher tempos moving forward.
The army staff calculated that it would take about a day to put the 26th Corps' units in order and concentrate the 59th Corps near Mudanjiang. The calculation proved correct. The troops rested, the tank brigades replenished their losses in equipment with repaired tanks, the 59th Corps was on the way, and the army's overall combat order was becoming its second echelon.
To capture Harbin, we created a strong army mobile group consisting of the 77th and 257th Tank Brigades (64 tanks), two self-propelled artillery divisions (about 20 vehicles), the 60th Anti-tank Brigade, the 52nd Mortar Brigade, seven rifle battalions from various regiments of the 22nd and 300th Divisions, as well as other units. The group was led by the commander of the army's armored and mechanized forces, Colonel A. P. Ivanovich, and a day later, command was taken over by General A. M. Maximov. The group’s task was to capture the Handaohézi station, reach the Central Manchurian Plain, and continue the advance on Harbin until meeting the advanced units of the Transbaikal Front.
By the evening of August 13, the army resumed its offensive, and by the end of the day, advancing west along the China-Eastern Railway, it captured the city of Hailincheng. From there, the road led into the mountains, toward the passes of the Zhangguancailin Range. We had to overcome another mountainous area with elevations up to 1,200 meters. There were two roads: the right one, shorter, which, according to the topographic signs, eventually turned into a mountain path, and the left one, longer, which ran alongside the railway line and followed all its steep and numerous loops. On the map, it was marked as an "improved dirt road," but in reality, it turned out to be much worse than the first. Torrential rains had turned it into a continuous intermountain swamp stretching for 40 km. Dozens of wagons and vehicles, abandoned by the retreating enemy, stuck out of the quagmire as a warning sign. Our attempt to use the road for a tank strike on Handaohézi by the mobile group failed. Even the powerful T-34s got bogged down in it. We had to turn the tanks onto the mountain path, the infantry route of the 26th Corps.
The defeat at Mudanjiang broke the 5th Japanese Army not only physically, with enormous losses in men, equipment, and armament, but also morally. On the way to Handaohézi, in the narrow passes of the Zhangguancailin Range, we faced resistance only from isolated groups and units, including the 1st Motorized Suicide Brigade. But these were dealt with by the vanguards of the 22nd Rifle Division. The pace of the advance was slowed by the poor mountain road, completely destroyed road structures, and the congestion of the army’s forces, advancing to the passes in a single column—infantry and artillery mixed with tanks.
On August 18, when the army’s advanced units reached the Handaohézi station area, we were informed of the capitulation of the Kwantung Army, and soon after, mass surrenders of regiments and divisions of the 5th Japanese Army began. The events leading up to this fact are described fairly fully in our literature. I would just like to note that at the front, we were not entirely clear about the long pause between the Japanese Imperial Government’s announcement that it accepted the terms of capitulation and its practical implementation. After all, the Kwantung Army was losing the remnants of its combat capability right before our eyes, and had the fighting lasted a few more days, there would have been no one left to capitulate—only the staff and rear units would remain.
The diplomatic maneuvers of the Japanese government, attempts to buy time, were apparently connected with an illusory hope in the Kwantung Army, that its forces might temporarily restore the crumbling front. In this regard, I will remind you of a document that characterizes the situation and shows how our command reacted to it:
"From the General Staff of the Red Army
Marshal Vasilevsky, Commander-in-Chief of Soviet Forces in the Far East, on August 17 sent the following radiogram to the commander of the Japanese Kwantung Army:
'The headquarters of the Japanese Kwantung Army has contacted the Soviet Far Eastern Forces Headquarters by radio with a proposal to cease hostilities, without mentioning the surrender of the Japanese armed forces in Manchuria.
At the same time, Japanese forces have launched offensives on several sections of the Soviet-Japanese front.
I propose that the commander of the Kwantung Army cease all combat operations against Soviet forces along the entire front at 12:00 on August 20, lay down their arms, and surrender.
The above deadline is given so that the Kwantung Army headquarters can communicate the order to cease resistance and surrender to all its troops.
As soon as the Japanese forces begin to surrender their weapons, Soviet forces will cease hostilities.
August 17, 1945, 6:00 AM (Far Eastern Time).'"
Since neither on this day nor in the first half of the following day did the commander of the Kwantung Army, General Yamada, respond to this radiogram, on August 18, the commander of the 1st Far Eastern Front sent General G. A. Shelakhov, a special envoy from the Front's Military Council, along with a group of paratroopers, to Harbin by transport planes. General Shelakhov successfully carried out his difficult and dangerous mission. 120 paratroopers captured the Harbin airfield, and after negotiations with the chief of staff of the Kwantung Army, General Hata, and other generals leading the 40,000-strong Japanese garrison, General Shelakhov sent them by plane to the command post of the 1st Far Eastern Front.
Thus, maintaining what is called "a good face in a bad game" in an official sense, the Japanese general staff, while not offering much resistance to capture, also did not put up much of a fight when the opportunity to surrender arose. The verbal tricks and attempts to smooth over the heavy defeat and exonerate the generals responsible for it are clearly visible in the captured documents of the Kwantung Army. Here is Order No. 106, in which the commander of the Kwantung Army, General Yamada, was forced to acknowledge the necessity of complete and unconditional surrender, but he did so in extremely vague terms. The first point read:
"My task is to achieve the goals of ending hostilities through the best use of the entire army in a unified direction and with the strict fulfillment of the emperor’s will..."
The following points and sub-points are filled with so much verbal fluff that, if desired, they could be interpreted in different ways—certainly not as a forced step by a defeated army, but rather as a mutual desire of the warring sides "to strive for a better existence and also to achieve the significant and majestic task of ending hostilities."
It is well known that an order in which the troops do not see clarity or clearly defined tasks often proves ineffective. This was the case with Order No. 106, issued at 10 p.m. on August 16. Therefore, it is not surprising that the following day, August 17, General Yamada had to repeat this order in shorter and more precise terms. Meanwhile, events on the front were unfolding as expected, the Japanese army continued to rapidly disintegrate, its divisions and regiments, under the pressure of Soviet forces, retreated into the hills and taiga, lost contact with their headquarters, and were unable to receive orders. The immediate result of this delay—a multi-step attempt, from the palaces in Tokyo to the army headquarters, to gain something in a hopeless situation—was the death of several more thousand Japanese soldiers on the Manchurian theater of operations.
In the sector of the 1st Red Banner Army, Japanese negotiators appeared at six in the evening on August 18. The reconnaissance of General A. M. Maximov’s mobile group encountered two Japanese vehicles with white flags affixed to them. Alexander Mikhailovich radioed that he had sent the negotiators to us under escort, led by Captain V. M. Efimenko. They arrived in Mudanjiang by morning, and the senior among the negotiators was the chief of staff of the 5th Japanese Army, General Kawagoe Shigesada. I received him, announced the terms of surrender, and asked:
— Is everything clear?
— Everything, — he replied, — except the word "capitulation." It is not in our military vocabulary, our army will not understand it.
— It will understand, — I said. — Life will teach it.
The conversation was drifting away from the matter at hand, so I reminded General Kawagoe why he was here. He nodded and went back to his point.
— There is no such word, — he said, — in the entire Japanese language.
I looked at my comrades — Ivan Mikhailovich Smolikov and Konstantin Petrovich Kazakov — they were sitting and smiling. I said to Kawagoe:
— General, I find it hard to discuss the Japanese language. But my comrades — they’ll be happy to discuss it with you. And they’ll also explain to you the written order that you will pass along with your messenger to your commander. Today, your army must fully disarm and, under escort, march in regimental columns to the prisoner-of-war collection points. To avoid any misunderstandings, each unit must have a flag bearer with a large white flag at the front.
With that, our conversation ended. My comrades clarified the necessary details with him about the locations of the units and formations of the 5th Japanese Army, as well as its combat and numerical composition.
In the evening, we received a combat report from the commander of the 26th Corps, General A. V. Skvortsov. He wrote:
"...On August 19, 1945, units of the 5th Army conducted a mass surrender and disarmament in the area of Handaohadzy. The following surrendered: the staff of the 5th Army, the 126th and 135th Infantry Divisions, part of the 124th Infantry Division, and the remnants of the defeated 125th Infantry Division, as well as other units and supply divisions of the 5th Army." By 7:00 PM on August 19, about 22,000 prisoners had been taken, and their reception was ongoing. 63 ammunition depots, about 80 vehicles, four tanks, and a large quantity of other weapons had been captured. Even a quick glance at these figures confirmed the view in the staff of the 1st Red Banner Army over the past few days that the 5th Japanese Army had lost its combat capability — only a third of its soldiers and officers surrendered as prisoners. Therefore, two-thirds were out of action.
In general, the enemy was finished, and on this day, other problems began to trouble us. The front headquarters requested that we take Harbin as soon as possible, ensure the protection of numerous industrial enterprises and other important facilities in the city, including two major railway bridges on the main communication line between the north and south of Manchuria. But General A. M. Maximov’s mobile army group was delayed. The dirt road along the KVZhD from the Yablonya station to Harbin, after the rains and after the retreating Japanese columns had passed, had become impassable, and the bridges had been destroyed. The chief of staff of the group, General Yusternik, who was with the advanced detachment, made the right decision. On the evening of August 19, he radioed: "I am boarding the train, I will be in Harbin by the morning of August 20."
Early in the morning, Yusternik’s tanks, having unloaded at the Old Harbin station, entered the city. This was significant support for the special envoy of the Front Military Council, General Shelakhov, who had already been guarding the bridges, power stations, airfield, and some other objects with his small paratrooper detachment for more than a day and a half. The Japanese garrison — two infantry divisions and other units — remained disarmed, and numerous military depots and enormous arsenals had not yet been taken under control.
The 26th Corps of General Skvortsov continued its forced march towards Harbin, to its temporary location. General Ksenofontov’s corps concentrated in the Mudanjiang area, at the Handaohaczi station. We had to ensure the accommodation of the troops, proper supplies, sanitary inspections, and processing of new deployment areas. Additionally, we were tasked with setting up temporary camps for prisoners of war, providing them with food, medical care, etc. In short, with the end of military operations, the work did not decrease for the army rear commander, General Ivan Vasilyevich Sidyak, nor for the member of the Military Council, General Fyodor Kondratievich Prudnikov, who was overseeing the rear services.
The command of the 5th Japanese Army — five generals and several senior officers of the staff — arrived in Mudanjiang on the morning of August 20, but urgent matters did not allow us to interrogate them immediately. They looked exhausted — the long trip along the broken mountain roads had taken its toll. Colonel Shioshvili handed them a list of questions so they could prepare in advance. The written answers of Army Commander Lieutenant General Noritsune Shimizu, as well as his oral testimony, have been preserved in our archives. This helped me recall the course of the interrogation. It began at 10 AM in the building of the Japanese military mission — a very peculiar institution, two-faced like the ancient Janus. The official face of this mission was to represent Japan at the "Great Emperor of Manchukuo," Henry Pu Yi, while its second and main face was to manage this puppet under its senior officials. At the same time, the mission and its branches, including in Mudanjiang, were in charge of all intelligence and counterintelligence operations. In the gray squat building on the main street of the city, many punitive expeditions were planned, such as the one that destroyed 85,000 Chinese peasants along with their families near Tsayamus. And the executors of these bloody plans in the Mudanjiang province were the troops of General N. Shimizu. I believe both he and the other generals must have inwardly shuddered when the convoy of Soviet machine gunners led them into the military mission, where our army headquarters was located.
The prisoners bowed and smiled obsequiously. This contrast between cold, brutal cruelty toward the defeated and the sycophantic behavior toward the victors was characteristic of the upper echelons of the Japanese military. Even during their reign in Manchuria, when a Japanese officer fell into the hands of Chinese partisans, he would shamelessly resort to servility. Now, they had completely lost their dignity. It was an unpleasant sight. "Please sit down!" — I said.
Noritsune Shimizu was an elderly, short, stocky man with a crew cut. Despite his summer general's uniform with a combat order and high yellow cavalry boots with spurs, he did not give the impression of a seasoned military officer. There was a certain inner lethargy in his responses. Perhaps this condition was the result of defeat and capitulation, but I felt it was natural for him. The chief of staff, Kawagoe, although visibly nervous, was more composed and, whenever Shimizu faltered, would assist him with precise answers.
There were many military correspondents present at the interrogation: Evgeny Krieger from the "Izvestia" newspaper, Boris Slutsky from the "Red Star," and others. They asked us to pose a series of questions intended for a wide audience. We did so, but began with specific questions:
— What is the combat and numerical composition of your army? Shimizu and Kawagoe answered that before the war, the 5th Japanese Army consisted of three infantry divisions — the 124th, 126th, and 135th, two border units, two heavy artillery regiments, a signal regiment, and other units, with a total of more than 60,000 men. After the war began, the 122nd Infantry Division and the 1st Motorized Kamikaze Brigade from the reserve front, as well as the 125th and units of the 11th and 128th Japanese Divisions and the 1st Manchurian Infantry Division, were incorporated, driven back into its area by the strikes of our neighboring armies, commanded by Generals N. D. Zakhvatayev and N. I. Krylov. According to the prisoners, command of the troops was disrupted from the very first days, and the situation later became so complicated that the army staff could no longer operate effectively.
— Your losses?
Simidzu could not provide a definite answer. He gave the number 40,000 and added, "Including the killed, wounded, and those who ran away." The losses were significant, but there were relatively few wounded in the 5th Army’s hospitals.
— Where are your wounded?
A pause fell. The eyes of all those present at the interrogation turned to General Satoo, the head of the army’s medical service.
— I don’t know,— he replied.
— Then who knows? Weren’t you dealing with the wounded?
— We couldn’t,— he said, and then quickly corrected himself:— We couldn’t deal with them. Once the connection with the units was lost, how could we evacuate the wounded? They went on their own. Those who could walk went. Those who couldn’t, stayed behind.
— To bleed to death? Like that?
— Yes, General.
This answer, this revelation from the head of the medical service of the 5th Japanese Army, somewhat clarified the discrepancy between the high number of killed and the small number of wounded in the total losses of the enemy.
— What was the task set for the army? — I asked Simidzu.
— Defensive,— he answered. — The army was covering the most important of all Manchurian operational directions — the Harbin direction. We were ordered to delay you at Mudanjiang.
— How do you explain the army's formation: strong flanks and a weak center? The strike on it, on Mulin, Mudanjiang, brought us directly to the Harbin direction.
The question was rhetorical, that is, the answer was already known. But it was interesting to hear it from the enemy’s mouth. Simidzu replied:
— We didn’t expect the Russian army to go through the taiga and such a formidable force to appear from the difficult terrain. Your advance was lightning-fast, we didn’t manage to organize the defense in time.
— Was there any thought of a counterstrike?
— A counterstrike? — he sighed.
— There was! — said Kawagoe. — From Linkou to the south, to the flank of your forces. But… well, you know.
— The combat actions stopped, the weapons were surrendered,— said Simidzu.
— That’s good!
— Yes,— he said,— last night there was still the 5th Army, but today…
— You’re an optimist, General,— I said.
— What?
— You’re an optimist. We thought your army had exhausted itself as a fighting force during the battles for Mudanjiang.
— No,— he said.— My army was combat-ready.
— After losing two-thirds of your personnel and almost all your artillery?
He looked at General Kawagoe, but he remained silent.
— We had twenty thousand loyal imperial soldiers,— said General Simidzu.— They would have fought to the last man.
— Let’s assume that’s true. How many soldiers were in the infantry divisions before they surrendered?
— About six thousand,— Kawagoe suggested.— And from the two divisions, the 125th and 135th, only a few remained: sappers, signalers, and the transport troops.
He turned to the commander of the 135th Division, General Hitomi.
— Yes,— he confirmed.— One of my regiments was cut off somewhere in the mountains. We had too many supply trains. We hadn’t finished reorganizing the division according to the new regulations. It would have become more mobile.
— Perhaps it would have,— I said.— But let’s return to the Han Dao He Zi station. Who would have met us at that line? Who would have been holding the defense and going on counterattacks? The transport troops?
— From that point of view, you’re right,— General Simidzu agreed.
— What caused the reorganization of the infantry divisions earlier this year?
— Necessity,— he explained weakly.— We were preparing for war with you.
— We studied your experience,— added Kawagoe.— We were falling behind the times. We all saw and understood this, and we kept repeating aloud that a Japanese division is equal in combat capabilities to three German and six American infantry divisions. Our divisions were 25,000-strong, and their artillery… In short, they were at the level of the 1930s.
— Including anti-tank? Your anti-tank troops were poorly prepared for direct fire.
— We hoped for them until we encountered your famous T-34,— said Kawagoe.
The conversation then shifted to another topic — the documentation and flags of the 5th Japanese Army. Simidzu said that all secret documents were destroyed by the army’s headquarters on higher orders during your advance on the Eha station. Two regimental flags were left somewhere near Mulin, and nothing was known about them. One flag was burned by the regimental commander when he was in a hopeless position. The other flag, as General Simidzu put it, was destroyed along with the regimental commander.
Were there many suicides? — I asked.
— No,— he replied.— We weren’t captured, we simply carried out the Emperor’s order. To carry out His Majesty’s orders is the duty of a Japanese officer. It’s not shameful, it doesn’t lead to hara-kiri.
A member of the Military Council, Ivan Mikhailovich Smolikov, asked:
— Hara-kiri — is that the law of the samurai?
— Yes, it’s the law of honor.
— A male law?
— Yes, the highest law of a Japanese nobleman.
— And what about women and children?
— What?
— Wives, mothers, children of your officers and settlers.
— I don’t understand,— said Simidzu.
Then Ivan Mikhailovich slowly, so the interpreter could keep up, read a political report from the 365th division. While marching from the city of Zisi to Linkou, the division’s units discovered two groups of dead Japanese women and children. 10–12 kilometers south of Zisi, at a railroad crossing, there were trucks. In the truck beds, sitting with their legs bent or lying in the same positions, were women and children, their heads wrapped in white, apparently ritual, cloths. Most had gunshot wounds, a smaller number were killed with knives. Another group was found on the highway near the Didaohe station. In total, over 400 women and children were counted in both groups. Prisoners captured nearby testified that the killings were carried out by Japanese soldiers and officers; they couldn’t take the women and children into the hills, and, according to the prisoners’ statements, the women and children were killed with their consent.
After hearing Ivan Mikhailovich, Simidzu said:
— Every nation lives and dies by its own laws. You — by yours, we, the Japanese — by ours.
— They weren’t afraid of you, of the Russians,— added Kawagoe.— They were afraid that their women and children would fall into the hands of the Chinese. The Chinese are angry, they take cruel revenge on us.
— I see,— said General Smolikov.— What’s unclear is why the hara-kiri law is carried out by women and children, but the generals don’t do it. Translate exactly,— he said to the interpreter.
Simidzu remained silent, his head lowered, and once again, Kawagoe answered for him.
— This was before the Emperor’s order to cease hostilities,— he said.— After this order, there will be no such thing.
Of course, there won’t be. After receiving several similar alarming signals, the command, staff, and political department of the 1st Red Banner Army immediately took the necessary measures. Japanese refugees, elderly, women, and children, were flocking to meet the Soviet troops and begging for protection. We gathered all of them, about 11,000 people, into a Japanese military settlement and provided strong security. It’s strange how it turned out; for decades, Japanese newspapers and other mass propaganda outlets hammered into people's heads all sorts of nonsense about “barbaric Bolsheviks,” but we arrived, and all that dirty foam was swept away. They rushed to us looking for protection. And not only the refugees. When the interrogation ended, I said that we would send the captive generals to Khabarovsk, but before that, if they wanted, they could say goodbye to their headquarters and troops.
— No, don’t! — suddenly Simidzu brightened up, shaking off his previous lethargy. — Send us to Khabarovsk.
— Why the hurry? Just recently, you claimed that if not for the Emperor’s order, your army would have fought to the last soldier, that these soldiers faithfully carried out their duty. But you don’t want to thank them for their service?
— No, no! — he replied. — It’s dangerous. There may be excesses.
— Don’t worry. We’ll provide you with strong security. A heavy self-propelled artillery regiment with infantry is already heading to Han Dao He Zi.
However, both Simizu and the other Japanese generals insisted so strongly that they be sent by plane to Khabarovsk as soon as possible (they didn’t even want to have lunch) that their request had to be fulfilled. To jump ahead, I will say that other groups of prisoners from the senior command of the Japanese forces also wanted to separate themselves from their assigned troops as quickly as possible and as far as possible. They knew that "Russian captivity" was nothing like the tales they had been feeding their subordinates. At the same time, they were very concerned not with the essence of the matter—being in captivity—but with its formal side. As I already mentioned, Kawagoe, upon coming to surrender, began the conversation with an objection to the word "capitulation." And General Simizu, while bidding us farewell, returned to the same topic. I quote his words as they are recorded in the interrogation protocol: "However, we find it unpleasant to hear the word 'prisoners'; we do not consider ourselves prisoners because we ceased military operations due to the highest rescript. We have never suffered a defeat. If the war with the Soviet Union had continued, all of our military would have perished on the battlefield. In view of the above, I ask you to pay serious attention to the use of the word 'prisoners'."
Well, how would you respond to this verbal quibble? A prisoner is a prisoner, Mr. Simizu. And you ended up in captivity not because the emperor commanded it, but because your army, like all Japanese armed forces in Manchuria, suffered immense losses during ten days of fighting against Soviet troops and turned into isolated, leaderless crowds of soldiers and officers driven into the mountains and swamps, without heavy weaponry, ammunition, or food supplies. And no formal phraseology can change that fact.
By August 20, the reception of prisoners from the 5th Japanese Army was essentially completed. A total of about 26,000 soldiers and officers surrendered, including the commanders of the 124th and 135th Infantry Divisions. The latter was stationed before the war in the Mishan defensive district, and its command, during the interrogation, provided a series of numbers and facts that clearly illustrated the reason for the failure of the enemy’s planned counteroffensive from Linkou to the south. The regrouping failed at the very beginning. During the march, the 135th Division, like the 125th Division, which was discussed in previous chapters, suffered very heavy losses in battles with the vanguard of General Ksenofontov’s troops. By the time of capitulation, there were just over 2,000 men left, and out of 64 guns of various calibers (artillery regiments, infantry regimental artillery, and the assault battalion), only six remained in action. All mortars were lost.
The assault battalion, essentially suicide troops, numbered about 1,000 men, and its infantry companies were officially called "partisan" and were primarily intended for the destruction of our military equipment. During the retreat, one company of suicide troops was left in a specific area where, on August 12–13, the mass murder of Japanese refugees—women and children—took place. According to the data we were able to gather, this atrocity was carried out by the "assault troops" of the 135th Infantry Division.
In the afternoon of August 20, I flew with the operational group of the 1st Red Banner Army headquarters to Harbin. Two hours of flight, and the large city appeared in the distance. Dozens of dirt roads and a few railroads meandered through the green fields and patches of forest. Steam engines, looking like toys from above, puffed out smoke and pulled trains—on open platforms, tanks were standing. This marked the end of the concentration of General Maksimov’s mobile army group near Harbin. We passed a freight station, with a jumble of railway tracks and branches leading to large fenced yards where long buildings under iron roofs were packed—an arsenal and engineering supply warehouses of the Kwantung Army. We flew over the racecourse, which was still empty, though, according to the information we had, the Japanese garrison had already received General Shelahov’s order to deliver and move all weaponry and military equipment to the racecourse.
The plane made a circle and landed on the grassy field of the Madziagou airfield. We were met by paratroopers. Everything was in order. Japanese fighters and bombers stood in a row, their engines covered, with guards around them. Trophy vehicles were waiting at the edge of the airstrip, and without delay, we headed into the city. It was already evening, and our small convoy circled around the dark, narrow alleys, passed the Nursery Grove, and finally arrived in the center. There was plenty of electric light, the streets were filled with people, red flags everywhere, and from the sidewalks, we heard a unified Russian "hurrah," Chinese "shango," and other welcoming exclamations from the diverse and multilingual crowd. No, no one was specifically waiting for us. This was how every car with Soviet soldiers, every soldier with a red star on his cap, was greeted in Harbin at that time. At the intersections, we saw groups of armed young people—also with red armbands. The officer accompanying me explained that these were local self-defense groups made up of Chinese, Koreans, and Russian emigrants. At night, there was anxiety in the city. The gangs of scoundrels, armed and used by the Japanese gendarmerie for their dark purposes, were looting stores, warehouses, and individuals. "At least the sailors and tankers have arrived," the accompanying officer said. "Otherwise, you'd never be able to keep an eye on the city from outside."
Near the "Shanghai" cabaret stood a Japanese staff bus, with drunken Japanese soldiers around it. They were waving their arms, arguing about something, and shouting; passersby scattered. We slowed down, the paratroopers quickly jumped out of the car, shoved the suddenly sober soldiers into the bus, confiscated their weapons, and sent them on their way. While we were on our way to the "Yamato" hotel, we encountered quite a few such aimless groups of drunken soldiers.
I found General G.A. Shelahov at his workplace. One hotel room had been turned into a reception area, and another into an office. There were many people. After sending off another delegation—some clergymen in brown robes (not Orthodox, that was clear)—Shelahov said with relief:
"Take over, Afanasiy Pavlantevich. I haven’t slept for three nights, my head is spinning. Who hasn’t been here: Buddhists, Muslims, former White Guards, a delegation of Harbin barbers, delegates from the Churin Universal Store, doctors, rickshaw drivers, tram conductors, the owner of a gambling house at the Pier, some nervous individual who introduced himself as the uncle of the famous fortune teller Vera Grozina, a businessman who whispered that [172] he could supply paper with watermarks for printing Chinese yuan for a reasonable price, and so on, and so on. I’m tired. Here are the documents you need, and I’ll try to sleep for an hour. Wake me up if needed."
I looked through the documents, in which the command of the 4th Japanese Separate Army, in response to General Shelahov’s inquiry, provided information about the composition of the Harbin garrison and how disarmament was proceeding. The 4th Army had been struck by flanking attacks from the Zabai-kalian and 2nd Far Eastern Fronts in the early days of the war and, heavily damaged, retreated to Harbin. By the time of the surrender, the following units had been concentrated in the city and its outskirts: the 149th and 119th Infantry Divisions, the 131st Mixed Brigade, and thirty-four separate units: five guard detachments, a armored train detachment, a gendarmerie detachment, artillery, engineering, and sapper regiments, many battalions of airfield service, a training detachment for learning Russian at the Kwantung Army’s information bureau (military intelligence), and so on. But the most interesting thing I read was in a second document, dated August 18th, provided by the headquarters of the 4th Japanese Army. It reported that "by this evening, the concentration of guns and most of the ammunition for them has been completed," and that the location for disarmament of the army "was in the southern outskirts of Harbin, at the Harbin racecourse." The final sentence was evidently meant to convince that disarmament was proceeding quickly and as planned: "At present, all our forces are mobilized for inspection, so that we will be able to immediately inform you of the situation on the next day or the days following," wrote the Japanese Army headquarters in their usual convoluted style, where the end of the sentence tends to obscure the beginning, capable of stretching the energetic "within the next day" into an endless "subsequent days." In fact, we had already observed this "stretching" as we flew over the empty racecourse.
That same night, I had to summon the senior command staff of the 4th Japanese Army to the hotel. I asked:
— Has the army order for capitulation been given?
— Yes, they reply, we received the order from the command of the Kwantung Army to cease hostilities and disarm. [173]
— I am not asking about the order of the Kwantung Army. Have you given the order for your 4th army?
— We, they reply, have prepared a disarmament plan.
It's difficult to have a conversation with them. You talk to them about one thing, and they answer something completely different. I say to the translator:
— Please tell the generals: tomorrow by evening I order that disarmament be completed and all weapons and equipment be gathered at the Harbin racetrack. This is the first thing. Second: immediately enforce strict discipline in the troops. From tomorrow, the presence of Japanese soldiers and officers with weapons in the city will be punishable by military law.
On the morning of August 22, I handed the commander of the 4th Japanese Army, General Uemura Mikio, the order from the Military Council of the 1st Red Banner Army. This document stated: "... You are required to:
Give the order to the army to cease hostilities, surrender the battle flags and weapons to the units of the Red Army.
Move the units and parts with supply trains, kitchens, and medical units out of Harbin and concentrate them in the prisoner of war camp in Old Harbin...
Maintain strict military discipline along the way. Do not create roadblocks or hinder the movement of Red Army units.
Immediately instruct the rear units of the Red Army to cease hostilities and surrender their weapons.
Cease all individual and group movements of military personnel in the city. Movement should only take place in formation, under the command of an officer.
Instruct the army quartermaster to hand over the warehouses, bases, and other military property to the Red Army units.
Submit a copy of your order, in compliance with these requirements, to me by 10:00 AM on 23.8.45 in both Russian and Japanese." [60]
Of course, we could have disarmed the 4th Japanese Army without bureaucratic delays and long negotiations. The Amur River Fleet’s monitors and gunboats were stationed at the Sungari docks, and our tanks were concentrated in the suburbs. A conversation in this language would have convinced the generals in about an hour. But then there would have been casualties among the Japanese garrison soldiers, and why would anyone need that when the war was over?
By the end of August 22, disarmament was mostly completed. Tanks, armored vehicles, artillery, and small arms were collected at the Harbin racetrack. The regiments and divisions of the 4th Army marched orderly to the prisoner of war camps. Around 43,000 soldiers and officers surrendered in Harbin. These were the remnants of the 4th Separate Army, as well as units directly subordinate to the Kwantung Army's headquarters. However, the capture of a large enemy grouping near Harbin did not mark the end of the operation. For another two weeks, our units continued to catch groups of Japanese soldiers hiding in the mountain taiga. From August 22 to September 1, the 1st Manchurian Infantry Division, led by its command (over 2000 people), the 386th regiment of the 135th Japanese Infantry Division (around 1500 people), and other units of the 5th Army were disarmed in the vicinity of the Handaohatzi station. During the same period, our troops, combing the outskirts of Harbin, captured up to 2000 Japanese soldiers and officers, and in the mountains near the Ehe station—1200 people from the 124th and 126th Infantry Divisions. [61]
Separate squads—mostly suicide soldiers—carried out sabotage acts on the railroad and even attempted to attack Soviet military commandants in small towns. For instance, on August 28, south of Handaohatzi, near the Russian village of Romanovka, a squad consisting of suicide soldiers and soldiers from a non-commissioned officer school was eliminated in a battle. Three days later, our rifle company surrounded around 300 suicide soldiers in the same area. They refused to surrender their weapons and were all destroyed. On September 2, a armored train at the Shihe junction was heavily machine-gunned and shelled with mortars from the nearest hills. Colonel M. K. Gvozdikov of the 365th Rifle Division had to send a detachment of infantry with artillery to the area. The enemy suffered heavy losses, and those who survived retreated deeper into the taiga. [175] Prisoners showed that their group consisted of around 2000 soldiers and officers.
In the Mishan fortifications, the elimination of small suicide squads continued until the beginning of September. Its vast area, many well-hidden shelters, barracks, warehouses with food and ammunition buried deep underground in the forested mountains, and in general the concrete labyrinths—all of this made fighting the suicide squads difficult. On September 2-3, several of their groups were destroyed near Mount Nanshan, and on September 5, up to 150 people were killed when they tried to attack our commandant office in Pingyanjhen.
Thus, combat operations in the 1st Red Banner Army’s sector in certain areas only ended a few days after the official signing of the act of Japan’s capitulation on September 2.
By early September, we could already draw the final conclusions of our army’s offensive operation in Manchuria. Breaking through the enemy front in an area about 16 km wide, the army then expanded the breakthrough to 170 km and advanced 450 km into Manchuria. Sixteen cities and many other settlements were liberated. We captured a large amount of military equipment and weapons, including guns of various calibers (up to 240mm howitzers), 190 tanks, 49 armored vehicles, 8 armored cars, 1100 machine guns, 40,000 rifles, 16 aircraft, and more than 120 major warehouses of military supplies.
The total number of prisoners was 87,000, including 19 generals. Irrecoverable enemy losses (killed and those who died from wounds), according to captured documents and confirmed by the interrogation of commanders and staff officers of Japanese units, exceeded 30,000. The irrecoverable losses of the 1st Red Banner Army were 598 men, including 98 officers, 162 sergeants, and 338 soldiers. In total, including the wounded, 2888 men were out of action.
Even a cursory glance at these figures speaks volumes. By comparing the losses on both sides, one can see that our superiority over the enemy in all aspects of military skill was overwhelming. However, I must again emphasize that a quick victory is not always equivalent to an easy victory. In describing the battle for Hualin station and the city of Mudanjiang, I aimed to show the reader how fierce the enemy’s resistance was and, accordingly, how difficult the path of the 1st Red Banner Army to victory was. The fighting situation was similarly tough in the sector of our left neighbor—the 5th Army of General N. I. Krylov. And while we managed to destroy the opposing 5th Japanese Army with joint efforts and in a short time, the reason for our success cannot be found in the weak resistance of the enemy. On the contrary, the figure of the enemy’s irrecoverable losses, the large number of killed, and the relatively small number of wounded testify to the fact that the enemy fought until the end. But, as the poet said, "strength proved superior to strength." Yes, our Soviet military power decisively and quickly broke the enemy’s power, but when evaluating victory, we should not indulge in self-congratulation. A strict and sober assessment of the past is necessary and important not only for history but for the tasks of today.
Throughout the narrative, I have often talked about the enormous role the party-political work played in ensuring the fulfillment of combat tasks by the army’s troops, about many political officers who led soldiers by example in particularly tense battles, who, through personal feats, repeatedly affirmed the tradition that has existed since the Great October Socialist Revolution and the Civil War—this glorious tradition that on the battlefield was usually expressed in the short command: "Communists, forward!" And if we talk about the distinctive features of party-political work in the Manchurian operation, they were closely related to the operation’s overall characteristics, especially the actions of the advanced detachments. The success of these detachments, including the 257th Tank Brigade, was largely predetermined by prior systematic party-political work in the units, the correct placement of communists and Komsomol members when the advanced detachments were formed, and the effective concentration of efforts by the party-political apparatus during various combat episodes. In general, our political officers, led by Ivan Mikhailovich Smolikov, member of the Military Council, effectively and successfully handled all planned and unexpected combat tasks. [177]
For their combat distinction during the operation, 25,746 soldiers, sergeants, officers, and generals of the 1st Red Banner Army were awarded. Major General Korniliy Georgievich Cherepanov and Private Vasiliy Stepanovich Kolesnik were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Fourteen units and formations received the honorary title of Harbin, and thirteen units and formations were awarded the Order of the Red Banner. [62]
These are the main results of the army's participation in the Manchurian strategic offensive operation. The general figures and facts characterizing the combat activity of all Soviet fronts and armies in this operation are well-known from many publications, so I will not repeat them. I will only note that in the history of World War II, it is hard to find an analogy to the Manchurian operation, both in terms of its spatial scale, the rapid development of events, and its final results. [178]
大家可以看到，里面并没有涉及苏军在整个满洲作战毙俘敌的数字。
顺着往下读，剩下的两章里面也没有提到这些数字。话说回来，作为一个指挥大概10万人左右部队的方向上的指挥员，这位上将也不可能亲身掌握整个东北战场的战果。
我用“日军 8。3万”搜索，都是些新闻稿，大概都是从这个条目抄来的。只有这个条目附有出处而且我们看到是不正确的。
所以，在有人提出翔实的历史资料佐证之前，这个所谓“苏军击毙日军八万”的说法缺乏根据，不宜再提，再提就是知错犯错，就是笑话。
我将联系维基，建议他们对此做出修改不要再误导他人。。
Page 7, Final report progress of demobilization of the Japanese Armed Forces, 30 December 1946.
下面是文件链接，有兴趣可以下载看看。
https://cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p4013coll8/id/349/rec/16
维基解密 Soviet–Japanese War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Japanese_War
比如珍宝岛战斗，苏方宣称击毙中方248人，你也信么。
这里做学术的人多，这就叫学术不端，一钱不值。
你看我上面戏作的推测，是五万人。八万应该是有一定浮夸。这个出处是苏联新闻处，大家都知道是GCD的宣传不是严肃中立的新闻机构。