Soviet–Japanese Border Wars

The Soviet–Japanese Border Wars were a series of border conflicts between the Soviet Union and Japan between 1938 to 1945.

After the occupation of Manchukuo and Korea, Japan turned its military interests to Soviet territories. Conflicts between the Japanese and the Soviets frequently happened on the border of Manchuria.

Battle of Lake Khasan

The Battle of Lake Khasan (July 29, 1938 – August 11, 1938) and also known as the Changkufeng Incident (Chinese & Japanese: 張鼓峰事件, Chinese pinyin: Zhānggǔfēng Shìjiàn, Japanese pronunciation: Chōkohō Jiken) in China and Japan, was an attempted military incursion of Manchukuo (Japanese) into the territory claimed by the Soviet Union. This incursion was founded in the beliefs of the Japanese side that the Soviet Union misinterpreted the demarcation of the boundary based on the Treaty of Peking between Imperial Russia and the former Qing-Dynasty China (and subsequent supplementary agreements on demarcation), and furthermore, that the demarcation markers were tampered with.

Battle of Khalkhin Gol

The Battle of Khalkhin Gol, sometimes spelled Halhin Gol or Khalkin Gol after the Halha River passing through the battlefield and known in Japan as the Nomonhan Incident (after a nearby village on the border between Mongolia and Manchuria), was the decisive engagement of the undeclared Soviet–Japanese Border War (1939), or Japanese–Soviet War. It should not be confused with the conflict in 1945 when the USSR declared war in support of the other Allies of World War II and launched Operation August Storm.

oviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact

As a result of the Japanese defeat at Khalkhin Gol, Japan and the Soviet Union signed on April 13, 1941 a Neutrality Pact, similar to the German–Soviet non-aggression pact

Later in 1941, Japan would consider breaking the pact when the German Third Reich invaded the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa) at the start of the Great Patriotic War, but they made the crucial decision to keep it and to continue to press into south east Asia. This was said largely due to the Battle of Khalkhin Gol that caused Japan not to join forces with the Germany against the Soviet Union, even though Japan and Germany were part of the Tripartite Pact. On April 5, 1945 the Soviet Union unilaterally denounced the pact three months before they launched Soviet invasion of Manchuria an attack on Japanese forces in Manchuria.

oviet invasion of Manchuria

Operation August Storm, or the Battle of Manchuria began on August 8, 1945, with the Soviet invasion of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo; the greater invasion would eventually include neighboring Mengjiang, as well as northern Korea, southern Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands. It marked the initial and only military action of the Soviet Union against the Empire of Japan; at the Yalta Conference, it had agreed to Allied pleas to terminate the neutrality pact with Japan and enter the Second World War's Pacific Theater within three months after the end of the war in Europe.

The invasion began on August 8, 1945, precisely three months after the German surrender on May 8. Notably, it began between the droppings of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 9).

Politically speaking, the conflict remains unresolved since Japan and Russia failed to sign a peace treaty at the end of WWII, and tensions remain high principally regarding the Kuril Islands Dispute. Soviet advances into North Korea resulted in a divided Korea, which soon led to the Korean War.

ee also

*Russo-Japanese War
*Chinese Eastern Railway and the South Manchuria Railway
*Sino-Soviet conflict (1929)