Word: manchuria
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Guess Again. Of her army, Japan now has about 25 combat divisions stationed in the home islands, 33 in China and Manchuria. The salvage from Burma will probably add little to this total; the doomed remnants of Okinawa, the Philippines and the abandoned garrisons of bypassed islands will add none...
History v. Honor. In Cairo, in December 1943, just before they first met Stalin at Teheran, Roosevelt and Churchill gave their national word of honor to 1) return Manchuria to China, 2) make Korea a free and independent country...
Both promises run counter to Russia's interest and history in Asia since the 17th Century. China's historic right to Manchuria is unquestionable; Russia's historic urge toward both Manchuria and Korea is inescapable. At the least, Russia will almost certainly demand economic (which also means political) priority in Manchuria; at the most, outright possession. In either case, Russia would then be the great Asiatic and Pacific power, in a position to dominate China as well...
...border between Russian Siberia and Jap-held Manchuria is 2,100 miles long, much of it trackless country designed by nature for frontier incidents. Tokyo and Moscow reported some 2,500 such clashes between 1931 and 1942; any one of them would have been enough to touch off a war if either nation had been in the mood...
Powerful forces are ranged along the border. At peak strength the Russians probably had 800,000 trained troops, with modern armor and planes, in Siberia. The Japs' crack Kwantung army, which holds its mandate direct from the Emperor and runs Manchuria like a private estate, may have 1,000,000 men. The Red Army took many of its best Siberian divisions west to fight the Germans in the last three years; they may or may not have been replaced. On the other hand, six Jap divisions from Manchuria were chopped up in the Philippines...