Starting this evening, the Communist Voice series on The Peoples Channel and Durham Community Media will be showing Manchuria – August 1945, a Soviet documentary about the USSR's role in liberating northeastern China from Japanese occupation. The program was donated by US Friends of the Soviet People. In September 1931 Japan attacked China and seized Manchuria, and in July 1938 the Sino-Japanese War began, lasting until the defeat of Japan in 1945. In this way WWII's roots extend back to the 20's and 30's, and in a few decades, US aggression against Iraq in the 90's and the invasion in 2003 may be seen as the quiet beginning of the next inter-imperialist war.
As the Allied powers had agreed at conferences, the USSR was to have a role in the war against Japan, but by August 1945 Roosevelt was dead and President Truman wanted a free hand. Japan's fascist government, all but defeated already, knew it had lost when the USSR and Mongolia entered the war, but the US still dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima August 6th and on Nagasaki August 9th. It can be argued that, other than the radiation, there is not a huge difference between being incinerated or boiled by a nuclear bomb versus the conventional firebombings that struck other Japanese and German cities. Two cities were destroyed and tens of thousands of Japanese and Korean civilians were killed so the US would be the sole occupier of Japan and could intimidate the USSR, an attempt which failed (ml-review.ca/aml/AllianceIssues/All30iii.htm). The US went on to preserve part of Japan's fascist leadership for use during the Cold War, divided the Korean nation, and fomented the Korean War (ml-review.ca/aml/China/KoreaNS.htm). China liberated itself from imperialist domination and feudalism, and helped defend the DPRK, but its revisionist leadership did not build socialism, and now openly advocates capitalism and supports imperialism, from Haiti to Libya.
There is an annual vigil in August commemorating the atomic bombing of Japan at the Chapel Hill Post Office on Franklin Street.
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