The Soviet invasion of the Northern Territories was a clear violation of international law. This article traces the post-Yalta power struggle, Roosevelt’s death, Truman’s containment of Soviet ambitions, the atomic bombings, and Stalin’s decision to occupy the islands and legitimize the act through propaganda.

The invasion of the Northern Territories was clearly an act that trampled on international law.
Even so, Stalin declared to his people.
2016-11-27.
What follows is a continuation of the previous chapter.
Tossed about by a power game.
About two months after the Yalta Conference, on April 12, 1945, Showa 20, Franklin D. Roosevelt died suddenly.
Harry S. Truman assumed the presidency.
Truman was a hardened anti-communist, learned of the Yalta secret agreement, and moved to contain Soviet entry into the war against Japan.
Coincidentally, on July 16, 1945, Showa 20, the United States successfully conducted an atomic bomb test in New Mexico.
Soviet power was no longer needed, and Truman sought to force Japan’s early surrender and crush Stalin’s ambitions.
On August 6, an uranium-type atomic bomb, Little Boy, was dropped on Hiroshima.
Fearing Japan’s immediate surrender, Stalin advanced his schedule, declared war on Japan on the eighth, and launched a simultaneous invasion of Manchuria and other regions on the ninth.
By the Emperor’s sacred decision, the Japanese government accepted the Potsdam Declaration late on the night of the fourteenth.
On the fifteenth, Truman sent Stalin a letter known as General Order No. 1.
The document listed the areas Japan was to surrender, but did not include the Kuril Islands sought by the Soviet Union.
Stalin sent a secret letter demanding revisions.
In addition to all of the Kuril Islands, he demanded the cession of the northern half of Hokkaido, but Truman countered by demanding military usage rights for the Kuril Islands.
Ultimately, Stalin abandoned the Hokkaido landing operation.
He judged that worsening relations with the United States, the world’s sole nuclear power, was not in his interest.
From the day of defeat, Japan was powerless, and the Kuril Islands were treated like drifting flotsam caught between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Stalin ceased negotiations with Truman and moved to make occupation a fait accompli.
On August 18, the Soviet Second Far Eastern Front moved south from the Kamchatka Peninsula and invaded Shumshu Island at the northern end of the Kuril Islands.
On August 28, Etorofu Island was taken, and from September 1 to 5 all of the Northern Territories, Kunashiri, Shikotan, and the Habomai Islands, were occupied.
Japan signed the instrument of surrender aboard the U.S. battleship Missouri on September 2.
The invasion of the Northern Territories was clearly an act that violated international law.
Nevertheless, Stalin boasted in a speech to the nation as follows.
“Southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands will pass to the Soviet Union, and these territories will serve as means of directly connecting the Soviet Union to the oceans and as bases to defend our country from Japanese aggression.
Now, the long-awaited peace has arrived for the peoples of the world.”