In his Sankei Shimbun column, Ryosuke Endo warns against Russia’s historical warfare in partnership with China.
He highlights Japan’s moral superiority over the USSR, detailing the Soviet Union’s violation of the Japan-Soviet Neutrality Pact, invasions after Japan’s surrender, and illegal Siberian internments.
Russia now aligns with China to promote a false narrative of joint victory over Japanese militarism, obscuring its own war crimes.
Endo urges Japan to firmly and consistently refute these distortions on the global stage.

Expose the Fiction of Sino-Russian “Historical Solidarity” — The Need to Counter Historical Warfare over Japan-Soviet Neutrality Treaty Violations

No matter how varied assessments of the last great war may be, one thing is certain: Japan bore no wrongdoing toward the former Soviet Union or present-day Russia, and holds complete moral superiority. We must never flinch before Russia’s historical warfare.

August 15, 1945, was the day Emperor Shōwa announced the end of the war via his Imperial Rescript on Surrender. Yet the Soviet Union paid no heed. On August 9, just before the war’s end, the Soviets broke the Japan-Soviet Neutrality Pact and entered the war against Japan. Even after Japan accepted the Potsdam Declaration on August 14, they continued their attacks.

The neutrality pact had been concluded in April 1941, with a validity period of five years. Japan’s adherence to the pact allowed the Soviet Union to focus entirely on its clash with Nazi Germany and secure victory. Nevertheless, the Soviets unilaterally tore up the treaty and delivered a surprise blow to Japan, already reeling from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. They unilaterally invaded Manchuria, southern Sakhalin, the Korean Peninsula, and the Kuril Islands, slaughtering not only soldiers but civilians.

The Soviet invasion of the Kuril Islands began on August 18, after Japan had accepted the Potsdam Declaration. They completed the occupation of the Northern Territories on September 5—after Japan had signed the Instrument of Surrender. What else can one call this but looting during a fire?

From Manchuria, Korea, and elsewhere, about 600,000 Japanese soldiers and civilians were taken to Siberia and other regions, subjected to forced labor and starvation, with roughly 60,000 dying. This forced internment violated both the Potsdam Declaration—which required the repatriation of Japanese soldiers after disarmament—and international law.

Russia’s official historical narrative completely conceals the fact that it violated the neutrality pact. Instead, it claims: “The Soviet army crushed Japan’s Kwantung Army and liberated northeastern China, North Korea, southern Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands, thereby hastening the end of World War II.”

As grounds for its entry into the war against Japan and its possession of the Northern Territories, Russia cites the Yalta Agreement of February 1945—a secret pact among the U.S., U.K., and USSR in which the Soviet Union agreed to enter the war against Japan after Germany’s surrender in exchange for the Kuril Islands. But Japan had no part in this secret agreement, and it cannot justify the Soviet violation of the neutrality pact or the postwar internment of Japanese citizens. The Yalta Agreement did not even stipulate the handling of territorial issues.

To shore up its fragile claims, Russia is now seeking a joint historical front with China. In 2020, the Putin administration moved its de facto victory day over Japan from September 2 to September 3—the same day as China’s “Victory over Japan Day.”

In May this year, marking the 80th anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Russia and met with President Putin. The two issued a 28-page (Russian-language) joint statement commemorating the “80th Anniversary of the Soviet-Chinese Victory,” emphasizing the narrative that “the former Soviet Union and China jointly defeated Nazi Germany and Japanese militarism.” The document claimed that the Soviet and Chinese peoples “fought the invaders shoulder to shoulder and supported each other selflessly.”

For Russia, portraying the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45) as a period of Sino-Soviet military cooperation helps obscure its own unlawful acts such as violating the neutrality pact. For the Chinese Communist Party, too, the narrative is convenient for glossing over the fact that the main force in the war of resistance against Japan was the Nationalist Army.

On September 3, President Putin is expected to visit China and once again emphasize this “historical solidarity.” To ensure that “a lie repeated a hundred times” does not become truth, Japan must respond vigorously and consistently to the false narratives of China and Russia.

(Chief Foreign News Editor and Editorial Writer)