Podcasts about Nakamura

On this episode of The Still Real to Us Show:-- It feels like we may be saying goodbye to AJ Styles' in-ring career, and if this is truly the end, the emotional week of Nakamura at SNME and Punk on RAW makes it one hell of a farewell-- A major shift in the wrestling landscape as NJPW confirms EVIL's departure, fueling serious buzz that he's WWE-bound-- WrestleVotes reports AJ Lee vs. Becky Lynch is one of the most “locked in” matches for WrestleMania 42—and the implications alone make this must-talk territory-- WWE 2K26's rumored Attitude Era and Monday Night Wars editions might finally pull us back into wrestling video games in a big way-- Trey Miguel resurfaces in TNA following his AEW release, opening the door to a fascinating next chapter in his career-- Tommaso Ciampa is officially All Elite after his WWE deal expires, and we break down whether this is the right move for “The Psycho Killer”-- Full WWE Royal Rumble preview and predictions as we sort out the chaos, surprises, and potential WrestleMania paths

Podcast available on Spotify "Keep It a Buck Daily"LIKE - COMMENT - PLEASE SUBSCRIBETIMESTAMPS:(0:01) - Intro / Thoughts on Paramount + Production for UFC 324(15:07) - UFC Bonuses / Betting Scandals / Fights dropped from UFC 324 Card(30:00) - UFC 324 Recap / Discussion (30:30) - Paddy vs Gaethje (44:00) - O'Malley vs Song (49:45) - Cortes-Acosta vs Lewis(55:35) - Silva vs Namajunas (56:06) - Silva vs Allen (1:01:40) - UFC 324 Prelims (Skim Through)(1:10:20) - Batbayar vs Tau (1:12:46) - Lui vs Sulangrangbo (1:14:00) - Szalay vs Nakamura (1:15:50) - Mar Fan vs Kim (1:17:07) - Ofli vs Yizha (1:20:30) - Micallef vs Elliott (1:24:10) - Malkoun vs Finney (1:28:10) - Rowston vs Brundage (1:30:45) - Tafa vs Elekana UFC 325 MAIN CARD(1:33:05) Salkilld vs Mullarkey (1:34:40) Tuivasa vs Teixeira(1:39:50) Fiziev vs Ruffy (1:46:42) CO MAIN: Hooker vs BSD(1:53:20) MAIN: Volkanovski vs Lopes I post all my final picks on my social media accounts down below. FOLLOW AND SUB THE Social Media accountsTWITTER / X Account: @KIABmediaInstagram: @keepitabuck_mediaTik Tok: @ kiabmedia_

MMA Lock of the Night is back to give you breakdowns and predictions for UFC 325: Volkanovski vs Lopes 2. Also on the card, Hooker vs Saint Denis, Fiziev vs Ruffy, Tuivasa vs Teixeira, and Salkilld vs Mullarkey.

The Dadley Boyz review Saturday Night's Main Event, including...Sami Zayn is the #1 contender!A Styles-Nakamura CLASSIC!Cody Rhodes & Jacob Fatu BRAWL!Rhea Ripley & IYO SKY vs. Liv Morgan & Roxanne Perez!The best SNME EVER?!ENJOY!Follow us on Twitter:@AdamWilbourn@MichaelHamflett@MSidgwick@WhatCultureWWEFor more awesome content, check out: whatculture.com/wwe Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jonathan Hood and Justin LaBar react to WWE's Saturday Night's Main Event in Montreal covering Sami Zayn's win in the fatal four way to win a shot against Drew McIntyre at the Royal Rumble as well as the instant classic between AJ Styles and Shinsuke Nakamura. To visit our partners at Chewy, click here. The Master's Class is now available on its own podcast feed! SUBSCRIBE NOW to hear over 50 episodes of Dave, Bully, Mark, and Tommy taking you behind the scenes like only they can, plus BRAND NEW episodes every week. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of Busted Open ad-free and get exclusive access to bonus episodes. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Wrestling Soup's Saturday Night's Main Event XLII Post-Show! Anthony Thomas and Joe Numbers break down all the action from Montreal including the Cody/Fatu brawl, women's tag team action, Nakamura vs AJ Styles, and the Fatal Four-Way main event.Timestamps: 3:50 - Royal Rumble Predictions & Surprises 6:17 - The Rock Rumble Talk 13:04 - Saturday Night's Main Event Begins 13:07 - Cody vs Fatu Brawl Breakdown 17:56 - Women's Tag Match Review (Liv/Roxy vs Ripley/Iyo) 24:19 - Nakamura vs AJ Styles Analysis 31:51 - Fatal Four-Way Main Event (Zayn/Priest/Orton/Williams) 43:10 - Final Thoughts & Wrap-UpBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/wrestling-soup--1425249/support.

Journalist Lee Sanders is back with a full breakdown, analysis, and reaction to WWE SATURDAY NIGHT's MAIN EVENT January 24, 2026 as wrestling legends AJ STYLES and Shinsuke Nakamura battle one final time before AJ Styles faces GUNTHER at Royal Rumble where his career will be on the line! WWE Saturday Night's Main Event 1/24/26 CardCody Rhodes vs. Jacob FatuWWE Women's Tag Team Championship Match  Rhea Ripley & IYO SKY (c) vs. Liv Morgan & Roxanne Perez  Undisputed WWE Title No. 1 Contender's Fatal 4-Way MatchRandy Orton vs. Trick Williams vs. Damian Priest vs. Sami Zayn  AJ Styles vs. Shinsuke Nakamura ——————————————————————LEE SANDERS PRESENTS: THE 2025 WRESTLING AWARDS is LIVE NOW! GO VOTE VIA https://lvuyvns43o1.typeform.com/to/khRz548W

Welcome to the Squared Circle Podcast with your host Marie Shadows!Season 7 kicks off going backwards through Wrestle Kingdom 20, starting with the main event: Hiroshi Tanahashi's retirement match against Kazuchika Okada (January 4, 2026, Tokyo Dome). Why this felt like NJPW coming back (even a little), why Okada still delivers elite psychology when motivated, the weird commentary dynamic nobody's talking about (marching orders for Chris Charlton?), Tanahashi as the most powerful man in wrestling, why he could've called Nakamura but chose Okada, post-match brotherhood, the creepy ten-bell salute, and why wrist control & body-part work still matter more than flips.I go in on AEW's lazy Okada run, the failing NJPW-AEW partnership, bad yen excuses, immigration/culture takes, IWC negativity, and why Tanahashi retiring means he can finally president properly.Substack: https://marieshadows.substack.comPatreon: https://patreon.com/marieshadowsTimestamps!00:00 – Welcome to Season 7, Happy New Year, January 24 202600:46 – Where to find the podcast + what's coming in 202601:14 – IWC negativity, wrong labels, Marty Scurll correct story03:29 – Cyber bullying still alive, be open-minded04:35 – Wrestle Kingdom 20 make-or-break for NJPW, Tanahashi retirement05:52 – Economy/yen excuses vs real issues09:49 – Sold out because of Tanahashi, Okada wins12:01 – Why Okada over Nakamura, Tanahashi power13:37 – AEW partnership not benefiting NJPW (Twitter thread proof)14:47 – Dual contracts discussion coming soon16:39 – Tanahashi could've called WWE for Nakamura19:12 – Match breakdown: wrestling, wrist control, psychology27:54 – Why struggle > flips, working body parts30:50 – Finish, post-match mic, brotherhood parade32:04 – Commentary dynamic: Charlton marching orders, tension37:00 – Walker indie/woke insertions, respect Japanese style42:41 – Storytelling lost art in commentary51:02 – Final thoughts, brotherhood, ten-bell creepy53:05 – Plugs: like/share/comment/poll, Patreon, Tape Study, consultations

Last time we spoke about the climax of the battle of Changkufeng. A 7–10 August clash near Changkufeng and Hill 52 saw a brutal, multi-front Soviet push against Japanese positions in the Changkufeng–Hill 52 complex and adjacent areas. The Korea Army and Imperial forces rapidly reinforced with artillery, long-range 15 cm and other pieces, to relieve pressure. By 7–8 August, Soviet assault waves, supported by tanks and aircraft, intensified but Japanese defenses, including engineers, machine-gun fire, and concentrated artillery, prevented a decisive breakthrough at key positions like Noguchi Hill and the Changkufeng spine.  By 9–10 August, continued Japanese counterfire, improved artillery neutralization, and renewed defenses kept Hill 52 and Changkufeng in Japanese control, though at heavy cost. The frontline exhaustion and looming strategic concerns prompted calls for intensified replacements and potential diplomatic considerations. It seemed like the battle was coming to an end.   #184 The Lake Khasan Truce Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. The casualties were atrocious for both sides, yet they continued to mobilize more forces to the conflict area. While the Russians appeared uninterested in all-out war, they were not rushing to settle the crisis through diplomacy and, at the front, were launching "reckless" counterattacks at inconvenient locations, presumably to occupy positions useful for bargaining. The local Soviet military, having ceded the hills at the outset, must also have been anxious about its prestige. The Kwantung Army's potential threat to the flank undoubtedly made the Russians nervous. Although the leading echelon of the 104th Division did not reach Hunchun until the evening of 13 August, Japanese intelligence heard that the Red Army Headquarters staff at Khabarovsk had detected movements of Kwantung Army elements around 10 August and had been compelled to take countermeasures: they reinforced positions along the eastern and northern Manchurian frontiers, concentrated the air force, ordered move-up preparations by ground forces in the Blagoveshchensk district, and commandeered most of the motor vehicles in the Amur Province. By shifting its main strength to the eastern front, the Kwantung Army exerted, as intended, a silent pressure. The covert objective was to restrain and divert the Russians and to assist Japanese diplomacy, not to provoke war. Nevertheless, an American correspondent who visited the Changkufeng area in mid-August privately reported that the Kwantung Army was massing large numbers of troops near the border and expected further trouble.  Toward its weak neighbor in Korea the Kwantung Army rendered every support. Apart from its major demonstration in eastern Manchuria, the Kwantung Army promptly sent whatever reinforcements of artillery, engineers, and other units that Seoul had desired. Being also intimately involved in anti-Soviet military preparations, the Kwantung Army understandably wanted the latest and most authentic information on Russian Army theory and practice. The Changkufeng Incident furnished such a firsthand opportunity, and the professional observers sent from Hsinking were well received at the front. Military classmate ties contributed to the working relationships between the armies. As one division officer put it, the teams from the Kwantung Army came as "friends," not only to study the battlefield by their respective branches of service but also to assist the front-line forces; "the Kwantung Army was increasingly helpful to us in settling the incident." Foreign Minister Ugaki felt that the pressure of troop movements in Manchuria played a major part in the Russians' eventual decision to conclude a cease-fire. From Inada's viewpoint, it had been a "fine and useful demonstration against the Soviet Union." Pinned at Changkufeng, the Russians did not or could not choose to react elsewhere, too. Army General Staff officers believed that clear and consistent operational guidance furnished by Tokyo produced good results, although the fighting had been very hard for the front-line Japanese troops because of the insistence on exclusive defense, the curbs on interference by the Kwantung Army, and the prohibition on the use of aircraft. It had been close, however. Only by conscious efforts at restraint had the small war at Changkufeng been kept from spilling over into neighboring areas. Escalation of combat in early August had caused the Japanese government to try to break the diplomatic impasse while localizing the conflict. On 2 August Premier Konoe assured the Emperor that he intended to leave matters for diplomacy and to suspend military operations as soon as possible, an approach with which the government concurred. The Changkufeng dispute had been accorded priority, preceding overall settlements and the creation of joint commissions to redefine the borders. On the 3rd, after coordinating with the military, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs advised Shigemitsu that the front-line situation had become "extremely critical" and that a quick suspension of fighting action should be proposed. Soviet and Japanese troops should be pulled back to the setup as of 30 July.  In the midst of the Changkufeng Incident, the USSR intensified harassing tactics against the last Japanese consulates located within the Soviet Union. Forty-eight hour ultimatums to quit the country were delivered to the consuls at Khabarovsk and Blagoveshchensk on 3 and 4 August, respectively. Although the Japanese government warned that it might retaliate, the Russians were unyielding. The foreign ambassadors, Mamoru Shigemitsu and Maxim Litvinov met on August 4th, whereupon Shigemitsu argued, the best procedure would be to suspend military operations on both sides and to restore the status quo. Litvinov in a long manner explained the stance of the USSR as Shigemitsu put it "the Soviet side had a disposition to cease fighting, provided that conditions were satisfactory."  The Russians were stalling at the very time the Red Army was bending every effort to retake Changkufeng. Coordination between the Army, Navy, and Foreign Ministers produced cease-fire conditions which were rushed to the Japanese ambassador on 6 August. Two alternate lines were proposed, to which both armies would pull back. After the creation of a buffer zone, discussions could begin concerning delineation of boundaries in the region of the incident. The Hunchun pact could be the basis for deliberations, demarcation to be effected by joint investigations on the spot in consultation with documents in the possession of Manchukuo and the USSR; the Japanese would serve only as observers. Shigemitsu conferred once more with Litvinov for three and a half hours on 7 August, but no progress was made. Litvinov insisted that a clash could be averted only if Japanese forces pulled However Litvinov's positive reaction to the idea of a demarcation commission was seen as a good sign.  On August the 10th, both sides seemed to have reached a similar conclusion that a cease-fire needed to rapidly be implemented. At 11pm that night Litvinov called the embassy, asking for Shigemitus to see him as fast as possible. Shigemitsu arrived around midnight whereupon Litvinov showed him a draft of a final accord: 1. Japanese and Soviet forces shall cease all military activities on 11 August at noon local time. Instructions to that effect are to be issued immediately by the governments of the USSR and Japan.  2. Japanese as well as Soviet troops shall remain on those lines which they occupied at midnight local time on 10 August.  3. For redemarcation of the portion of frontier in dispute, there shall be created a mixed commission of two representatives from the USSR and two representatives from the Japanese-Manchurian side, with an umpire selected by agreement of both parties from among citizens of a third state.  4. The commission for redemarcation shall work on the basis of agreements and maps bearing the signatures of plenipotentiary representatives of Russia and China. Shigemitsu agreed to the inclusion of a Japanese commissioner on the Manchukuoan delegation, but he could not assent to the addition of a neutral umpire. Moscow received the news of the truce with gratification mingled with surprise. Few realized that the USSR had taken the step of appeasing or at least saving face for the Japanese even after Shigemitsu had pleaded for and won a cease-fire. The world was told by the Russians only that specific overtures for cessation of hostilities had originated with the Soviet authorities. In general, it was not difficult to guess why the Russian government, distracted by the European political scene and apprehensive about a two-front war, agreed to a cease-fire at Changkufeng.  The slowness of communication across the many miles between Moscow and Tokyo did nothing to alleviate nervousness in the Japanese capital during the night of 10–11 August. Ugaki wrote in his diary that, "after ten days of tension, the struggle between the Japanese and Soviet armies on the USSR–Manchukuo border had reached the decisive brink". Complicating the situation was the fact that, late on 10 August, the president of Domei News Agency conveyed to Konoe a message from one of his Moscow correspondents. Purporting to sum up Shigemitsu's latest outlook, the report stated that success in the negotiations seemed unlikely. The contents of the message were transmitted to Ugaki and Itagaki. Consequently, Konoe and his associates spent a fearful and depressed night. Shigemitsu's own report, sent by telegram, arrived frustratingly slowly.  After definite information had been received from Shigemitsu, Harada happily called Kazami Akira, the prime minister's chief secretary, and Konoe himself. "Until the accord was implemented," Kazami had said, "we would have to be on the alert all day today." Konoe and Kazami seemed "a little relaxed anyhow." Inada had finally retired past midnight on 10–11 August, "agreement or no agreement. I must have been dozing from fatigue when the jangle of the phone got me up. It was a message saying that a truce had been concluded the preceding midnight. Just as I had been expecting, I said to myself, but I felt empty inside, as if it were an anticlimax." The call had to have been an unofficial communication, perhaps the latest Domei news, since the records showed that definitive word from the embassy in Moscow did not reach Tokyo until after 10:00. Attache Doi's report to the Army General Staff came at about 11:00. This was extremely late in terms of getting Japanese troops to cease operations at 13:00 Tokyo time (or noon on the spot); a tardy imperial order might undo the Moscow accord. Complicating this matter of split-second timing was the fact that the first official telegram from Shigemitsu referred to unilateral Japanese withdrawal by one kilometer. At the Japanese high command level, there was agitated discussion when initial word of these arrangements arrived. Inada speculated that on 10 August the Russians had staged persistent close-quarter assaults against Changkufeng and seized the southern edge eventually, although repulsed at all other points. Moscow may have agreed to a truce at that midnight because they expected that the crest of Changkufeng would be in their hands by then and that a fait accompli would have been achieved. Some officers argued that the Russian forces were suffering "quite badly and this caused the authorities' agreeability to a cease-fire." Most exasperating, however, was the provision stipulating a one-sided military withdrawal. Admittedly, such action had been under discussion by the Army General Staff itself, particularly after Terada's sobering appeal of 10 August. It was another matter to have a Japanese withdrawal dictated by the USSR while Russian troops did not have to budge. Initial puzzlement and chagrin began to yield to rationalization. The Japanese side seemed to have made a concession in the negotiations, but there must have been significance to the phrase which said, "the line occupied by Japanese forces has been taken into due consideration." Japanese troops had presumably advanced to the edge of the frontier, while Russian soldiers had not come even close. Thus, it must have been necessary to have the Japanese units withdraw first, to fix the boundaries, since it had been the Japanese who had done the greater advancing. One Japanese office remarked "A pull-back was a pull-back, no matter how you looked at things—and we were the ones who had to do it. But the atmosphere in the command had been far from optimistic on 10 August; so we decided that it was unnecessary to complain about this issue and we approved the agreement in general. Both the senior and junior staff levels seemed to be quite relieved." The 11th of August had been an awkward day to conduct liaison between the Foreign Ministry, the Army, and the Throne, since the Emperor was leaving Hayama to visit naval installations in the Yokosuka area and the navy air unit in Chiba from morning. By the time a conclusive report on the cease-fire could be conveyed to the monarch, he was aboard the destroyer Natsugumo at Kisarazu. Naval wireless facilities in Tokyo had to be used to transmit coded messages to Admiral Yonai, the Navy Minister, for delivery to the Emperor. This was done shortly before 14:45 According to Yonai, the Emperor "was very pleased and relieved when I reported to him… about the conclusion of the truce accord." The appropriate Imperial order was approved promptly. But not until 15:00, two hours after cease-fire time at Changkufeng, did word of Imperial sanction reach the high command.  Japanese soldiers in the lines recalled nothing special on 11 August. "We didn't hear about the truce till the last minute," said one, "and we had become so inured to enemy artillery we hardly noticed any 'last salute.' From Tokyo, on 11 August, it was reported that the Japanese side had suspended operations promptly at noon, as agreed, but that sporadic bursts of fire had continued to come from the Soviet side. Colonel Grebennik, when asked after the war whether the combat did end at noon, replied petulantly: "Yes, but not quite so. The fighting actually ceased at 12:05." According to him, the tardiness was the Japanese side's fault.  The Japanese press told readers that "the cease-fire bugle has sounded—the frontier is cheerful now, 14 days after the shooting began." All was quiet in the area of Changkufeng, where the sounds of firing ceased at noon "as if erased." The most intense period of stillness lasted only a few minutes and was followed by the excited chattering of soldiers, audible on both sides. Korea Army Headquarters spoke of the "lifting of dark clouds [and] return of the rays of peace." In Hongui, a Japanese combat officer told a Japanese correspondent: "Suddenly we noticed the insects making noise; the soldiers were delighted. Once the fighting stopped, Japanese national flags were hoisted here and there along our front. … After the Russians observed what we had done, they broke out red flags also, at various points in their trenches." Some Japanese soldiers were given cookies by Soviet medical corpsmen. At Hill 52, an infantryman remembered, the Japanese and the Russians were facing each other, 50 meters apart, that afternoon. "We just lay there and stared at each other for two hours, waiting grimly. But it was well past cease-fire now, and those same Russians finally started to wave at us. Later that day, when Soviet troops came to salvage their KO'd tanks, we 'chatted' in sign language." After the cease-fire, Ichimoto, whose battalion had seen the most difficult fighting, stuck his head above the trench and waved hello to some Soviet officers. "They waved back. It gave me an odd sensation, for during the furious struggle I had considered them to be barbarians. Now I was surprised to see that they were civilized after all!" A rifleman at Changkufeng remembered swapping watches with an unarmed Russian across the peak. The Japanese front-line troops stayed in their positions confronting the Russians and conducted preparations for further combat while cleaning up the battlefield. Soviet troops also remained deployed as of the time of the cease-fire and vigorously carried out their own construction. The day after the cease-fire went into effect, Suetaka escorted an American reporter to the front. At Changkufeng:  "carpenters were making wooden receptacles for the ashes of the Japanese dead. Funeral pyres still were smoldering. . . . From our vantage point the lieutenant general pointed out long lines of Soviet trucks coming up in clouds of dust [which] apparently were made deliberately in an effort to conceal the trucks' movements, [probably designed] to haul supplies from the front. Soviet boats were pushing across [Khasan] . . . and Soviet soldiers were towing smashed tanks back from no-man'sland. On the Japanese side there was a pronounced holiday spirit. Soldiers, emerging from dugouts, were drying white undershirts on near-by brush and bathing in the Tumen River. The soldiers were laughing heartily. A few were trying to ride a Korean donkey near Changkufeng's scarred slope. The general pointed out three Soviet tanks behind the Japanese advance lines east of Changkufeng. He said the Russians had hauled back seventy others [on the night of 11 August]. . . . The writer was shown a barbed wire fence immediately behind a wrecked village on the west slope of Changkufeng which the general said the Soviet troops built at the beginning of the fighting. Possiet Bay also was pointed out, clearly visible across the swamp." Soviet losses for what became known as the battle of Lake Khasan for the Russians and the Changkufeng incident for the Japanese, totaled 792 killed or missing and 3,279 wounded or sick, according to Soviet records. The Japanese claimed to have destroyed or immobilized 96 enemy tanks and 30 guns. Soviet armored losses were significant, with dozens of tanks knocked out or destroyed and hundreds of "tank troops" becoming casualties. Japanese casualties, as revealed by secret Army General Staff statistics, were 1,439 casualties, 526 killed or missing, 913 wounded; the Soviets claimed Japanese losses of 3,100, with 600 killed and 2,500 wounded. The Soviets concluded that these losses were due in part to poor communications infrastructure and roads, as well as the loss of unit coherence caused by weak organization, headquarters, commanders, and a lack of combat-support units. The faults in the Soviet army and leadership at Khasan were blamed on the incompetence of Blyukher. In addition to leading the troops into action at Khasan, Blyukher was also supposed to oversee the trans-Baikal Military District's and the Far Eastern fronts' move to combat readiness, using an administrative apparatus that delivered army group, army, and corps-level instructions to the 40th Rifle Division by accident. On 22 October, he was arrested by the NKVD and is thought to have been tortured to death. At 15:35 on 11 August, in the Hill 52 sector, high-ranking military delegates bearing a white flag emerged from the Soviet lines and proceeded to Akahage Hill, about 100 meters from the Japanese positions. Cho, as right sector chief, was notified. He sent three lieutenants to converse with the Russians; they learned that the Soviets wanted the Japanese to designate a time and place for a conference. This word was conveyed to Suetaka, who had already dispatched Lieutenant Kozuki to the heights east of Shachaofeng to contact the Russians. Around 4:20, the commander canceled Kozuki's mission and instructed Cho to reply that the delegation ought to convene near the peak of Changkufeng at 18:00 Cho set out promptly with several subordinates; they reached the Changkufeng crest a little before 6. The Russians then said they wanted to meet the Japanese near the Crestline southeast of Changkufeng, the excuse being that the peak was too far for them to go and that they could not arrive by the designated time. Cho took his team to the location requested by the Russians. There, the Japanese found 13 Soviet soldiers and a heavy machine gun on guard, but the Russian delegates had not arrived, although it was 6:18. The irked Japanese clocked a further delay of two minutes before the Russian truce chief, Gen. Grigory M. Shtern, rode up on horseback with a party of eight. Both delegations saluted, the chiefs and team members identified themselves, and all shook hands. The Soviet team was made up of Corps General 3rd rank Shtern, 38, chief of staff, Far East area army; Brigade Commissar Semenovsky political major general, 37 or 38; Colonel Fedotev, 42; and Major Wabilev, about 30. Interpreting for the Russians was Alexei Kim. In Colonel Cho's opinion, "It was always necessary to take the initiative in dealing with the Soviets. So, even in such matters as shaking hands or conversing, he always did things first." During the exchange of greetings, Cho teased Shtern about his bandaged forehead. "A Japanese artillery shell got you, didn't it?" he asked. But Cho began formal discussions on a more dignified note: "Cho: It is very much to be regretted that the Japanese and Soviet armies had to get involved in combat around Changkufeng. Nevertheless, I laud the consummation of the Mos­cow accord on the part of both governments. And, I must say, your forces were quite brave and patriotic. Shtern: I agree with you. The Japanese Army, too, was courageous and strong." Negotiations would go on at the local level and diplomatic level for many days. In Tokyo, on the morning of 13 August, Ugaki had gone to the Meiji shrine to "report" on the cease-fire and to express his gratitude. At 10:00, when received in Imperial audience, he discussed the Changkufeng Incident. "I humbly regret to have troubled Your Majesty so unduly in connection with an unimportant affair on the Soviet-Manchurian frontier" at a time when the monarch was confronted by grave national problems. A long and winding road lay ahead before the incident as a whole was settled, but a good start had been made and "we are going to be even more careful in handling matters, although the Soviet regime  consists of devious, vicious scoundrels." Recognition of the Japanese Army's performance was accorded by the highest authorities in the homeland. As soon as the fighting ceased, Kan'in transmitted a message of appreciation. The day after the cease-fire, the command in North Korea issued a generous communique: "We pay homage to the Japanese for defending themselves against 100 planes, 200 tanks, and 60 pieces of heavy artillery. Our admiration for the bravery of both armies is of the highest." At 14:00 on the 15th, Kan'in was received in audience and reported on the settlement of the crisis. Said the Emperor: "We are gratified by the fact that, during this incident at Changkufeng, Our officers and men achieved their mission fully and manifested prudence and forbearance while confronting difficult circumstances with small forces. Our profound condolences to the casualties. Convey this message to the officers and men." A wire was dispatched promptly to Nakamura. With Imperial use of the wording "Changkufeng Incident," the nomenclature for the affair was fixed in Japan. When the cabinet met on 16 August, the decision was reached officially. After the Changkufeng affair, Japanese officers claimed that the Soviets had dispatched tactical experts "to ascertain why their elite Far Eastern forces had not been able to achieve satisfactory results. They realize the urgency of this investigation in preparation for any great war." Specifically, the AGS heard that on the day of the cease-fire, Blyukher had sent an investigative team of commissars under Romanovsky to the scene. Japanese experts on the USSR speculated that the experience at Changkufeng ought indeed to have impressed the Red Army: "Our forces did seize the hill and hold it. After comparing the strengths involved ... the Russians may well have had to modify their estimates." According to one Japanese commentator, improvements in political leadership were judged imperative by the USSR, gainsaying claims that the Soviet Army had been strengthened through the purge of alleged Japanese tools. Soviet authorities would conclude "As a test of doctrine, the fighting had confirmed the correctness of the basic principles embodied in the 1936 Field Service Regulations." The Soviet infantry had paid dearly for this, as well as for the deficiencies in tactical training. Defense Commissar Voroshilov admitted, "We were not sufficiently quick in our tactics, and particularly in joint operations in dealing the enemy a concentrated blow." In the view of historian Mackintosh: "The Soviet success at Lake Khasan was bought at the cost of heavy casualties and exposed serious defects in the mobilization machinery and the training of troops. There can be little doubt that these factors checked to some extent the Soviet Government's overoptimistic estimate of its own military strength and cast doubt on the effectiveness of its policy of expansion in all fields of military organization". Writing a year and a half after Changkufeng, an Mainichi reporter observed that the greatest harvest from the incident was tangible Japanese experience in determining the fighting strength of the Russians. Purchased with blood, this knowledge could provide valuable evidence for future combat operations. It was a question whether Changkufeng really possessed such strategic significance as was claimed for it, but the Soviet policy of bluff could be interpreted as substantiating the weakness of the defenses of Vladivostok. "The Russians used all kinds of new weapons at Changkufeng and tipped their whole hand. But although mechanization of the Red Army had attained high levels with respect to quantity, their weaknesses in technique and quality were laid bare." Imaoka observed that since the Changkufeng Incident marked the first time that the Japanese and Soviet armies engaged each other in combat involving large strategic elements, divisional and above, Russian fighting strength was studied with keen interest. The Japanese did not rate the capacity of the officers or Soviet quality, in general, as especially high. Still, the Russians did possess quantitative abundance, and Japanese losses had been heavy because the enemy had fired masses of ammunition against fixed targets. Suetaka seemed to have comprehended the scope of tangible Soviet strength in equipment and materiel, as shown by his comment: "I felt deeply that if the gap in manpower went beyond limits, it would be inevitable for our casualties to increase tremendously; this might even cause us danger in specific local areas." Few Japanese officers saw anything new in Soviet tactical methods, although considerations of mass were ever-present. Not only intelligence experts but the whole army worked on ways of coping with Soviet forces that would have the numerical advantage by 3:1. Most awesome was the "fantastic abundance" of hostile materiel, although the Russians could not deploy to surround the Japanese because of the geography. An AGS expert on the USSR summed it up: "We learned that Soviet strength was up to expectations, whereas Japanese arms and equipment had to be improved and reinforced." Worded in a multiplicity of ways, the Japanese conclusion was that patient imperial forces had won a great victory by defending the contested border with flesh vs. steel and by limiting the Changkufeng Incident, till the end, against enemy hordes supported exclusively by planes and tanks. Japanese infantrymen admit that the combat soldiers did not savor their disadvantages. "All our materiel was inferior in quality and particularly in quantity. We had the impression that whereas we relied on muscle power, the enemy used engines. This rendered our fighting particularly hard, but we had full confidence in our spiritual strength [i.e., superiority]."  Nevertheless, the Japanese mode of tactical operation, asserted Iwasaki, the Korea Army senior staff officer, was "the worst possible: fighting with hands tied." This meant that the Russians could fight "to their hearts' content," committing tanks and planes, and striking from all directions. A front-line infantry commander commented: "One's troops ought to be provided meaningful reasons for fighting and for dying happily. It is cruel to ask officers and men to meet masses of steel and to shed their blood without visible cause, and apparently because of inadequate combat preparations." The cease-fire agreement was concluded "at just the right time," General Morimoto admitted. A secret report prepared by AGS analysts sheds light on the larger question of what the army thought it had learned about itself and the Soviet enemy: "In studying Changkufeng, one ought to bear a number of cautions in mind: (1) The incident broke out when we were concentrating on the holy war against China; severe limitations on combat operations were imposed by the necessity to adhere to a policy of nonenlargement. (2) Apparently, the enemy also adopted a policy of localization while continuously attempting to recapture the high ground in the Changkufeng area. (3) Our forces employed units which were on Phase-1 alert from beginning to end; in terms of quality, the personnel were excellent—mainly active-duty types, from key men down. But our numbers were far inferior, and our organization and equipment were not of the best. In addition, we committed no planes or tanks, whereas the enemy used plenty. (4) The 19th Division was thorough, rigorous, and realistic in its combat training prior to the engagement. (5) Battlefield terrain seriously limited the enemy's attacks, especially tank action. But while the Tumen restricted assaults against our flanks and rear, it hampered our own services of supply, notably the provision of position construction materials." The Japanese learned few or erroneous lessons from the Changkufeng affair; the Kwantung Army, for example, was convinced that everything had been handled badly in 1938 by the Korea Army and the high command. When a dispute arose in 1939 at Nomonhan on another border lying between Outer Mongolia and Manchukuo, the staff in Hsinking fostered escalating measures. The USSR, however, learned in 1937 and 1938 that the Japanese Army seemed to respect only force.  I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. The Changkufeng incident or battle of Lake Khasan clash saw a fierce Soviet push against Japanese positions around Changkufeng and Hill 52. The cease-fire ended the incident, but not the conflict. Despite the brutal lessons learned by both sides, a much larger conflict would explode the next year that would alter both nations throughout WW2.   

In this week's episode of the Wade Keller Pro Wrestling Post-show from five years ago (1-8-2021), PWTorch columnist Zack Heydorn guest hosts for Wade Keller and is joined by PWTorch contributor and Smackdown alternative perspective reporter Brandon LeClair to talk WWE Smackdown with listener calls and emails. Discussion points include the number one contender Gauntlet Match featuring Daniel Bryan, Sami Zayn, King Corbin, Shinsuke Nakamura, Rey Mysterio, and Adam Pearce, Roman's continued run as a heel, nuances of the heel act that take the act to the next level, Adam Pearce's role moving forward, Shinsuke Nakamura's babyface turn, Big E's first night as Intercontinental Champion, the pros and cons of Robert Roode and Dolph Ziggler as tag team champions, the state of the Smackdown women's division, and much more.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/wade-keller-pro-wrestling-post-shows--3275545/support.

Episode 53! 2026 kicks off with a bang and Tanahashi's retirement. Trish was at the Dome for Wrestle Kingdom 20 and gives her thoughts on the live experience. Then we discuss the matches! Aaron Wolf vs Evil (8:25) Takeshita vs Tsuji (20:52) and Tanahashi vs Okada (44:35) as well as the post-match retirement ceremony (54:25) and some general thoughts about New Year's Dash and what it means for NJPW in 2026. Next up, Tony Khan's interview with Case Lowe and some thoughts about Nakamura. We then switch gears to Chris Jericho and his potential free agency (1:1:45) before moving on to the upcoming TNA Debut (1:42:50), AEW's Continental Classic and Women's Tag Tournament (1:55:15) and MJF as AEW's new Men's World Champion (1:55:15). Then Trish wraps it up with thoughts on her experience in Japan.(2:09:35)Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/social-suplex-podcast-network/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Hiroshi Tanahashi is one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time and the man known as The Ace of NJPW. In this episode, we look back at Hiroshi Tanahashi's legendary career — from his early struggles, rise as the face of New Japan Pro-Wrestling, iconic rivalries, classic matches, championships, and lasting legacy in wrestling history.This career retrospective explores how Tanahashi saved NJPW, defined an era, and inspired a generation of wrestlers worldwide.Topics covered:Hiroshi Tanahashi's early careerBecoming The Ace of NJPWRivalries with Okada, Nakamura, and moreIWGP Heavyweight Championship reignsTanahashi's legacy in modern wrestling

Every week Cav gets sent the news but knows nothing about it until he reads it live on air and breaks it down and reacts, this week.... Who could or could not be coming to wwe? Who has a new dramatic look? Jack talks about Anna Jay Nakamura tower Sasha is delusional Subscribe on patreon.com/LingusMafia for ad-free and video versions of the show, exclusive PPV/PLE reviews and bonus shows including every Wrestlemania, SummerSlam, Royal Rumble, Survivor Series, and Saturday Night's Main Event ever. Get access to over 10 years of podcasts! Stay connected: All our social media (@LingusMafia) links can be found here: https://linktr.ee/lingusmafia We have merch! Shirts, hoodies, stickers and more: lingusmafiashop.printify.me/ Drop us an email with comments or questions: lingusmafia@gmail.com Check our YouTube out at Wrestle Lingus Show! Remember to leave a comment and rate the show wherever you get your podcast from, we gotta get the word out there, we aren't too proud to beg, please? Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Courtesy of University of Minnesota Press, Elijah sits down with translator and writer Jeffrey Angles learning the secrets about his latest work; The Luminous Fairies and Mothra by Shin'ichirō Nakamura, Takehiko Fukunaga, and Yoshie Hotta.Check-out Jeffrey's work here:Order "Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again" (Paperback) by Shigeru Kayama - https://www.amazon.com/Godzilla-Raids-Again-Shigeru-Kayama/dp/1517915236Order "Writing the Love of Boys: Origins of Bishonen Culture in Modernist Japanese Literature" (Paperback) by Jeffrey Angles - https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Love-Boys-Modernist-Literature/dp/0816669708Order "The Book of the Dead" (Paperback) by Orikuchi Shinobu - https://www.amazon.com/Book-Dead-Orikuchi-Shinobu/dp/0816688109/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0Kaiju Conversation is a podcast series diving into the world of tokusatsu featuring genres like science fiction, J-Horror, action, and comedy! From Godzilla, Gamera, and Ultraman to the deepest darkest places like Zeiram, Zebraman, and Tetsuo: The Iron Man.The podcast is hosted by Elijah Thomas and Jackson Gibbens. Email: kaijuconversation@gmail.comTwitter/Facebook: @kaiju_convers Instagram: kaiju_conversLinktree:https://linktr.ee/Kaiju_Convers YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuni8GjDt1abcYq39cOxzDw Discord Server:https://discord.gg/gEwRexe Merchandise:https://teespring.com/stores/kaiju-conversation • Host: Elijah Thomashttps://linktr.ee/ET13_PRODUCTIONS• Co-host/Editor: Jackson Gibbenshttps://linktr.ee/RexXenoDon't forget to leave us a 5-star review!

Last time we spoke about the Japanese Victory over Changkufeng. Japan's generals hatched a plan: strike at night, seize the peak, then bargain if need be. Colonel Sato, steady as a compass, chose Nakano's brave 75th Regiment, selecting five fearless captains and a rising star, Nakajima, to lead the charge. Ahead, scouts and engineers threaded a fragile path through darkness, while distant Soviet tanks rumbled like distant thunder. At 2:15 a.m., wire breached and soldiers slipped over the slope. The crest resisted with brutal tenacity, grenades flashed, machine guns spit fire, and leaders fell. Yet by 5:15 a.m. dawn painted the hill in pale light, and Japanese hands grasped the summit. The dawn assault on nearby Hill 52 and the Shachaofeng corridor followed, with Takeshita's and Matsunobe's units threading through fog, fire, and shifting trenches. Narukawa's howitzers answered the dawn with measured fury, silencing the Soviets' early artillery as Japanese infantry pressed forward. By daybreak, the Russians were driven back, their lines frayed and retreating toward Khasan. The price was steep: dozens of officers dead or injured, and a crescent of smoke and memory left etched on every face.    #181 The Russian Counter Offensive over the Heights Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. After admitting the loss of Changkufeng and Shachaofeng by dawn on 31 July, the Russian government issued a communique the next day asserting that Soviet troops had "hurled back a Japanese division… after a two-day battle" involving tanks, artillery, and aircraft. Some hours after the Japanese penetration, Soviet regulars rushed to the scene and drove out the invaders. Japanese losses amounted to 400 men; Soviet losses were 13 killed and 55 wounded. On Soviet soil, the Japanese abandoned five cannons, 14 machine guns, and 157 rifles, while the Russians admitted losing one tank and one gun. A Soviet reconnaissance pilot may have fallen into Japanese hands after bailing out. "Both before and during the Japanese attack… Soviet troops did not once cross the Manchukuoan frontier,which deprived them of the possibility of surrounding or outflanking the invaders." By 1 August, Russian ground forces were deployed and the Soviet Air Force took action. Soviet aircraft appeared at 24:30 to reconnoiter. Soon after, more than ten planes flew in formation, launching strikes against forward units. Eight sorties, light bombers and fighters, roughly 120–150 aircraft in flights of two or three dozen, bombed and strafed. Raids were conducted by as many as 30 planes, though no Soviet losses were reported. The Russians also hit targets on the Korean side of the Tumen. The 75th Regiment judged that the Soviet Air Force sought only to intimidate. Russian planes dropped several dozen bombs on the Kyonghun bridge, but the span was not struck; damage was limited to the railway, producing an impression of severity that was misleading. The lack of air cover troubled the troops most. Japanese casualties on 1 August were modest: three men wounded in the 75th Infantry, and one wounded and a horse killed in the 76th. However the three Japanese battalions expended over 15,000 machine-gun and 7,000 rifle rounds that day. The appearance of Soviet air power at Changkufeng drew anxious international attention. Shanghai reports electrified observers, who anticipated that major Russo-Japanese hostilities would transform the China campaign overnight. Some observers were openly dismayed, foreseeing a prolongation of the mainland war with potential benefits to Soviet interests. Japanese Army spokesmen sought to downplay the situation. Officers in Hsinking told correspondents that the raids, while serious, represented only a face-saving measure. The Red Army was reportedly attempting to compensate for losses at Changkufeng and other disputed positions, but aside from the bombings, the frontier remained quiet. If the Russians were serious, observers noted, they would have bombed the vital Unggi railway bridge, which remained untouched; raids focused on minor bridges, with limited damage. In Tokyo, foreign observers believed the appearance of about 50 Soviet heavy bombers over North Korea signaled an extension of the incidents and that the Japanese government was taking urgent measures. Military leaders decided not to escalate but prepared for emergencies. The Korea Army Headquarters denied Soviet bombing of Harbin in Manchuria or Najin and Chongjin in Korea. Regarding retaliation, an American correspondent reported that the Japanese military had no intention of bombing Russian territory. Although Soviet use of aircraft introduced a new dimension of danger, the main efforts remained ground-based on both sides. After Japanese troops cleared Changkufeng and Shachaofeng, the Russians appeared to be redeploying to contract their defensive frontage; no troops or works remained west of Khasan. Four or five Russian infantry companies and ten artillery pieces stood between the lake and Paksikori, while the main forces, with numerous gun sites, were concentrated west of Novokievsk. On the Kwantung Army front in southeast Manchuria, no changes were observed. "The Russians were apparently shocked by their defeat at Changkufeng and must suddenly have resorted to negative, conservative measures." Korea Army Headquarters assessed the situation as of the evening of 31 July: "The enemy must fear a Japanese advance into the Novokievsk plain and therefore is concentrating his main forces in that district. Our interests require that we anticipate any emergency, so we must prepare the necessary strength in the Kyonghun region and reinforce positions at Wuchiatzu."  At 20:45 on the 31st, the 19th Division received a detailed message from the Hunchun garrison commander describing his northward deployments. Suetaka was heartened; he "earnestly desired to bring about the end of the incident as a result of the fighting of 30–31 July but was equally resolved to defend the border firmly, based on Japanese interpretation of the Hunchun pact, in case the Soviet side did not perform intensive self-reflection." First, Suetaka issued instructions from Kyonghun at 8:15 on the 31st via K. Sato: "It is our intention that Changkufeng and the high ground northwest of Shachaofeng be secured, as well as the high ground south of Shachaofeng if possible. Enemy attacks are to be met at our positions, but you are not to pursue far." Second, Colonel Tanaka was instructed not to fire as long as Russian artillery did not bombard friendly forces. "Except for preparing against counterassaults, your actions will be cautious. In particular, harassing fire against inhabited places and residents is prohibited." Suetaka was finally armed with formal authority, received at 22:05 on 1 August. He did not delay in implementing it. At 23:00 he ordered the immediate rail movement of strong reinforcements: the alerted infantry brigade headquarters, as well as four infantry battalions and the remaining mountain artillery battalion. Thus, Suetaka could deploy forward not only the forces he had requested but also a brigade-level organization to assume control of the now sizeable combat elements massed at the front for "maneuvers." Earlier that afternoon he had already moved his division's message center forward to the Matsu'otsuho heights at the Tumen, and he regularly posted at least one staff officer there so that the center could function as the division's combat headquarters. An additional matter of explosive potential was built into the divisional order: provision of Japanese Air Force cover for rail movements forward, although use of aircraft had been prohibited by all higher headquarters; Nakamura intended only ground cover. At the front, Japanese units spent most of their time consolidating their hard-won positions. By 3 on 1 August, a column of Soviet forces with vehicles was observed moving from the east side of Khasan. Late in the day, the division received an extremely important telegram from the 2nd (Intelligence) Section of the Kwantung Army: "According to a special espionage report from our OSS in Khabarovsk city, Red Army authorities there have decided to retake the high ground along Changkufeng." From other intelligence, the Kwantung Army concluded that the Russians were rebuilding in the Novokievsk region. Frequent movements observed immediately to the rear of the Soviet battle zone caused K. Sato to grow apprehensive about a dawn counterattack on the 1st, and he reinforced Changkufeng with the 6th Company. The second of August was marked by continuation of Soviet air attacks and the anticipated Russian counteroffensive. According to Japanese intelligence, Marshal Blyukher had arrived in Khabarovsk, and Lieutenant General Sokolov was in Voroshilov. An offensive buildup, estimated at about 3,000 men plus tanks and guns, was reported in the Kozando area by evening on the 1st. Hirahara, commanding the battalion at Changkufeng, grew concerned about Hill 52. With day's end approaching, he reinforced the defenses further and ordered the battalion medical officer to establish a dressing station at Fangchuanting. Around 15:00 Soviet artillery began firing at forward areas, especially gun positions; the bombardments were described as severe. Japanese artillery sought to conserve ammunition, firing only at worthwhile, short-range targets. Main Russian ground actions focused on the far-right (Hill 52) and far-left (Shachaofeng) sectors, not Changkufeng. In line with Hirahara's orders, two infantry companies and four heavy machine guns were moved by 8:00 from Changkufeng to the heights 800 meters southeast. Soviet heavy artillery pounded the zone between Fangchuanting and Hill 52; observing the enemy became difficult. Russian planes engaged at 9:00 fighters, then bombers, to soften defenses and gun positions. Meanwhile, the Soviets deployed firepower southeast of Khasan, while two infantry battalions and more than ten tanks advanced through the pines on the western slopes. Japanese regimental guns and two machine-gun platoons at Hill 52 attacked the enemy heavy machine guns and neutralized them. By 10:00 the Russians had advanced with heavy weapons to the high ground 800 meters from Hill 52. From Changkufeng, the battalion guns engaged heavy weapons. Hirahara moved with the engineers and battalion guns to the heights to which he had transferred reinforcements earlier, took command, and prepared an assault. Initially, Soviet troops advanced in formation, but after cresting a dip, they dispersed and moved onto the high ground opposite Hill 52. Heavily armed, they drew within 700 meters, with artillery and heavy machine guns providing coverage. By 10:00 Sato requested Shiozawa's mountain guns across the Tumen to unleash a barrage against Hill 52's front. For about half an hour, the battery fired. By 10:30, the Soviet advance grew listless. Believing the moment ripe, Hirahara deployed his men to charge the foe's right wing, ordering rapid movement with caution against eastern flank fire. On the heights north of Hill 52, Inagaki watched the struggle; with the telephone out and the situation urgent, he brought up firepower on his own initiative. Taking the main body of the 1st Machine Gun Company, along with the battalion guns, he moved out at noon, making contact with the 10th Company on Hill 52 around 14:00, where the Japanese machine guns and battalion guns joined the fray. The Russians, losing momentum, were checked by Japanese heavy weapons and by mountain guns from Hill 82. Hirahara's main battalion advanced onto the high ground north of Hill 52 around noon. By 15:00, two enemy companies began to fall back, climbing the western slopes of Hill 29 as the main forces retreated piecemeal to a dip. By 16:00, Suetaka observed that his units were continuing to secure their positions and were "gradually breaking the hostile intention." Despite heat and rain, front-line troops showed fatigue but remained vigilant. Between 11:00 and 16;00, Sato inspected the lines and directed defensive positions, particularly at Hill 52. After a poor initial performance, the Russians awaited reinforcements before attempting another assault on Hill 52. They moved up a mechanized corps, and by 15:00 50 tanks massed east of Maanshan. Around 17:00, the Russians began moving south along the high ground across Khasan. Another two Soviet battalions advanced along the Tumen hills, led by armor. Hirahara anticipated an assault at twilight, especially after 18:00, when nine bombers struck Hill 52. Earlier, Takeshita had received reports from the antitank commander, Lieutenant Saito, that at 17:00 several enemy tanks and three infantry battalions were advancing from Hill 29. Convinced of an imminent Soviet strike, Takeshita ordered the defense to conceal its efforts and to annihilate the foe with point-blank fire and hand-to-hand fighting. He sought to instill confidence that hostile infantry could not reach the positions. Before 19:00, the enemy battalions came within effective range, and Japan opened with all available firepower. Rapid-fire antitank guns set the lead tank alight; the remaining tanks were stopped. Support came from Hisatsune's regimental guns and two antitank gun squads atop Changkufeng. The Russian advance was checked. By nightfall, Soviet elements had displaced heavy weapons about 400 meters from Japanese positions. As early as 16:00, Suetaka ordered a mountain artillery squad to cross the river. Sato told Takeshita at 7:30 that there would be a night attack against Hill 52. Takeshita was to annihilate the foe after allowing them to close to 40–50 meters. The Russians did mount a night assault and pressed close between 8 and 9 p.m. with three battalions led by four tanks. The main force targeted Takeshita; all ten Russian heavy machine guns engaged that side. Japanese machine guns and battalion guns joined the fray. The Russians pressed within 30 meters, shouted "Hurrah! Hurrah!" and hurled grenades before advancing a further 15 meters. The Japanese repelled the first waves with grenades and emplaced weapons, leaving light machine guns and grenade dischargers forward. Soviet illuminating shells were fired to enable closer approaches within 100 meters. Japanese grenade-discharger fire blasted the forces massed in the dead space before the works. While the Hill 52 night attack collapsed, other Russian units, smaller in strength and with one tank leading, moved against the hill on the left that the Japanese had not yet occupied that morning. The Russians advanced along the Khasan slope north of Hill 52, came within point-blank range, and shouted but did not charge. By 22:00, the Japanese, supported by machine guns, had checked the foe. Thereupon, the 6th Company, now under a platoon leader, Narusawa, launched a counterattack along the lake. "The enemy was bewildered and became dislocated. Buddies were heard shouting to one another, and some could be seen hauling away their dead." The Soviet troops held back 300–400 meters and began to dig in. Sato decided artillery should sweep the zone in front of Hill 52. At 21:30, he requested support, but the mountain guns could not open fire. Still, by 23:00, not a shadow of an enemy soldier remained on the Hill 52 front, where the Japanese spent the night on alert. In the northern sector, eight Russian tanks crossed the Japanese-claimed border at 5:25 on 2 August and moved south to a position northwest of Shachaofeng. Around 7 Russian artillery opened fire to "prepare" the Japanese while a dozen heavy bombers attacked. An hour later, the ground offensive began in earnest, with one and a half to two infantry battalions, a dozen machine guns, and several tanks. Supporting Takenouchi's left wing were several batteries of mountain artillery and two heavy batteries. Well-planned counterfire stopped the offensive. There was little change north of Shachaofeng and in the southeast, where Kanda's company held its positions against attack. On Takenouchi's front, Akaishizawa notes 120-degree daytime heat and nighttime chill. Men endured damp clothes and mosquitoes. To keep warm at night, soldiers moved about; during the day they sought shade and camouflage with twigs and weeds. No defense existed against cold night rain. Nocturnal vigilance required napping by day when possible, but the intense sun drained strength. For three days, Imagawa's company had only wild berries and dirty river water to eat. At 6:00 on 2 August, Colonel Tanaka exhorted his artillery to "exalt maximum annihilation power at close range, engage confirmed targets, and display firepower that is sniperlike—precise, concentrated, and as swift as a hurricane." Tanaka devised interdiction sectors for day and night attacks. At 10:30, the artillery laid down severe fire and eventually caused the enemy assault to wither. Around 24:40, Rokutanda's battalion detected a Russian battalion of towed artillery moving into positions at the skirt of Maanshan. When the first shells hit near the vanguard, a commander on horseback fled; the rest dispersed, abandoning at least eight artillery wagons and ten vehicles. Suetaka, observing from the Kucheng BGU, picked up the phone and commended the 3rd Battalion. Japanese casualties on 2 August were relatively light: ten men killed and 15 wounded. Among the killed, the 75th Infantry lost seven, the 76th Infantry two, and the engineers one. Among the wounded, the 75th suffered nine and the 76th six. Infantry ammunition was expended at an even higher rate than on 30–31 July. In Hirahara's battalion area, small arms, machine guns, ammunition, helmets, knapsacks, and gas masks were captured. A considerable portion of the seized materiel was employed in subsequent combat, as in the case of an antitank gun and ammunition captured on 31 July. Soviet casualties to date were estimated at 200–250, including 70 abandoned corpses. Twelve enemy tanks had been captured, and five more knocked out on 1–2 August; several dozen heavy bombers and about 5,000 Soviet ground troops were involved in the concerted offensives.  Nevertheless, reports of an imminent Soviet night attack against Hill 52 on 2–3 August alarmed Suetaka as much as his subordinates. Shortly after 20:00 accompanied by his intelligence officer, Suetaka set out for the hill, resolved to direct operations himself. Somewhat earlier, the division had sent Korea Army Headquarters a message, received by 18:30, reflecting Suetaka's current outlook: 30 to 40 Soviet planes had been bombing all sectors since morning, but losses were negligible and morale was high. The division had brought up additional elements in accord with army orders, and was continuing to strive for nonenlargement, but was "prepared firmly to reject the enemy's large-scale attacks." Impressed by the severity of the artillery and small-arms fire, Suetaka deemed it imperative "quickly to mete out a decisive counterassault and thus hasten the solution of the incident." But Japanese lines were thinly held and counterattacks required fresh strength. This state of affairs caused Suetaka to consider immediate commitment of the reinforcements moving to the front, although the Korea Army had insisted on prior permission before additional troops might cross the Tumen. Suetaka's customary and unsurprising solution was again to rely on his initiative and authorize commitment of every reinforcement unit. Nearest was T. Sato's 73rd Regiment, which had been ordered the night before to move up from Nanam. Under the cover of two Japanese fighters, these troops had alighted from the train the next morning at Seikaku, where they awaited orders eagerly.   K. Sato was receiving reports about the enemy buildup. At 20:10 orders were given to the 73rd Regiment to proceed at once to the Matsu'otsuho crossing and be prepared to support the 75th. Involved were T. Sato's two battalions, half of the total infantry reinforcements. Suetaka had something else in mind: his trump, Okido's 76th Infantry. At 23:40 he ordered this regiment, coming up behind the 73rd, to proceed to Huichungyuan on the Manchurian side of the Tumen, via Kyonghun, intercept the enemy, and be ready to go over to the offensive. On the basis of the information that the division planned to employ Okido's regiment for an enveloping attack, K. Sato quickly worked out details. He would conceal the presence of the reinforcements expected momentarily from the 73rd Regiment and would move Senda's BGU and Shimomura's battalion to Huichungyuan to cover the advance of the 76th Regiment and come under the latter's control. Japanese forces faced the danger of Soviet actions against Changkufeng from the Shachaofeng front after midnight on 2 August. Takenouchi had been ready to strike when he learned that the enemy had launched an attack at 01:00 against one of his own companies, Matsunobe's southwest of Shachaofeng. Therefore, Takenouchi's main unit went to drive off the attackers, returning to its positions at 02:30. The Russians tried again, starting from 04:00 on 03 August. Strong elements came as close as 300 meters; near 05:00 Soviet artillery and heavy weapons fire had grown hot, and nine enemy fighters made ineffective strafing passes. By 06:30 the Russians seemed thwarted completely. Hill 52 was pummeled during the three battles on 2 August. Taking advantage of night, the Russians had been regrouping; east of the hill, heavy machine guns were set up on the ridgeline 500 meters away. From 05:00 on 03 August, the Russians opened up with heavy weapons. Led by three tanks, 50 or 60 infantrymen then attacked from the direction of Hill 29 and reached a line 700–800 meters from the Japanese defenses. Here the Russian soldiers peppered away, but one of their tanks was set ablaze by gunfire and the other two were damaged and fled into a dip. Kamimori's mountain artillery reinforcements reached Nanpozan by 07:15 on 03 August. Tanaka issued an order directing the battalion to check the zone east of Hill 52 as well as to engage artillery across Khasan. A site for the supply unit was to be selected beyond enemy artillery range; on the day before, Russian shells had hit the supply unit of the 3rd Mountain Artillery Battalion, killing two men and 20 horses. The exposed force was ordered to take cover behind Crestline 1,000 meters to the rear. After 09:00 on 03 August, the artillery went into action and Japanese morale was enhanced. Near 09:00, Soviet bombardment grew pronounced, accompanied by bomber strikes. The Japanese front-line infantry responded with intensive fire, supported by mountain pieces and the regimental guns atop Changkufeng. Enemy forces stayed behind their heavy weapons and moved no further, while their casualties mounted. At 11:00 the Russians began to fall back, leaving only machine guns and snipers. One reason the Soviets had been frustrated since early morning was that K. Sato had seen the urgency of closing the gap midway between Changkufeng and Hill 52 (a site called Scattered Pines) and had shifted the 2nd Company from Changkufeng. Between 06:00 and 07:40, the company fired on Soviet troops which had advanced north of Hill 52, and inflicted considerable casualties. A corporal commanding a grenade launcher was cited posthumously for leading an assault which caused the destruction of three heavy machine guns. In the afternoon, the Japanese sustained two shellings and a bomber raid. Otherwise, the battlefield was quiet, since Russian troops had pulled back toward Hill 29 by 15:00 under cover of heavy weapons and artillery. At Hill 52, however, defense posed a problem, for each barrage smashed positions and trenches. During intervals between bombardments and air strikes, the men struggled to repair and reinforce the facilities. Changkufeng was again not attacked by ground troops during the day but was hit by planes and artillery. Trifling support was rendered by the mountain gun which had been moved to the Manchurian side of the Tumen. Japanese infantry reinforcements were on the way. By 23:00 on 02 August, T. Sato had left Shikai. His 73rd Regiment pushed forward along roads so sodden that the units had to dismantle the heavy weapons for hauling. The rate of advance was little more than one kilometer per hour, but finally, at 05:20 on 03 August, he reached Chiangchunfeng with the bulk of two battalions. The esprit of the other front-line troops "soared." K. Sato, who was commanding all forces across the Tumen pending Morimoto's setting up of headquarters for the 37th Brigade, had T. Sato take over the line to the left of Changkufeng, employing Takenouchi's old unit and the 73rd Regiment to cover Shachaofeng. T. Sato set out with his battalions at 06:00 amid heavy rain. By 07:30, under severe fire, he was in position to command the new left sector. According to division orders to Morimoto, this zone was to include the heights south and northwest of Shachaofeng, but, in the case of the former, it was "permissible to pull back and occupy high ground west of the heights south of Shachaofeng." T. Sato contemplated using his regiment to encircle the foe on the north side of the lake, while Okido's 76th Infantry formed the other prong. Most of the day afterward, Soviet artillery was active; the Japanese responded with barrages of their own. Eventually, from 15:30, the entire enemy front-line force in this sector began falling back under violent covering fire. Morimoto's initial operations order, received at 18:00, advised T. Sato officially that he was coming under command of the 37th Brigade. The night of 03–04 August passed with the units uneasy, striving to conduct security and reconnaissance while working on the battered defenses. Total Japanese casualties on 3 August were light again: six men killed and ten wounded, four of the dead and seven of the wounded being suffered by the 75th Infantry, the rest by Takenouchi's battalion. Ammunition was expended at a lower rate than on the preceding day. The Japanese War Ministry reported no significant change since nightfall on 03 August. Thereafter, the battlefield seemed to return to quiescence; Japanese morale was high. In the press abroad, Changkufeng attracted overriding attention. The world was no longer talking of "border affrays." Three-column headlines on page 1 of the New York Times announced: "Soviet Hurls Six Divisions and 30 Tanks into Battle with Japanese on Border, 2 Claims Conflict, Tokyo Reports Victory in Manchukuo and Foes' Big Losses, Moscow Asserts It Won." The startling claim that six Soviet divisions were in action seemed to have been supplied for external consumption by Hsinking as well as Seoul. According to Nakamura Bin, the Russians employed 4,000 to 5,000 men supported by 230 tanks. Although Japanese casualties were moderate, Soviet artillery bombardment had stripped the hills of their lush summer grass. According to the uninformed foreign press, "the meager information showed both sides were heavily armed with the most modern equipment. The Russians were using small, fast tanks and the Japanese apparently were forewarned of this type of weapon and were well supplied with batteries of armor-piercing antitank guns." On 03 August the Russians lost 200 men, 15 tanks, and 25 light artillery pieces. One feature of the fighting was Japanese use of "thousands of flares" to expose fog-shrouded enemy ranks during a Soviet night attack. During the "first phase counteroffensive" by the Russians on 2–3 August, the 75th Regiment judged that the enemy's choice of opportunities for attacking was "senseless"; once they started, they continued until an annihilating blow was dealt. "We did not observe truly severe attacking capacity, such as lightning breakthroughs." With respect to tactical methods, the Japanese noted that Soviet offensive deployment was characterized by depth, which facilitated piecemeal destruction. When Russian advance elements suffered losses, replacements were moved up gradually. Soviet artillery fired without linkage to the front-line troops, nor was there liaison between the ground attacks staged in the Shachaofeng and Hill 52 sectors. Since enemy troops fought entirely on their own, they could be driven off in one swoop. Additionally, although 20–30 Russian tanks appeared during the counterattacks, their cooperation with the infantry was clumsy, and the armor was stopped. Soviet use of artillery in mobile warfare was "poorness personified." "Our troops never felt the least concern about hostile artillery forces, which were quite numerous. Even privates scoffed at the incapability of Russian artillery." It seemed that "those enemies who had lost their fighting spirit had the habit of fleeing far." During the combat between 31 July and 03 August, the defeated Russians appeared to fear pursuit and dashed all the way back to Kozando, "although we did not advance even a step beyond the boundary." On 4 August Suetaka prepared a secret evaluation: the enemy attacks by day and night on 2 August were conducted by front-line corps built around the 40th Rifle Division. "In view of the failure of those assaults, the foe is bound to carry out a more purposeful offensive effort, using newly arrived corps reinforcements." Russian actions on 02 August had been the most serious and persistent offensive efforts undertaken since the outset of the incident, but they were about the last by the front-line corps whose immediate jurisdiction lay in the region of the incident. Consequently, the enemy's loss of morale as a result of their defeat on 30–31 July, combined with their lack of unity in attack power, caused the attacks to end in failure. "We must be prepared for the fact that enemy forces will now mount a unified and deliberate offensive, avoiding rash attacks in view of their previous reversal, since large new corps are coming up." I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. In the shadowed night, Japan's Sato chose Nakano's 75th to seize a peak, sending five captains and a rising Nakajima into darkness. At 2:15 a.m., they breached wires and climbed the slope; dawn lit a hard-won crest, then Hill 52 and Shachaofeng yielded to resolve and fire. The day wore on with brutal artillery, fluttering bombers, and relentless clashes. By August's edge, casualties mounted on both sides, yet Japanese regiments held fast, repelling night assaults with grit. 

Zweifacher Deutscher Meister, Großmeister und vielseitiger Schachmacher: Niclas Huschenbeth gibt im Schachtalk Einblicke in seinen Weg im Profischach. Er erzählt, wie er einst als Sekundant für Hikaru Nakamura arbeitete, warum diese Zusammenarbeit nicht für das Kandidatenturnier fortgesetzt wurde und weshalb sowohl Nakamura als auch Matthias Blübaum ihn für 2025 als Sekundant ablehnten. Im Gespräch beleuchten wir außerdem seine Rolle bei der Freestyle Tour. Dazu kommt ein Blick auf sein Unternehmen Chessence als Schachschule, Arbeitgeber und kreativer Knotenpunkt zwischen Training, Coaching und Content. Dazu gibt Niclas reflektierte Antworten auf Zuschauerfragen aus der Community wie z.B. die Frage, ob er den Trainerschein erwerben will. ...Dieser Podcast wird vermarktet von der Podcastbude.www.podcastbu.de - Full-Service-Podcast-Agentur - Konzeption, Produktion, Vermarktung, Distribution und Hosting.Du möchtest deinen Podcast auch kostenlos hosten und damit Geld verdienen?Dann schaue auf www.kostenlos-hosten.de und informiere dich.Dort erhältst du alle Informationen zu unseren kostenlosen Podcast-Hosting-Angeboten. kostenlos-hosten.de ist ein Produkt der Podcastbude.

Zweifacher Deutscher Meister, Großmeister – und vielseitiger Schachmacher: Niclas Huschenbeth gibt im Schachtalk Einblicke in seinen Weg im Profischach. Er erzählt, wie er einst als Sekundant für Hikaru Nakamura arbeitete, warum diese Zusammenarbeit nicht für das Kandidatenturnier fortgesetzt wurde und weshalb sowohl Nakamura als auch Matthias Blübaum ihn für 2025 als Sekundant ablehnten. Im Gespräch beleuchten wir außerdem seine Rolle bei der Freestyle Tour. Dazu kommt ein Blick auf sein Unternehmen Chessence – als Schachschule, Arbeitgeber und kreativer Knotenpunkt zwischen Training, Coaching und Content. Dazu gibt Niclas reflektierte Antworten auf Zuschauerfragen aus der Community wie z.B. die Frage, ob er den Trainerschein erwerben will. Zum Abschluss gibt Niclas einen Ausblick auf 2026: seine persönlichen Pläne, Projekte, Ziele – und was die Schachwelt an Highlights (Kandidatenturnier, Schachgipfel, WM, Schacholympiade) erwarten kann. Folge direkt herunterladen ℹ Die besten Schachmaterialien im Chess Tigers Online Shop: Chess Tigers Shop

Zweifacher Deutscher Meister, Großmeister und vielseitiger Schachmacher: Niclas Huschenbeth gibt im Schachtalk Einblicke in seinen Weg im Profischach. Er erzählt, wie er einst als Sekundant für Hikaru Nakamura arbeitete, warum diese Zusammenarbeit nicht für das Kandidatenturnier fortgesetzt wurde und weshalb sowohl Nakamura als auch Matthias Blübaum ihn für 2025 als Sekundant ablehnten. Im Gespräch beleuchten wir außerdem seine Rolle bei der Freestyle Tour. Dazu kommt ein Blick auf sein Unternehmen Chessence als Schachschule, Arbeitgeber und kreativer Knotenpunkt zwischen Training, Coaching und Content. Dazu gibt Niclas reflektierte Antworten auf Zuschauerfragen aus der Community wie z.B. die Frage, ob er den Trainerschein erwerben will. ...Dieser Podcast wird vermarktet von der Podcastbude.www.podcastbu.de - Full-Service-Podcast-Agentur - Konzeption, Produktion, Vermarktung, Distribution und Hosting.Du möchtest deinen Podcast auch kostenlos hosten und damit Geld verdienen?Dann schaue auf www.kostenlos-hosten.de und informiere dich.Dort erhältst du alle Informationen zu unseren kostenlosen Podcast-Hosting-Angeboten. kostenlos-hosten.de ist ein Produkt der Podcastbude.

Madeleine Nakamura shares her novels Cursebreakers and Angel Eye. We discuss the impact of queer speculative fiction, as well as authentic ways to introduce mental illness in main characters. https://www.madeleinenakamura.com/  http://www.wrotepodcast.com/madeleine-nakamura/ 

Last time we spoke about the battle over Changfukeng Hill. In the frost-bit dawn by the Chaun and Tumen, two empires faced a cliff of fate: Soviet and Japanese, each convinced that Changkufeng belonged to them. Diplomats urged restraint, yet Tokyo's generals brewed a daring plan, strike at night, seize the crest, then bargain. Sato and Suetaka debated risk and restraint, weighing "dokudan senko" against disciplined action as rain hissed on the ground. Night fell like velvet. Nakano, a quiet, meticulous regimental leader, gathered the 75th Regiment's veterans, choosing five fearless captains and a rising star, Nakajima, to carry the charge. Scouts and engineers moved ahead, weaving a fragile path across the Tumen: wire-cutters in the dark, signals humming softly, and the thunder of distant Soviet tanks rolling along the shore. At 02:15, after breaches breached and silent men slid through wire, the Japanese surged up the slopes with bayonets glinting, swords ready, and nerves as taut as steel. The crest lunged with savage resistance: grenades flashed, machine guns roared, and leaders fell. By 05:15, dawn broke, and the hill, Course of blood and courage, stood in Japanese hands.   #180 A premature Japanese Victory over Changkufeng Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. On 31 July 1938, dawn seemed to indicate Changkufeng Hill was in Japanese hands. From his command post, Colonel Sato Kotoku, his regimental staff, and most of Hirahara's 3rd Battalion had been anxiously watching the progress of the 1st Battalion's operations since 12:30 on 31 July. Around 03:00, the Japanese infantry commanders issued "heroic orders to charge," audible above the withering fire. Sato expected the crest to fall in little more than an hour; when no signal shell burst over the hill, he grew apprehensive, praying for success with his heart breaking. A mile away on Hill 52, the troops could discern no voices, only gunfire and the spectacular glow of flares and tracers. As one soldier recalled "It was like fireflies," another soldier added "it was like a carnival". To Sasai, on the heights at Kucheng, it was, as he put it, "c'était un grand spectacle." By the way I think its one of the only times I've read a Japanese soldier using French, what he said translates to "it was a large spectacle", I am from Quebec so I speak baguette. The mist moved up Changkufeng Hill, and Japanese troops followed it, fighting for hours. Fearing Nakano's battalion might have been wiped out, Sato's staff prayed for fog. Sato later admitted, "By dawn we were failing to take our objectives."   At the base of Chiangchunfeng, Sato held the 6th Company in reserve, ready to attack Changkufeng from the left. He would have preferred not to commit it, given the danger of an accidental fire-fight with friendly forces. Nevertheless, as combat intensified, Sato decided to push the company into support of the 1st Battalion. After orders at 03:15, Ito moved toward the northwest side of Changkufeng. The Russians laid down heavy fire, especially from a well-placed machine-gun position on the far left. Ito's company, suffering heavy and needlessly casualties, had to hold near the middle of the slope. A runner was sent to the regimental command post requesting artillery support after dawn. By 04:30, Sato could discern the Changkufeng crest, where fierce close-quarters fighting raged between Japanese and Russians on the south edge, while the enemy continually sent reinforcements, troops followed by tanks, up the northern slope. Ito's company was visible on the western slope, bravely bearing a Japanese flag. 10-15 minutes later, grenade-discharger fire began to blast the Soviet positions. At 04:40, Ito, redeploying at dawn, observed elements of the 1st Company near the hill's summit. Contact was established with Inagaki's men. The Russians began to show signs of disarray under the grenade dischargers and the heavy weapons deployed by the reserve battalion at Chiangchunfeng. Thereupon Ito's company charged as well, capturing the northwest corner of Changkufeng roughly concurrently with the main body of the 1st Battalion under Sakata. Ito was wounded and evacuated; two sergeants were later cited in dispatches. Meanwhile, the 10th Company, led by Takeshita of the 3rd Battalion, was to conduct a separate night assault against fire points around Hill 24, about 1,000 meters north of Changkufeng. The aim was to disrupt Russian withdrawal along the slopes to the rear and to hinder reinforcements. At midnight, the company left the skirts of Chiangchunfeng in fog and darkness. Moving stealthily over the undulating terrain, they faced knee-deep bogs and tall vegetation. After evading sentries, they penetrated behind the enemy. By 02:00, five teams totaling 16 men under Sergeant Uchibori were ready to strike Hill 24. Takeshita led the charge from the right and overran the defenders by 02:20. The Russians, numbering 20 to 30 riflemen with one machine gun, fled toward Khasan, leaving four soldiers behind whom the Japanese bayoneted. Takeshita's company continued to consolidate Hill 24, awaiting counterattacks, which soon followed. At 04:00, eight tanks, with headlights on, launched an attack from the Shachaofeng sector, supported by an infantry company . Takeshita reinforced Uchibori's unit with assault teams; the Russian infantry were routed, and five tanks were knocked out. At dawn, about 100 Soviet troops were observed retreating from the direction of Changkufeng, surprised and mowed down by heavy and light machine guns at ranges of about 300 meters. At 06:30, the Soviets attacked again with an infantry battalion and a machine-gun company from north of Khasan. The Japanese allowed them to close, then concentrated the firepower of both infantry platoons plus heavy machine guns. After a 30-minute firefight with heavy casualties on the Soviet side, the Russians fell back. Again, at 07:10, the Soviets struck from the north of Khasan, this time with one company and five tanks. Russian infantry, supported by three tanks, pushed in front of the Japanese positions, but machine-gun and small-arms fire forced them to retreat eastward, the tanks being stopped 50 meters from the lines. Meanwhile, two Japanese enlisted men on patrol near the lake encountered armor; they attacked and, after taking casualties, returned with captured ammunition and equipment. One rapid-fire piece had been providing covering fire behind Takeshita's unit and opened fire on three tanks attacking north of Changkufeng, helping to stop them. As daybreak arrived, Takeshita's company cleared the battlefield, retrieved casualties, and reinforced the defenses. Then an order from the regiment transferred the main body to Changkufeng. Leaving one platoon at Hill 24, Takeshita came directly under Hirahara's command. Takeshita was later officially cited by the regiment. If Hill 52 fell, Changkufeng would be lost. The Russians understood the importance of this constricted sector as well. Their armor could swing south of Khasan, while the terrain to the north was boggier and could be made impassable by the field-artillery battery emplaced on the Korean side of the Tumen. To check hostile reinforcements into this vital region, Sato had dispatched an infantry element to Hill 52 early. Northward, he had 1st Lieutenant Hisatsune emplacement the two 75-millimeter mountain pieces belonging to his infantry gun battery, together with two of 2nd Lieutenant Saito's three 20-millimeter anti-tank guns and the two 37-millimeter infantry rapid-fire guns belonging to 2nd Lieutenant Kutsukake's battalion gun battery. At 23:00 on 30 July, in accord with Nakano's orders, Hisatsune moved these six guns to the ridgeline between Changkufeng and Hill 52. Apart from the guns to the left, defense of Hill 52 was entrusted to the experienced Master Sergeant Murakoshi Kimio, 2nd Platoon leader in Nakajima's company. After the Shachaofeng affair, Murakoshi was ordered to occupy the hill. Moving along the shore on 30 July, his unit encountered neither friendly nor hostile troops. The regimental records note that "some enemy unit came into the dip east of Hill 52 since morning on the 30th, and both sides were watching each other." Murakoshi deployed his three rifle squads, totaling 34 men. After Nakano's battalion jumped off on 31 July, the platoon observed not only the "fireworks display" but also Soviet motorized units with lights aglow, moving on high ground east of Khasan. Later, tanks could be heard clanking toward Hill 52. Around 04:00, Murakoshi organized anti-tank teams and sent them into action. Most accounts emphasize the anti-tank efforts, rather than the fire of Murakoshi's machine gunners. Three privates, carrying anti-tank mines, undertook daring assaults once the terrain obliged the Russian tanks to slow. They laid their mines, but the soil proved too soft, and the attempt failed. In the most publicized episode, Private First Class Matsuo, nicknamed a "human bullet," was badly wounded by machine-gun fire from a tank and knocked from the vehicle, but he managed to reboard with a satchel charge and, it is said, stop the tank at the cost of his life. The platoon leader and his remaining 20 men, having withdrawn 200 meters below their positions, poured torrents of fire at the infantry accompanying the tanks. Flames from the antitank mine assaults provided blazing targets. In concert with Hisatsune's six infantry guns emplaced on the Crestline southeast of Changkufeng, Murakoshi knocked out the remaining two tanks. When the tanks were immobilized, the Soviet troops did not press forward; exposed to Japanese fire, their losses mounted. By daybreak, the Russians had pulled back. Official records describe one Soviet company with four heavy machine guns, led by mounted officers. After hours of intense combat, Colonel Sato and his staff observed that all operations were succeeding by dawn. It was fortunate that Japanese units had posed a threat from the east; only then did the Russians begin to retreat. "But what an incomparably heroic first combat it had been… the scene at Changkufeng was sublime and inspiring. Private feelings were forgotten, and all bowed their heads in respect for the gallant fighting by matchless subordinates." As soon as Sato confirmed that Changkufeng had been occupied, he sent an aide to assess casualties. "When the colonel learned about the death of his capable and dependable officers," a lieutenant recalled, "he… murmured, 'Is that so?' and closed his eyes. The dew glistened on his lids." Meanwhile, in addition to the battle of annihilation at Changkufeng, Major Takenouchi of Okido's regiment was to conduct the dawn assault in the Shachaofeng area. His 1st Battalion and attached elements numbered 379 men; Kanda's company of the Kucheng Border Guard Unit added another 49. An engineer platoon was attached. At 18:00 on 30 July, Takenouchi issued his orders. According to that evening's regimental maps, north of Khasan were two battalions of Soviet infantry and 20 tanks. South of Shachaofeng, the Russians had entanglements and machine-gun nests, with additional emplacements to the rear, west of the lake, and armor moving south toward Changkufeng. Northwest of Shachaofeng lay the main body of Takenouchi's battalion. Signal lines connected his headquarters with Sato's command post. The only Soviet patrol activity noted, as of evening, was in the direction of Matsunobe. Around 02:00, machine guns chattered south of Changkufeng, signaling an increasing intensity of Sato's night assault. On Takenouchi's front, the Russians went on alert, firing illuminating shells and opening fire from the north side of Changkufeng. At 02:30, Matsunobe's unit finished breakfast and moved to the jump-off site. The terrain was difficult and there was considerable enemy tracer fire, but, thanks to effective reconnaissance, the force reached its destination without loss by 04:00. Matsunobe eliminated an outpost unit using rear-area scouts who struck from the rear and gave the enemy little opportunity to respond. Then the Japanese prepared for the main attack as they awaited daybreak. At 04:00, the supporting mountain artillery platoon took position between Matsunobe and Takenouchi. Throughout this period, the sounds of fighting grew more violent toward Changkufeng; machine guns were especially active. At 05:00, three enemy tanks could be seen moving up the northern slope of Changkufeng, but soon after news arrived that friendly forces had seized the crest. With sunrise imminent, the Japanese guns assumed their role. The longest-range support Takenouchi could expect was Narukawa's two 15-centimeter howitzers, emplaced across the Tumen north of Sozan. This battery took position at 04:20, after which the commander went to join Sato just behind the front. Several thousand meters of telephone line had been strung across the river, linking observation post and battery. Narukawa watched the fierce struggle at Changkufeng and prepared to support the dawn assault, while honoring the desperate effort of Ito's company for covering fire. Firing began at 05:10, though range data were not adequate. After little more than ten rounds, the enemy heavy machine guns on the Shachaofeng front subsided. A veteran artilleryman proudly remarked, "These were the first howitzer shells ever fired against the Soviet Army." At 05:20, Takenouchi's own heavy weapons added effective counterfire. Matsunobe and his company had crept to a line 150 meters in front of the Russian positions, taking advantage of dead angles and covered by light machine guns. Three Soviet tanks, however, had pressed forward against the main body. Two Private First Class soldiers, members of a close-quarters team, waited until the lead tank reversed course, then dashed in from the rear and blew it up. Two other soldiers attacked the third tank with mines but could not destroy it because of the tall grass. In a dramatic action that always thrilled Japanese audiences, a Private First Class jumped aboard with a portable mine, while a superior private jammed explosives into the tank's rear and allegedly blew off both treads, though the tank continued firing. While Matsunobe's company laid a smoke screen and prepared to charge, the Soviet tank was knocked out by rapid-fire guns. Master Sergeant Sudo's platoon seized the opportunity to race forward 15 meters and overrun two firing points at 05:40. When the Russians counterattacked with 60 infantrymen and three new tanks, Matsunobe ordered the grenade-discharger squad to fire while he had Sudo pull back to the foot of the hill. Close-quarter teams knocked out the tanks in succession. By this time the Russians had been shaken badly, allowing Matsunobe's main force to surge into two more positions. Five or six remaining Soviet soldiers were wiped out by a combination of Japanese pursuit fire and Soviet gunfire emanating from east of Khasan. After 06:00, the Japanese held the high ground at Shachaofeng. Kanda's unit had achieved a similar result, swinging around Matsunobe and skirting the left of the Soviet positions. Russian artillery opened from the east, but the Japanese used the terrain to advantage and suffered no casualties. Around this time, enemy forces in the Changkufeng area began to retreat, a portion by motor vehicle. Takenouchi had Matsunobe secure the site and, at 06:13, directed the main battalion to advance toward the north side of Khasan. A stubborn four-hour battle then ensued as Soviet forces delayed their retreat and the covering unit occupied the northern edge of the lake. Takenouchi estimated the enemy's strength at two infantry companies, a company of 12 heavy machine guns, and one heavy battery. Several Russian counterattacks were mounted against Matsunobe, while Takenouchi reinforced Kanda. The battalion attacked with great intensity and by 10:30 had managed to encircle the right flank of the enemy defenses at the northwest edge of Khasan. The Russians began to fall back, though one company of infantry resisted vigorously. At 10:50, the Soviet rear-guard company opened fire with machine guns while several tanks delivered heavy machine-gun and cannon fire. Soviet artillery, firing rapidly, also joined the resistance to Takenouchi's advance. Firepower pinned down the Japanese in this sector from late morning until nightfall.    For reasons of necessity as well as doctrine, the night assault on Changkufeng Hill received no artillery support. The dawn assault to clear Shachaofeng, however, required all available firepower, even if limited. Firing diagrams reflect no howitzer fire directed north of Changkufeng; this is understandable since Narukawa had only two pieces to handle numerous targets. A Soviet tank element was driven off, west of the lake, by 03:00 from the skirt of Chiangchunfeng by 3rd Battalion heavy weapons. Sasai, at the Kucheng command post, contends that Japanese artillery scored a significant success: school-tactics were followed, and the battery stood ready in case the night assault by the infantry failed. By dawn, Russian remnants clung to the crest, though the infantry had "peeled the skin" from their defenses. "In the morning, one of our howitzer shells hit near Changkufeng, whereupon the last of the enemy fled." Survivors of the night assault recalled no direct artillery support by Japanese artillery, though firing charts suggest some; Soviet sources dispute this. Regimental records note: "After firing against positions southwest of Shachaofeng, the Narukawa battery fired to cut off the enemy's retreat path from Shachaofeng and to neutralize the foe's superior artillery. Results were great." In the morning, Sato returned to Chiangchunfeng, observed the difficult anti-artillery combat by the Narukawa battery, and commended their performance. He watched howitzer fire disrupt Soviet artillery positions opposite Shachaofeng and estimated enemy strength at a battalion. Sato saw Russian horse-drawn artillery blasted from its sites and pulled back north of Khasan. Narukawa's first targets were positions and tanks south of Shachaofeng. Northeast of the lake, one battery of Russians headed north after dawn. In Narukawa's firing pattern, north of the lake, a Soviet motorized unit of more than ten vehicles withdrew in the afternoon. A new Russian artillery formation moving north of Khasan that afternoon received the heaviest fire from the howitzers. On that day Narukawa's two active pieces fired a total of 74 rounds. The only other Japanese artillery support for the infantry consisted of the half-battery of 75-millimeter mountain guns already forward. The platoon under 2nd Lieutenant Ikue moved west of Shachaofeng, starting from behind Kanda at 04:00, and bombarded Soviet positions to the northeast. Firing a lighter projectile than Narukawa's pieces, Ikue's men fired 162 shells and 37 shrapnel rounds at the Russians. Colonel Tanaka, the artillery regiment commander, reached the front during the night as battle's fury peaked from Changkufeng. Tanaka's mission was to take over Narukawa's battery and support infantry combat from dawn. Upon establishing his headquarters, Tanaka sent a liaison officer to the 75th Regiment. The 3rd Mountain Artillery Battalion completed unloading at Shikai Station in the night, and at 03:40, it entered emplacements on the north side of Nanpozan. Tanaka ordered Rokutanda to repel any enemy attacks that might be staged from Changkufeng and north of Yangkuanping. The battalion made good use of prior surveys and proved helpful in thwarting offensive attempts from the vicinity of Shachaofeng after daybreak. Rokutanda also coordinated with Narukawa to cut off the Soviet retreat route after enemy motorized and infantry forces began to fall back from Shachaofeng.   At Changkufeng, once the last Russians had been routed, two hours of quiet settled over both sides. The Japanese busied themselves with cleaning up the field, retrieving casualties, and bearing the dead to the rear. The few Japanese historians who have worked with 75th Regiment records have argued with a dramatic passage describing dawn: "From 05:15, after the top had been secured by us, the fog began to drift in. At about 05:30 rain started to drench the whole area; therefore, enemy artillery had to stop firing. God's will." Sakata counters that no Russian artillery shelled the peak after his men had cleared it. Sato agrees; only in the afternoon did at least 20 Soviet guns, emplaced north of the lake, open fire at Changkufeng. At first, Russian shells fell harmlessly into a pond nearby; Sato recalls fish splashing out. Thereafter, Soviet gunners gradually corrected their aim, but the Japanese took cover behind rocks and sustained no casualties. Soviet shellfire may have begun at dawn but appeared to be directed mainly toward Shachaofeng, where Soviet defenders were not evicted until an hour after Changkufeng fell. Tanaka, however, argues that when he arrived at the front at 05:00, Russian artillery was firing on objectives west of the Tumen, and several shells struck his men and guns. Japanese firing charts show that Soviet guns initially bombarded Takenouchi's sector at Shachaofeng from two positions north and northeast of Khasan. After these Russian positions were forced to evacuate, the new Soviet gun unit that arrived in the afternoon engaged not only Changkufeng but also the area of the Japanese regimental headquarters. A Japanese military history suggests that Chiangchunfeng, the site of the observation post for the heavy field-artillery battery, was hit early in the morning, just after Takenouchi's ground assault against Shachaofeng had begun. The only other Russian artillery fire noted is the early-morning bombardment of the region of Hill 52. This shelling emanated from a point southeast of the lake but appeared directed primarily against Hisatsune's guns, which pulled back to Changkufeng at 06:00. Takeshita's company, which had jumped off at 02:00 and struck to the rear of Changkufeng toward the heights southwest of Shachaofeng, sustained severe enemy artillery fire after dawn. The main body secured the positions it had captured, while one platoon occupied Hill 24. On Takenouchi's front, intense enemy artillery fire continued after the Shachaofeng district was cleared, but the battalion maintained its position throughout the day. At 20:00, Takenouchi pulled back to the heights northwest of Shachaofeng. Elements of Matsunobe's unit on the right flank clung to advanced positions southeast of Shachaofeng. Regarding the theological allusion to merciful rain at dawn, no interviewee recalled a torrential downpour at Changkufeng. One soldier remembered descending from the crest at 08:30, taking breakfast, and returning for battlefield cleanup an hour later, at which time it began to drizzle. The 75th Regiment's weather record for Sunday, 31 July, simply states, "Cloudy; sunrise 05:08."   At 06:40, Colonel Sato ordered Hirahara's 3rd Battalion to relieve Nakano's mauled 1st Battalion and Ito's company atop Changkufeng. The 1st Battalion was to become the regimental reserve force, assemble at Chiangchunfeng, and collect its dead and wounded. Shortly after 08:00, Hirahara arrived at the crest of Changkufeng. Sakata was still upright, blood-streaked. "It's all right now," Hirahara told him. "You can go down." Sakata limped away with the remnants of the 1st Battalion. At the command post he met Sato, who praised him, promised to replace his damaged sword with one of his own, and told him to head for the hospital. When he protested, Sato bellowed, more in pride than anger, "To the hospital with you!" Sakata went, leaving Kuriyama as acting company commander. That morning, Sato climbed Changkufeng and gave Hirahara instructions. He commended the heavy field artillery battery commander, Narukawa, for his effective support of Takenouchi's dawn attack at Shachaofeng. Before returning to his command post, Sato carefully supervised the collection of Japanese dead. He looked into the face of each man and bade him farewell, a regiment officer recalls. "His sincerity and sorrow inspired reverence in all of us." In the afternoon, Sato sent Oshima back to Haigan to report the victory to forces in the rear, to visit the families of the fallen, and to "exert a beneficial influence on the native inhabitants lest they become confused and upset by the recent fighting." After the Russians had been ousted from Changkufeng and Shachaofeng, information became available to Japanese headquarters concerning the extent of the victory and the price. The 75th Regiment put Soviet casualties at 300 men in each area and claimed a total of 17 tanks knocked out during the operations—seven at Changkufeng, three at Hill 52, seven at Shachaofeng. Assault infantrymen noted that few Soviet bodies were found in the crestline positions, other than those cut down by cold steel; many Russians were presumably wounded by grenades. Colonel Sato asserts that 30 Soviet corpses were picked up in the Changkufeng area after the night attack. Most Japanese survivors judge that Soviet casualties were at least double those incurred by their own forces. The Japanese used much of the materiel they had captured. The price had been grim in the assault units: 45 killed, 133 wounded. In both Colonel Nakano's and Colonel Takenouchi's battalions, about 25 percent of the officers and almost 10 percent of the men were killed or wounded. The main assault waves, chiefly the 1st and 2nd infantry companies and 1st Machine-Gun Company of Colonel Nakano's unit, suffered as many as one-half or two-thirds casualties, down to platoons and squads. Before the night attack, Colonel Nakano's battalion had a total of 401 men. The strength of Shimomura's battalion had diminished by only 17: Hirahara's by 10. Nakano's unit lost over 80 percent of all Japanese killed and wounded in the Changkufeng–Hill 52 sector.  Japanese accounts were lavish in their praise of Colonel Sato's conception and execution of the night-dawn assaults. "Everybody had conducted several inspections of the front, yet only two or three individuals were acquainted with the precise sector where we carried out our assault." The costly lack of comprehensive intelligence necessitated reduction of firing points in succession and made the assault on the peak, the true key, possible only at the end. "This was a rather difficult method. It would have been better to have thrown one small unit against one firing point invariably and to have used the main force to break through the depth of the foe swiftly." On the larger benefits of the night operation, Akaishizawa wrote, "We prevented the main hostile forces, numbering several thousand troops concentrated east of Khasan about 600 or 700 meters behind Changkufeng, from laying a finger on us." Sato regards the night attack as a success: "The Soviets would have taken over the entire region unless checked." But with respect to Suetaka's words of praise for Sato himself, one candid division staff officer does not share what he calls "extravagant laudation." "The night-attack plan had been devised long in advance. I do not see anything particularly brilliant about it. Only in terms of results could one call the assault well done." Sakata concurs but stresses that training paid off: "All the men in my company followed their leaders to the crest and thus displayed their teamwork and unity," despite the unexpectedly severe casualties. The Soviets seemed particularly apprehensive about the possibility of Japanese armored operations. Antitank weapons were deployed on the eastern slopes of Changkufeng, ready to fire against the axis of Hill 52, which theoretically was good tank country. Illuminating shells and flares were employed profusely in concert with heavy machine guns firing blue tracers from the time Japanese troops entered the zone of wire defenses. Tanks supplemented the fire network, as did artillery zeroed in east of Khasan. But it was the grenades, in "heaps and mounds," that troubled the attackers most: "This tactic must be one of the most important aspects of Soviet infantry training, together with snipers. Our night assault unit did not sustain too many casualties until the crest but, since we could not run up into the positions, the foe was able to hurl many milk-bottle-size grenades. Our forces must be given more training with hand grenades".  The first phone call to Seoul did not come until Changkufeng had been assaulted and cleared. Around 05:00 the division learned that victory had been achieved at Changkufeng; the first reports mentioned no Japanese casualties. "Thank God!" was the reaction. Suetaka and the major toasted Sato's victory with sake. "At 06:00, one company of the Sato unit occupied Shachaofeng and expelled the Soviet forces across the border." Not long afterward, the division, like the 75th Regiment, began to learn the extent of the casualties. Although personal sorrow displaced initial elation, there was grim satisfaction that the insolent Russians had been ousted and the dignity of the Imperial Army maintained. It was hoped and expected that the Korea Army would share this view. Seoul had learned of the Japanese assaults only after the fact and in a rather cursory fashion. Nakamura ordered the front-line units to secure the heights and to localize the affair by limiting the strength used in that area and by ensuring cautious action.  Nakamura's orders to not expand upon the victory were criticized heavily. However Tsuchiya recalled "The decision was taken too easily. Perhaps some had covert opposition, but no one spoke up. I think there was some misunderstanding of individual positions. Yet the crisis should have been analyzed carefully. It is too bad that there was no direct supervision by the Chief of Staff." For Tsuchiya, the Korea Army would have been in trouble if the incident had dragged on because of Soviet buildup and Japanese casualties and low mobilization. Although Nakamura likely wished the 19th Division to abandon unnecessary actions regardless of victory or defeat, he did not seem to care; he showed no intention of inspecting the local scene. Yet Tsuchiya felt such a keen sense of responsibility that he was prepared to commit suicide if matters went wrong. Inada argued that Nakamura did not visit the front to avoid expanding the troubles and disturbing the troops. Analyzing the Korea Army's nebulous control, Imaoka notes that Nakamura had only recently arrived in Korea and had little time before fighting began, but something seemed lacking in the army's exercise of command. Thus, Nakamura never met Suetaka until after the incident had been resolved, although the governor-general came from Seoul to visit Suetaka at the battlefront and to express appreciation in person. "It was quite proper to adhere to the policy of nonenlargement, but the Korea Army should have furnished more positive operational guidance in such a case when a subordinate division was in serious trouble." There were important lessons to be learned here, Tsuchiya recalled  "The 19th Division attacked the Russians twice in 36 hours without army orders or approval. How is it that the division commander, a lieutenant general and certainly not an reckless man, could have been allowed so much margin to act independently?" Some suggest that Suetaka tended to violate the spirit of the law, especially in force majeure. Others think that Suetaka was loyal, deliberate, and law-abiding, a worrier who could be expected to follow orders. Why risk one's career—one's life, given that self-censure loomed—when headquarters' decision was available? Military discipline and national interest dictated prior consultation and compliance. Or did Suetaka, like other notable generals, think gambles were justified by the goddess of Victory? I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. A daring Japanese night assault, led by Colonel Sato and his bold captains, threaded through fog, wire, and enemy fire. As dawn broke, the crest fell into Japanese hands, after brutal stand-ins on Hill 52 and Shachaofeng. Glinting grenades, roaring tanks, and disciplined infantry forged the victory, at a heavy price: dozens of officers and many men lost.   

In this episode, acclaimed translator, poet, and scholar Jeffrey Angles takes us inside his translation of The Luminous Fairies and Mothra by Shin'ichirō Nakamura, Takehiko Fukunaga, and Yoshie Hotta, offering deep insight into the origins of the film, the cultural landscape of Japan in the early 1960s, and the complexities of bringing Japanese prose into English.Whether you're a fan of kaiju films, Japanese literature, translation craft, or cultural history, this is a rare look at the story that helped define one of Japan's most iconic movie monsters.#Mothra #Kaiju #JapaneseLiterature #BookTranslation #JeffreyAngles #TheLuminousFairiesAndMothra #JapaneseHistory #TranslationWatch the interview on YouTube

Last time we spoke about the beginning of a conflict between the USSR and Japan. In the frost-hardened dawns by the Chaun and Tumen, two powers eye a ridge called Changkufeng, each seeing a prize and fearing a trap. On the Soviet side, weary front-line troops tighten their grip, while Moscow's diplomats coaxed restraint through Seoul and Harbin.  As July unfolds, Tokyo's generals push a dangerous idea: seize the hill with a surprise strike, then bargain for peace. Seoul's 19th Division is readied in secret, trains loaded with men and horses, movement masked, prayers whispered to avoid widening the rift. Japanese scouts in white Hanbok disguise, peering at trenches, wire, and watchful Russians. Russian border guards appear as shadows, counters slipping into place, yet both sides hold their fire. On July 29, a skirmish erupts: a platoon crosses a shallow line, clashes flare, and bodies and banners ripple in the cold air.    #178 Night Attacks and Diplomatic Strains: The Lake Khasan Conflict Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. A second troop train was scheduled to depart Agochi for Nanam on the night of 29 July, carrying back the initial elements of the 75th Infantry. At Haigan, regimental commander Sato was pulling on his boots at 16:00 when the division informed him that fighting had broken out near Shachaofeng since 15:00 and that the Russians were assembling forces in that area. Suetaka ordered Sato's 3rd Battalion, which had not been slated to leave until the following night, to proceed to Kucheng; the remainder of the regiment was to assemble at Agochi. After consulting with Division Staff Officer Saito at Agochi, Sato returned to Haigan with the conclusion that "overall developments did not warrant optimism, it was imperative to prepare to move the entire regiment to the battlefield." One of Sato's first actions was to telephone a recommendation to the division that he be allowed to occupy Hill 52, which commanded the approaches to Changkufeng from south of Khasan. Suetaka approved, and at 17:30, Yamada's company was ordered to proceed to Shikai along with Hirahara's battalion. Meanwhile, Suzuki's 15th Heavy Field Artillery Regiment, which had been among the last units ordered to leave, had finished loading at Agochi by about 15:00. Sato recommended to Suetaka that a portion of Suzuki's regiment be attached to him; this was why Suetaka decided to transfer one of the two batteries to the 75th Infantry. The rest of the heavy artillery concentrated at Kyonghun. Suetaka's orders, issued at 18:20, called for Sato to have two of his battalions, the 1st and 3rd, cross the Tumen as soon as possible, with engineer support. Attached was Narukawa's heavy battery. Sato's mission was twofold: to assist Senda and to watch the enemy in the Changkufeng area. Sato arrived at 21:15 in Shikai. There, he assembled a number of his officers, including Yamada, and explained his plan: the 1st Company plus machine guns were to cross the Tumen from Sozan ahead of the other units, occupy Hill 52 with an element, and concentrate the main body at the foot of Fangchuanting to await Hirahara's battalion. A portion of the 19th Engineers would go to Sozan to assist the 1st Company with its river crossing. Amid heavy rain and darkness, the various units set out at 22:15. The platoon sent to Hill 52 arrived before dawn on the 30th, the rest of the forces somewhat later, though Sato had intended to move everybody across the river by the early hours. On the 29th the engineer regiment commander, Kobayashi, had also arrived at Shikai. He ordered Captain Tomura to handle the crossing in the vicinity of Sozan, as well as preparations for a future offensive with the main body. When Kobayashi reached Kucheng, he learned from Hirahara not only about the front-line situation but also about Sato's important plans: "The K. Sato force is going to cross the river tonight, 29–30 July. A night attack will be launched against Changkufeng on the night of 30–31 July." Kobayashi issued orders to his two commanders to assist the crossing by Nakano's infantry unit, 1st Battalion, 75th Regiment at Matsu'otsuho and Sozan, and, in addition, to cooperate with the position attack by Nakano and help in the assault at Hill 52. Most of these young officers, such as Seutaka dishing out orders were performing what the Japanese termed "dokudan senko" or "arbitrary or independent action". Japanese operational regulations actually contained a section dealing with dokudan senko, by which initiative, not imperiousness, was meant. Two elements were involved: control but encouragement of self-reliant thinking. This subject became important in training officers, all of whom, including such infantry experts as Suetaka, were well acquainted with the requirements. Combat missions were stipulated in operations orders, but, if these were not realistic, initiative was to come into play, though only when there was no time to contact superiors. By the same token, commanders had to be ready to assume full responsibility if matters turned out adversely. "We were disciples of the 'Moltke' system of AGS control, with dual authority vis-à-vis the local forces and the chief of staff."  The Korea Army's version of events on 29 July, there was no mention of any report received from the division prior to 17:30. Details did not reach Seoul, in the form of printed divisional intelligence reports and operational orders, until 1 August. The late afternoon report from Kyonghun provided the Korea Army authorities with little solid information, but Seoul had to notify higher headquarters immediately. Kitano sent messages to Tokyo and Hsinking at 19:15. The command and Kwantung Army were told that, in addition to Senda's assault party, 40 Japanese soldiers were deployed west of Changkufeng and at Yangkuanping. The division's main forces had begun the rail pullback from the 28th, leaving behind only two infantry battalions and a mountain artillery battalion for the time being. At 21:20 on 29 July, Korea Army Headquarters received the text of Suetaka's full report, which concluded: "With a view toward a possible emergency, the division suspended movement back of the 75th Regiment and is making necessary arrangements to have them advance instead. The latest affair derives sheerly from the enemy's unlawful challenge. It is my firm belief that the nature of this incident differs completely from the one at Changkufeng and should be handled separately. At present, since communication with the forward lines is not good, Lieutenant Colonel Senda (who is at the front) has been entrusted with command, but I assume entire responsibility for the consequences." Instead of boarding their trains at Agochi, Sato's regiment and supporting engineers moved to the Manchurian side of the Tumen as soon as possible. Suetaka called Sato's 2nd Battalion to Kyonghun as divisional reserve. Subsequent dispatches claimed that: (1) Senda's unit, which had driven off intruders in the Shachaofeng area once, was engaged against new Soviet forces (sent at 18:20, 29th);  (2) Senda's unit had expelled trespassers, and a combat situation had developed near Shachaofeng (22:00, 29th);  (3) fighting was going on in the vicinity of Shachaofeng (06:40, 30th).  Korea Army Headquarters, however, obtained no more important communication concerning the events of 29 July than a report, sent that evening by Suetaka, that revealed his concern about a possible Soviet attack in the Wuchiatzu sector near the neck of the long Changkufeng appendix.  After the clash at Shachaofeng, a general officer, Morimoto, happened to be visiting Colonels Okido and Tanaka in Nanam. Both of them were said to be of the pronounced opinion that no troubles ought to be provoked with the USSR while the critical Hankow operation lay ahead; yet Suetaka apparently had some intention of striking at the Soviet intruders, using the 75th Regiment. They urged that this policy not be adopted and that Suetaka be approached directly; the channel through Y. Nakamura, the division chief of staff, was hopeless. Although in agreement, General Morimoto declined to approach Suetaka; since the latter seemed to have made up his mind, it would be inappropriate to "meddle" with his command. Suetaka was functioning as an operations chief at that time. Apart from the mobilization staff officer, who was not enthusiastic about aggressive action, the only other officer who may have affected the decisionmaking process was the Hunchun OSS chief, Maj. Tanaka Tetsujiro, a positive type who shared Suetaka's views and was probably with him on the 29th as well as 30th. Although developments at Suetaka's command post were known more as the result of silence than of elucidation, we possessed considerable information about thinking at the Korea Army level: "Suetaka contacted us only after his men had driven out the enemy near Shachaofeng. Till then, the front had been relatively quiet and we were of the opinion all or most of the deployed forces were on their way home. We at Seoul had no foreknowledge of or connection with the 29 July affair. Reports came in; we never sent specific orders. Triggered by the affray at Shachaofeng, the division attacked on its own initiative. It was our understanding that very small Japanese forces had been committed to evict a dozen enemy scouts and that, when a platoon of ours got atop the hill, they observed surprisingly huge hostile concentrations to the rear. This was probably why the platoon pulied back, although much has been made of the desire to obey the nonaggravation policy to the letter. We at Seoul felt that this was a troublesome matter—that our side had done something unnecessary. When the division finally made its report, the army had to reach some decision. There were two irreconcilable ways of looking at things. We might condemn what had been done, and the division ought to be ordered to pull out promptly, having arbitrarily and intolerably acted against the known facts that Imperial sanction for use of force had been withheld and Tokyo had directed evacuation of the moved-up units. The opposing, eventually predominant view was that the division commander's course of action ought to be approved. Perusal of small-scale maps of the locale indicated a clear violation of the frontier, something not proved in the case of Changkufeng. We shared the division commander's interpretation. His BGU had its mission, and he was acting with foresight to solve matters positively and on his own, since he was the man closest to the problem. General Nakamura felt that the latest development was inevitable; our units did not cross the Tumen until the Soviets attacked us in force. Therefore, the division's actions were approved and a report was rendered promptly to Tokyo. It could be said that our outlook served to "cover" the division commander, in a way. But if IGHQ had ordered us to desist, we would have".  Nakamura added: "I was of the opinion the only solution was to drive the Soviet troops outside Manchukuoan territory; therefore, I approved the action by the division." Such sanction had been granted on the basis of information supplied to Seoul by Suetaka on the evening of 29 July, again post facto. At 01:20 on the 30th, Nakamura wired Suetaka a message characterized by gracious phrasing that suggested his grave concern: "One ought to be satisfied with expelling from Manchurian territory the enemy attacking our unit on the . . . heights southwest of Shachaofeng. It is necessary to keep watch on the enemy for the time being, after having pulled back to the heights mentioned above, but we desire that matters be handled carefully to avoid enlargement; in case the foe has already pulled back south of Shachaofeng . . . he need not be attacked." Nakamura also sent a wire to the AGS chief, the War Minister, and the Kwantung Army commander. After conveying the information received from Suetaka, Nakamura continued: "In spite of the fact that our troops have been patient and cautious . . . this latest incident [near Shachaofeng] started with Soviet forces' arrogant border trespassing and . . . unlawful challenge. Therefore, I am convinced that this affair must be dealt with separately from the incident at Changkufeng. Nevertheless, I shall endeavor to handle matters so that the incident will not spread and shall make it my fundamental principle to be satisfied with evicting from Manchurian territory the hostile forces confronting us. The Korea Army chief of staff is being dispatched quickly to handle the incident".  The Korea Army, "painfully slow to act," says a Kwantung Army major, was merely the intermediary link, the executor of Tokyo's desires. In the case of remote Shachaofeng, there was an inevitable gap between on-the-spot occurrences and AGS reactions. By then, Arisue, Kotani, and Arao, Inada's observers, had returned to Japan—an important fact, given the "Moltke" system of staff control. Nevertheless, their return must have exerted significant effects on central operational thinking. Kotani remembered that his AGS subsection had given him a welcome-home party on the night of 29 July when an emergency phone call was received from the duty officer. "It was about the clash at Shachaofeng. The festivities came to an abrupt end and I headed for the office. From then till the cease-fire on 11 August, I remained at the AGS night and day." Since the 19th Division had furnished higher headquarters with minimal information, Tokyo, like Seoul, had only a few ostensible facts to act upon. But this had been the first combat test for the Korea Army, which needed all the encouragement and assistance possible. Although Japanese field armies, notably the Kwantung Army, were notorious for insubordination, one could not overemphasize the fact that the Korea Army was meek and tractable. If Nakamura had concluded that Suetaka acted properly (which reports from Seoul indicated), the AGS could hardly demur. It would have been unrealistic to think that Tokyo, although cautious, was "softer" about the Russian problem than front-line forces. There had been no concern over time lags; details were Seoul's province. Reaction took time at every level of the chain of command. Decision making in the Japanese Army had been a many-layered process. The Army general staff had been of the opinion that initial guidance ought to have been provided to the Korea Army soon, particularly since there had been evidence of failure to convey intentions promptly to the front and no high command staff officer remained to direct matters. After hearing from Seoul twice about the Shachaofeng affair, the responsible Army general staff officers conferred at length. Stress had been laid on the indivisibility of the Shachaofeng and Changkufeng incidents. It had also been evident that further information was required. On that basis, a "handling policy for the Shachaofeng Incident" was drafted, and Tada notified the Korea and Kwantung armies accordingly on 30 July. Nakamura had received the telegram at 16:50 and had its contents retransmitted to Kitano, then at Kyonghun: "Shachaofeng Incident is progressing along lines of our policy, leave things to local units, which have been adhering to the principle of nonenlargement. Have them report on front-line situation without fail."  The Army general staff and the Korea Army were calling for prudence, but the division, well down the rungs of the ladder of command, was initiating actions that jeopardized the government's basic policy. Earlier quibbling about restraints on "unit-size" elements crossing into Manchuria had been abandoned after the firefight near Shachaofeng on 29 July. At 15:30, Takenouchi's battalion, part of the 76th Regiment, had been directed to assist Senda near Yangkuanping; at 18:20 Suetaka was ordering the 75th Regiment to head for the Kucheng sector and be ready to assault the Russians in the Changkufeng area. Support was to be provided by Kobayashi's engineers, by Iwano's transportation men, and by Suzuki's heavy guns. Of particular interest had been Suetaka's acceptance of Sato's recommendation that elements be sent to occupy Hill 52, a measure linked with a possible Japanese attack against Changkufeng.   Sato had decided by evening that the new situation required rapid deployment of his forces across the river. At Shikai, he conducted a briefing of his officers. Suetaka's orders conveyed orally by staff officers had stipulated: "The division will take steps to secure the border line immediately, even if the situation undergoes change. The Sato unit will advance immediately to the left shore, reinforce Senda's unit, and maintain a strict watch on the enemy in the Changkufeng area." Around 23:20, the last elements ordered forward arrived at Shikai station. Sato instructed only his headquarters and the Ito company to get off. The rest of the troop train primarily the 1st [Nakano's] Battalion was to move on to Hongui. From there, the soldiers proceeded to the Tumen near Sozan. With his staff and Ito's company, Sato trudged in silence through the mud from Shikai to the shore at Matsu'otsuho, starting at 00:30 and reaching the crossing site at 03:00. Reconnaissance had proved satisfactory, Sato remembered.  At the crossings, the hardworking engineers rowed his 1st and 3rd battalions across, company by company. Near dawn, around 04:30, he traversed the river. The movement had been completed in about an hour. When Sato's infantry finally got across, they proceeded to the skirt of Fangchuanting and assembled in secrecy. Not until about 08:00 did the regimental headquarters, Ito's company, and Hirahara's battalion reach Hill 147, already held by Noguchi's company west of Changkufeng. By then, plans had fallen behind schedule by at least several hours because of difficulties in train movement forward. Sato also remembered torrential rains; other officers mentioned darkness. Members of Nakano's battalion pinpointed a shortage of engineer boats from Kucheng. Engineers rowed some boats downstream during the night, but six of them were kept at Matsu'otsuho. This left only three boats for moving the 400 men of the 1st Battalion, the unit slated to storm Changkufeng, across the river at Sozan. Sato had wanted all of his troops across well before dawn on the 30th. A division staff officer rightly thought that Suetaka had already advised Sato, in secret, to "attack at an opportune time," and that the night of 29–30 July had been intended for the surprise assault. "Perhaps there was not enough time for all the attack preparations." Kobayashi's engineers admitted problems in moving boats to Sozan: "Although the water level had gone up because of daily rains recently, there were still many shallows and the current was irregular. Not only was it hard to move downstream, but dense fog also complicated the work. Nevertheless, the units at both sites were able to accomplish the river-crossing operation approximately as scheduled".  Meanwhile, after reconnoitering Soviet defenses along the Manchurian bank, Suzuki, commander of the 15th Heavy Field Artillery Regiment, crossed the Kyonghun Bridge on 30 July with his 1st Battery and established positions on the edge of Shuiliufeng Hill. Once Captain Narukawa was attached to the 75th Infantry on 29 July, he dispatched his 2nd Battery by train to Shikai that night. Although firing sites had been surveyed northwest of Sho-Sozan, the battery had to traverse two weak, narrow bridges in the darkness. With two 15-centimeter howitzers to haul, plus five caissons and wagons, the unit faced tense moments. The gun sites themselves were worrisome: they were scarcely masked from observation from Changkufeng, and the single road to them from the unloading station ran through a paddy area and was similarly exposed. By 1200 hours on 30 July, Sato exerted operational control over the following units: his own forces, Nakano's battalion east of Fangchuanting; Hirahara's reinforced battalion west of Chiangchunfeng; a platoon from Nakajima's infantry company on Hill 52; and Noguchi's company on Hill 147; and from other forces, Senda's 2nd (Kanda) BGU Company; two reinforced companies from Takenouchi's battalion of Okido's 76th Regiment near Shachaofeng; and a 75-mm half-battery from the 25th Mountain Artillery on the Manchurian side with Sato. On the Korean shore, another half-battery comprising two 15-centimeter howitzers from Narukawa's unit of the 15th Heavy Field Artillery was in place. The 19th Engineers operated near the crossing sites, though one platoon remained at Fangchuanting. Sato said, "We were now deployed at last, to cope with any situation." His command post was set in foxholes on open ground at Chiangchunfeng, a central hill that offered excellent observation and control over actions around Changkufeng to the east and Shachaofeng to the north. Not content with suspending the pullout of units and deploying additional combat troops across the Tumen, Suetaka decided to recall division headquarters, mountain artillery, cavalry, signal, medical, and veterinary personnel from Nanam. At dawn on 30 July, Nanam issued orders for Colonel Tanaka to move 500 men and 300 horses to Agochi by rail; most of the increment came from Tanaka's horse-drawn 25th Mountain Artillery. The colonel reached the Korean side of the Tumen at 05:00 on 31 July. The preceding emergency measures were being implemented by Suetaka, even as he received Nakamura's calming telegram of 30 July enjoining nonexpansion. Changkufeng Hill was not even mentioned. Nakamura's concern was typified by Kitano flying to the front. At 10:00 on 30 July, Kitano sent the division chief of staff a cautious follow-up cable: "Based on the consistent policy for handling the Changkufeng Incident and on the army commander's earlier telegram, kindly take steps to ensure careful action in connection with the affair in the Shachaofeng vicinity lest there be enlargement." At 13:45, Nakamura transmitted another restraining message to Suetaka: "The division is to secure … Chiangchunfeng and … the heights southwest of Shachaofeng, using present front-line units. Unless there is an enemy attack, however, resort to force will depend on separate orders." Several hours later, at 16:50, Nakamura received instructions from Tada: the Shachaofeng case was being left to the local forces, who were pursuing the desired policy of nonenlargement, but prompt reporting was desired. At 19:30, the retransmitted message was received by Kitano, already at the front with Suetaka at Kyonghun. After his units had crossed the Tumen on 30 July, Sato Kotoku ordered a strict watch and directed preparations for an assault based on the plans. He conferred with Senda at Chiangchunfeng and observed the enemy. Even after dawn, the frontline commanders who had crossed the river remained uncertain about when the attack would be staged. While Sato's force conducted reconnaissance to prepare for a daytime offensive, orders arrived around 08:00 indicating, "We intend a night attack, so conceal your activities." Daytime movements were prohibited. Sato then explained the impression he had derived from Senda and the intelligence on which he based his estimates: " Exploiting the impasse in diplomatic negotiation, the enemy side had steadily reinforced front-line offensive strength and trespassed anew near Shachaofeng. They now had a battalion and a half of infantry plus 20 artillery pieces in the area, some south of Shachaofeng and the others at four positions immediately east of Lake Khasan. At least a dozen (maybe 20) tanks were deployed in the sector opposite us. About 300 well-armed, active Russian troops were at Changkufeng. I decided that an attack ought to be staged that night. First of all, we were going to chill the insolent enemy by a courageous night assault—a method characteristic of the Imperial Army. Then all kinds of fire power were to be combined in a surprise attack against the positions. Our intention was to jo lt the Russians, demonstrate the true strength of our combat fire, and, by a combination of night and dawn attacks, cut down losses which our left-flank units would have incurred if a night assault alone were staged. We had considered two plans—a night attack against Changkufeng by the 3rd Battalion from the north, or by the 1st Battalion from the south. On 30 July, I decided to execute the second plan, using my 1st (Nakano's) Battalion, to avoid simultaneous involvement around Shachaofeng where the foe was by now alerted."  The Japanese Army ordinarily favored surprise assaults without supporting guns, since firepower was regarded as secondary in close combat and artillery was in short supply. According to the regimental journal, telephone contacts from the morning of the 30th indicated that the division commander shared the same line of thinking as Sato. By noon, Suetaka made his stance explicit. A phone call from Kucheng conveyed to Sato the gist of a critical division order: first, a detailed briefing on Soviet troop concentrations and dispositions, firing positions, troops, and armor south of Shachaofeng; entanglements and forces at Changkufeng; large concentrations behind west of Khasan; tanks and ground formations moving north of the lake; a heavy concentration near the lake to the northwest; one confirmed and two suspected positions along the eastern shore and another with artillery far to the south. Then the order stated that K. Sato's forces, including the Takenouchi battalion from the 76th Infantry, one mountain artillery platoon, and one engineer platoon were to strengthen their positions and, at the same time, promptly evict from Manchurian territory the intruding and advancing enemy. However, pursuit must not be pushed too far lest the border be crossed. Shortly after noon, Suetaka issued another order to form a new force under Senda, who was to strengthen border security along the Shuiliufeng–Hunchun line. As with Sato, Senda was to eject the intruding and advancing enemy from Manchurian soil but not pursue them across the border. By midafternoon, Sato knew not only what he wanted to do but also Suetaka's intentions. At 15:30, he assembled all subordinate officers at Chiangchunfeng and dictated minute attack instructions. Intelligence indicated that the enemy continued to fortify points of importance along the Changkufeng–Shachaofeng line. Sato's plan was to annihilate hostile elements that had crossed the border north and south of Changkufeng. His concept went beyond a frontal assault. While Nakano's battalion would jump off south of Changkufeng, one reinforced company, Takeshita's 10th was to attack north. Since the sun rose at about 05:00, Sato intended to wipe out the enemy during three hours of darkness. Another battalion, Hirahara's 3rd would be held in reserve, with Ito's 6th Company ready to launch a night attack against Changkufeng from the northwest if necessary. Small forces deployed southeast at Hill 52 were to block the arrival of Soviet reinforcements around the southern shores of Khasan. Only after Changkufeng was secured and fire swept the high ground south of Shachaofeng would a reinforced battalion, Takenouchi's 1st from the 76th Regiment undertake a dawn assault to clear the Russians from that sector. An engineer platoon would assist both the night and dawn assault battalions with obstacle clearing. There would be no artillery support until dawn, when the available guns were to provide maximum coverage. Notably, even the movement of a single antitank gun warranted mention. Sato concluded the attack order by directing that each unit mask its intentions after sunset. Takenouchi was to act to check the enemy as soon as the sun went down. In connection with the dawn barrage against the enemy southwest of Shachaofeng, key personnel were to study the best way to exploit sudden fire described as gale and lightning. They were also to be ready to destroy enemy tanks. A green star shell would be fired to signal the success of the night attack. The code words were shojiki "honesty" and ydmo "bravery". At midnight, the regiment commander would be at the northwest foot of Chiangchunfeng. The order stressed typical night-attack precautions: secrecy and concealment, avoidance of confusion, antitank defense, and flare signaling of success. Sato added his own flair with his daily motto as code words and the reference to "whirlwind" fire. Impending action times were explicitly set when the order was issued at 15:30 on the 30th, more than ten hours before the 1st Battalion was to jump off. The key to success in a night assault lay in an absolute prohibition on firing by their side, and bold, courageous charging. Sato reminded his men that life is granted again after death. Nakano then assembled his company commanders east of Fangchuanting and issued his battalion order at 18:30. A few hours after Sato's briefing of the assault commanders, Suetaka arrived at the 75th Regiment command post. This visit late on 30 July is central to allegations that Sato, not Suetaka, conceived and executed the night attack on his own initiative. Divisional orders giving Sato his core mission had already been conveyed by telephone. After 16:00, Suetaka boarded a motorboat at Kucheng and went to the Manchurian side to verify front-line conditions. Soviet snipers south of Yangkuanping fired several shots, but his craft reached the Matsu'otsuho landing and proceeded to Chiangchunfeng to meet Sato. Sato described the situation: "frontline enemy forces had been reinforced steadily and had begun a vigorous offensive. The foe was provoking us, and the matter had grown very serious. I had already issued orders at 15:30 to take the initiative and deal the enemy a smashing blow." I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. On a frost-bitten dawn by the Chaun and Tumen, Russia and Japan lock eyes over Changkufeng. Diplomats urge restraint, yet Tokyo's generals push a bold gamble: seize a hill with a surprise strike and bargain later. Japanese divisions, engineers, and artillery edge toward the border, while Soviet sentries brace for a confrontation that could widen the war. 

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Last time we spoke about the Changkufeng Incident. In a frost-bitten dawn along the Chaun and Tumen rivers, a border notched with memory becomes the stage for a quiet duel of will. On one side, Japanese officers led by Inada Masazum study maps, mud, and the hill known as Changkufeng, weighing ground it offers and the risk of war. They glimpse a prize, high ground that could shield lines to Korea—yet they sense peril in every ridge, every scent of winter wind. Across the line, Soviet forces tighten their grip on the crest, their eyes fixed on the same hill, their tents and vehicles creeping closer to the border. The air hums with cautious diplomacy: Moscow's orders pulse through Seoul and Harbin, urging restraint, probing, deterring, but never inviting full-scale conflict. Yet every patrol, every reconnaissance, seems to tilt the balance toward escalation.   #177 The point of no return for the USSR and Japan Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. Days passed and the local emissaries had not been released by the Russians. Domei reported from Seoul that the authorities were growing worried; the "brazen" actions of Soviet front-line forces infuriated the Manchurians and Japanese. From Seoul, too, came ominous news that villagers were preparing to evacuate because they feared fighting would soon begin in the Changkufeng area. While diplomatic activity continued in Moscow without effect, the Tokyo press continued to report intense military activity throughout the Soviet Far East—the greatest massing of troops in months, with planes, armored cars, and motorized equipment choking the Trans-Siberian railway. The press was dominated by commentary about the danger of war. One enterprising Tokyo publisher ran advertisements under the heading: "The Manchukuo-Soviet Border Situation Is Urgent—Ours Is the Only Detailed Map of the Soviet Far East: Newspaper-size, in seven clear colors, offset printed, only 50 sen." Although the Manchukuoan foreign office issued a statement on 20 July about the dire consequences the Soviets were inviting, it is probable that the next Russian actions, of a conciliatory nature, were reached independently. Either Moscow had taken almost a week to make the decision, or the diplomatic conversations there had had an effect. Local Japanese authorities reported inactivity on the Changkufeng front from the morning of 23 July. On the next day, word was received that the USSR proposed to return the two emissaries as "trespassers." At midday on 26 July, the Russians released the blindfolded agents at a border site along the Novokievsk road. After completing the formalities, the Japanese asked the Russians for a reply concerning local settlement of the incident. According to Japanese sources, the "flustered" Colonel Grebennik answered: "My assignment today was merely to turn over the envoys. As for any request about the Changkufeng Incident, our guard commander must have asked for instructions from the central government. I think this is the type of matter which must be answered by the authorities at Moscow through diplomatic channels." Grebennik's postwar recollection does not differ appreciably from the Japanese version. Soviet sources mention a second effort by the Japanese military to deliver a message under more forceful circumstances. On 23 July a Soviet border unit drove off a four-man party. Russian cavalry, sent to investigate, discovered that the Japanese had pulled down a telegraph pole, severed lines 100–150 meters inside Soviet territory, absconded with wire, and left behind a white flag and a letter. Undated, unsigned, and written in Korean, the message struck Grebennik as being substantively the same as the communication delivered formally by the emissaries on 18 July. Japanese materials make no reference to a second, informal effort by local forces, but there is little reason to doubt that such an attempt, perhaps unauthorized, was made. Although Japanese efforts at low-level negotiations came to naught, two observations emerged from the local authorities and the press. First, on-the-spot negotiations had broken down; it had been difficult even to reclaim the emissaries, and the Russians in the Posyet region were using various pretexts to refer matters to diplomatic echelons. Second, the Russians had released the men. Some interpreted this as the first evidence of Soviet sincerity; possibly, the USSR would even return Matsushima's body as a step toward settlement. Other Japanese observers on the scene warned the public that it was imperative to stay on guard: "All depends on how diplomacy proceeds and how the front-line troops behave." Yet the excitement in the Japanese press began to abate. It is difficult to ascertain the nature of the decision-making process on the Russian side after the Japanese attempted local negotiations. The Soviets contend that nothing special had been undertaken before the Japanese provoked matters at the end of July. Grebennik, however, admits that after receiving the two Japanese communications, "we started to prepare against an attack on us in the Lake Khasan area." He and a group of officers went to Changkufeng Hill and sent as many border guards there as possible. Although he personally observed Japanese troops and instructed his officers to do the same, he denied categorically that the Russians constructed trenches and fortifications. Only the observation of Manchurian territory was intensified while instructions were awaited from higher headquarters. For its part, the Korea Army was carrying out Imperial general headquarters first instructions while pursuing a wait-and-see policy. On 16 July, Korea Army Headquarters wired an important operations order to Suetaka. With a view toward a possible attack against intruders in the Khasan area, the army planned to make preparations. The division commander was to alert stipulated units for emergency dispatch and send key personnel to the Kyonghun sector to undertake preparations for an attack. Lt. Col. Senda Sadasue, BGU commander of the 76th Infantry Regiment, was to reconnoiter, reinforce nearby districts, and be ready for emergencies. Particular care was enjoined not to irritate the Soviet side. Maj. Gen. Yokoyama Shinpei, the Hunchun garrison commander, was to maintain close contact with the BGU and take every precaution in guarding the frontiers. Like Senda, Yokoyama was warned against irritating the Russians. Korea Army Headquarters also dispatched staff to the front and had them begin preparations, envisaging an offensive. Upon receipt of the army order, Suetaka issued implementing instructions from his Nanam headquarters at 4:30 A.M. on the 17th. The following units were to prepare for immediate alert: the 38th Infantry Brigade Headquarters, 75th Infantry Regiment, 27th Cavalry Regiment, 5th Antiaircraft Regiment, and 19th Engineer Regiment. The same instructions applied to the next units, except that elements organic to the division were designated: the 76th Infantry Regiment, 25th Mountain Artillery Regiment, and 15th Heavy Field Artillery Regiment. Another order enjoined utmost care not to irritate the Russians; Japanese actions were to be masked. Next came a directive to the forces of Senda and K. Sato. The former comprised mainly the 76th Infantry BGU and a cavalry platoon. The latter was built around the 75th Infantry Regiment, the Kucheng garrison unit, another cavalry platoon, two mountain artillery and one heavy field artillery battalion, and the 19th Engineers. Suetaka's idea about a solution to the border troubles had become concrete and aggressive. From the night of July 17, concentration would be accomplished gradually. The exact timing of the attack would be determined by subsequent orders; in Senda's area, there was no such restriction regarding "counteraction brought on by enemy attack." Division signal and intendant officers would conduct reconnaissance related to communications, billeting, food, and supplies. Sato and his subordinates were to reconnoiter personally. Having ordered the division to begin concentration and to stand by, Korea Army Headquarters was prepared the next morning, July 17, to direct the movement. Nevertheless, there was concern in Seoul that Suetaka's advance elements might cross the Tumen River into Manchurian territory, which could result in a clash with Soviet troops. Such an outcome might run counter to the principle established by Imperial general headquarters. Consequently, it was decided that "movement east of the river would therefore have to be forbidden in the Korea Army's implementing order." Nakamura transmitted his operational instructions to Suetaka at 6:00 on July 17: "No great change in latest situation around Lake Khasan. Soviet forces are still occupying Changkufeng area. Diplomaticlevel negotiations on part of central authorities and Manchukuoan government do not appear to have progressed. Considering various circumstances and with view to preparations, this army will concentrate elements of 19th Division between Shikai, Kyonghun, Agochi." Restrictions stipulated that the division commander would transport the units by rail and motor vehicle and concentrate them in the waiting zone in secret. Movement was to begin on the night of July 17 and to be completed the next day. Further orders, however, must govern unit advance east of the Tumen as well as use of force. The remainder of the division was to stay ready to move out. Troops were to carry rations for about two weeks.   Late that day, Suetaka received an order by phone for his subordinates in line with Seoul's instructions. Senda would handle the concentration of elements assembling at Kyonghun, and Sato would do the same for the main units arriving at Agochi. A communications net was to be set up quickly. Caution was to be exercised not to undertake provocative actions against the opposite bank of the Tumen, even for reconnaissance. The division would dispatch two trains from Hoeryong and four from Nanam. At 11:58 pm on 18 July, the first train left Hoeryong for Agochi. Concentration of units was completed by dawn. By that time, the Japanese had dispatched to the border 3,236 men and 743 horses. Past midnight on 20 July, Division Chief of Staff Nakamura wired headquarters that the division was ready to take any action required, having completed the alert process by 11 pm. Japanese scouting of the Changkufeng sector began in earnest after mid-July. Although the affair had seemed amenable to settlement, Sato took steps for an emergency from around the 14th. His thoughts centered on readiness for an attack against Changkufeng, which simultaneously required reconnaissance for the assault and preparation to pull the regiment back quickly to Hoeryong if a withdrawal was ordered. After arriving at Haigan on 18 July, Sato set out with several engineers. At Kucheng, the officers donned white Korean clothing, presumably the disguise directed by the division—and boarded native oxcarts for a leisurely journey southward along the Korean bank of the Tumen across from Changkufeng. The seemingly innocent "farmers" studied the river for crossing sites and Changkufeng Hill for the extent of enemy activity. On the hill's western slope, in Manchurian territory, three rows of Russian entanglements could be observed 300 feet below the crest. Only a handful of soldiers were visible, probably a platoon, certainly not more than a company. Infantry Captain Yamada Teizo conducted secret reconnaissance of the entire Changkufeng-Hill 52 sector for 314 hours in the afternoon of 18 July. Even after intense scanning through powerful binoculars, he could detect no more than 19 lookouts and six horsemen; camouflage work had been completed that day, and there were ten separate covered trench or base points. Barbed wire, under camouflage, extended about four meters in depth, yet even Yamada's trained eye could not determine whether there was one line of stakes or two. He jotted down what he could see and compared his information with that learned from local police. Artillery Colonel R. Tanaka shared the view that the Soviets had intruded. When he went reconnoitering along the Korean bank, he observed Russian soldiers entrenched around the hilltop, easily visible through binoculars at a range of two kilometers. Trenches had been dug 20 to 30 meters below the crest on the western slope. Eventually, there were three rows of barbed wire, the first just below the trenches and the lowest 100 meters under the summit. Tanaka estimated Soviet strength at two companies (about 200 men). Suetaka's intelligence officer, Sasai, recalls seeing barbed wire after Japanese units deployed to the front on 18–19 July; he had surmised then that the entanglements were being prepared out of fear of a Japanese assault.   To obtain first-hand information, the Gaimusho ordered a section chief, Miura Kazu'ichi, to the spot. Between 23 July and the cease-fire in August, Miura collected data at Kyonghun and transmitted reports from the consulate at Hunchun. On 28 July he visited Sozan on the Korean bank. He observed Soviet soldiers on the western slopes of Changkufeng, digging trenches and driving stakes. These actions were clearly on Manchukuoan territory even according to Soviet maps. Miura insisted that he saw no friendly troops on territory claimed by the Russians and observed no provocative actions by the Japanese. These statements are supported by a map drawn for him in early August by Division Staff Officer Saito Toshio, a sketch Miura retained as late as 1947. Miura's testimony is tempered by his assertion that he saw a red flag flying near the top of Changkufeng Hill. This contention conflicts with all evidence, as Russian lawyers at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East argued, it is improbable that a Soviet frontier post, highly interested in camouflage, would have hoisted a pennon so large that it could be seen from Sozan. Russian sources are unanimous in stating that no flag was put up until 6 August and that no trenches or entanglements were established by Soviet border guards in July, at least prior to the 29th. The two Army General staff consultants, Arisue and Kotani, arrived in Seoul on 16 July, the day Korea Army Headquarters was ordering an alert for the 19th Division "with a view toward a possible attack against enemy intruders." Inada dispatched them mainly to inspect the frontline situation; but he had not fully decided on reconnaissance in force. At Shikai, Arisue and Kotani donned Korean garb and traveled by oxcart on the Korean side of the Tumen, reconnoitering opposite the Shachaofeng sector. Kotani was convinced that hostile possession of Changkufeng posed a serious threat to the Korean railway. He agreed with the division's estimate that, if the Japanese did decide to seize Changkufeng, it ought not to be too difficult. Arisue, as senior observer, dispatched messages from Kyonghun to Tokyo detailing their analysis and recommendations. Meanwhile, in Tokyo, on 17 July the central military authorities received a cable from the Japanese envoy in Moscow, Colonel Doi Akio, reporting that prospects for a diplomatic settlement were nil. The USSR was taking a hard line because Japan was deeply involved in China, though there were domestic considerations as well. The Russians, however, showed no intention of using the border incident to provoke war. It would be best for Japan to seize Changkufeng quickly and then press forward with parleys. Meanwhile, Japan should conduct an intensive domestic and external propaganda campaign. There was mounting pressure in the high command that negotiations, conducted "unaided," would miss an opportunity. Based on reports from Arisue and Kotani, that army seemed to be contemplating an unimaginative, ponderous plan: an infantry battalion would cross the Tumen west of Changkufeng and attack frontally, while two more battalions would cross south of Kyonghun to drive along the river and assault Changkufeng from the north. Inada sent a telegram on 17 July to Arisue for "reference." Prospects had diminished that Soviet troops would withdraw as a result of negotiation. As for the attack ideas Arisue mentioned, Inada believed it necessary to prepare to retake Changkufeng with a night attack using small forces. To avoid widening the crisis, the best plan was a limited, surprise attack using ground units. The notion of a surprise attack drew on the Kwantung Army's extensive combat experience in Manchuria since 1931.  The next morning, after the forward concentration of troops was completed, Suetaka went to the front. From Kucheng, he observed the Changkufeng district and decided on concrete plans for use of force. Meanwhile, Nakamura was curbing any hawkish courses at the front. As high-command sources privately conceded later, the younger officers in Tokyo sometimes seemed to think the commander was doing too good a job; there was covert sentiment that it might be preferable if someone in the chain of command acted independently before the opportunity slipped away. This is significant in light of the usual complaints by responsible central authorities about gekokujo—insubordination—by local commands. An important report influencing the high command's view arrived from Kwantung Army Intelligence on 19 July: according to agents in Khabarovsk, the USSR would not let the Changkufeng incident develop into war; Russians also believed there would be no large-scale Soviet intrusion into their territory. By 19 July, the Tokyo operations staff was considering the best method to restore control of the lost hill by force, since Seoul appeared to maintain its laissez-faire stance. On 18 July, Arisue and Kotani were instructed by Imperial General headquarters to assist the Korea Army and the 19th Division regarding the Changkufeng Incident. What the Army general staff operations officers sought was an Imperial General headquarters order, requiring Imperial sanction, that would instruct the Korea Army to evict the Russian troops from Changkufeng the way the Kwantung Army would, using units already under Nakamura's command. The sense was that the affair could be handled locally, but if the USSR sought to escalate the incident, it might be prudent for that to occur before the Hankow operation began. The IGHQ and War Ministry coordinated the drafting of an IGHQ order on 19–20 July: "We deem it advisable to eradicate Soviet challenges . . . by promptly delivering blow on this occasion against unit which crossed border at Changkufeng. That unit is in disadvantageous spot strategically and tactically; thus, probability is scant that dispute would enlarge, and we are investigating countermeasures in any case. Careless expansion of situation is definitely not desired. We would like you people also to conduct studies concerning mode of assault employing smallest strength possible for surprise attack against limited objective. Kindly learn general atmosphere here [Tokyo] from [Operations] Major Arao Okikatsu." The 20th of July proved to be a hectic day in Korea, and even more so in Tokyo. The division had informed the Korea Army that it was finally "ready to go," a message received in Seoul in the early hours. Then Arisue received a wire from Inada presenting limited-attack plans and noting that Arao was on the way. By that day, Japanese intelligence judged there were 400 Soviet troops and two or three mountain guns south of Paksikori. Russian positions at Changkufeng had been reinforced, but no aggressive intentions could be detected. Soviet ground elements, as well as materiel, appeared to be moving from Vladivostok and Slavyanka toward Posyet. Suetaka headed back to the front. Sato told him that it was absolutely necessary to occupy Chiangchunfeng Hill across the Tumen in Manchurian territory. Upon reaching the Wuchiatzu sector and inspecting the situation, Suetaka agreed to send a small unit to Chiangchunfeng on his own authority.  Colonel Sato Kotoku had ordered one company to move across the Tumen toward Chiangchunfeng on 21 July, a maneuver that did not escape the Russians' notice. On 24 July, the same day another Japanese unit occupied Shangchiaoshan Hill, Marshal Blyukher ordered the 40th Rifle Division, stationed in the Posyet area to be placed on combat readiness, with a force of regulars assigned to back the Soviet border guards; two reinforced rifle battalions were detached as a reserve. According to Japanese records, Russian border patrols began appearing around Huichungyuan, Yangkuanping, and Shachaofeng from 26 July, but no serious incidents were reported at that stage. At about 9:30 am on 29 July, Captain Kanda, the 2nd Company commander of Lieutenant Colonel Senda's 76th Border Garrison Unit, was observing the Shachaofeng area from his Kucheng cantonments. Through his glasses, Kanda observed four or five Soviet soldiers engaged in construction on high ground on the west side of Shachaofeng. Kanda notified Senda, who was at BGU Headquarters inspecting the forward areas. Senda transmitted the information to Suetaka. Deciding to cross the Tumen for a closer look, Senda set off with Kanda. A little after 11 am, they reached Chiangchunfeng Hill, where the men from Captain Noguchi's company were already located. Senda verified, to his own satisfaction, that as many as 10 enemy infantrymen had "violated the border" to a depth of 350 meters, "even by the Soviets' contention", and were starting construction 1,000 meters south of Shachaofeng. Senda decided to oust the Russian force "promptly and resolutely," in light of the basic mission assigned his unit. He telephoned Suetaka, who was in Kyonghun, and supplied the intelligence and the recommendation. Subordinates recalled Suetaka's initial reaction when the BGU reported a Soviet intrusion about a mile and a half north of Changkufeng. "The arrogant Russians were making fools of the Japanese, or were trying to. At stake was not a trifling hill and a few invaders, but the honor of the Imperial Army. In the face of this insult, the general became furious. He insisted upon smashing the enemy right away."  Kanda phoned 2nd Lieutenant Sakuma, who was still at Kucheng, and told him to bring his 25-man platoon across the river by 2 pm Sakuma crossed by boat and arrived at 1:30. Kanda set out from Chiangchunfeng at 2:20, took over Sakuma's unit, bore east, and approached within 700 meters of the enemy. He ordered the men not to fire unless fired upon, and to withdraw quickly after routing the Russians. It is said that the Japanese troops were fired upon as they advanced in deployed formation but did not respond at first. In a valley, casualties were incurred and the Japanese finally returned fire. Sakuma's 1st Squad leader took a light machine gun and pinned down the Russians facing him. Sakuma himself pressed forward with his other two squads, taking advantage of the slope to envelop the enemy from the right. At the same time, he sent a patrol to the high ground on the left to cover the platoon's flank. Thanks to the 1st Squad's frontal assault, the Russians had no chance to worry about their wings, and Sakuma moved forward to a point only 30 meters from the foe's rear. Kanda was now 50 meters from the Russians. When the enemy light machine gun let up, he ordered a charge and, in the lead, personally cut down one of the foe. Sakuma also rushed the Soviets, but when about to bring down his saber he was stabbed in the face while another Russian struck him in the shoulder. Grappling with this assailant, Sakuma felled him. Other Japanese attackers sabered two more Russians and shot the rest. By 3:10 pm the eight enemy "trespassers" had been annihilated. The covering patrol reported that five Soviet horsemen, with a light machine gun, were galloping up from Khasan. Sakuma had his platoon fire grenade dischargers, which smashed the enemy. Seventy more Russian soldiers now came, attacking from northwest of the lake and supported by fire from the east side. Using light machine guns and grenade dischargers, Sakuma checked them. Meanwhile, Miyashita's platoon, part of Noguchi's company, had departed from Chiangchunfeng at 2:20 pm and swung right until it reached the crestline between Changkufeng and Kanda's company. One squad faced 200 Russians on Changkufeng; the other faced the enemy south of Shachaofeng. Soviet forces opened intense machine-gun fire from Changkufeng and from the high ground east of the lake. After 20 minutes, Kanda's unit charged, two or three Russians fled, and Miyashita's platoon shot one down. Senda, who had gone with Miyashita, directed the platoon's movements and proceeded north, under fire, to Kanda's unit. Once the Russians had been cleared out, Senda forbade pursuit across the boundary and gradually withdrew his forces to the heights line 800 meters southwest. It was 4:30 then. By 5 pm Soviet reinforcements, apparently brought up from the Changkufeng and Paksikori sectors, advanced anew. With 80 men in the front lines, the enemy pushed across the border to a depth of at least 500 meters, according to the Japanese, and began to establish positions. Several tanks and many troops could be observed in the rear. Senda had Noguchi's company hold Chiangchunfeng. Kanda's unit, reinforced by 33 men from Kucheng, was to occupy the heights southwest of Shachaofeng, while Imagawa's company of the 76th Regiment was to occupy other high ground to the west. Senda then reported the situation to Suetaka in Kyonghun and asked for reinforcements. In Seoul, Army headquarters understood the developments reported by Suetaka as a response to the hostile border violation, and about 20 men of the Kucheng BGU under Lt. Sakuma drove the enemy out between 2:30 and 3 pm. Afterward, Sakuma pulled back to high ground two kilometers south of Yangkuanping to avoid trouble and was now observing the foe. Although Seoul had heard nothing about Japanese losses, Corp. Akaishizawa Kunihiko personally observed that Kanda had been wounded in the face by a grenade and bandaged, that Sakuma had been bayoneted twice and also bandaged, and that the dead lay on the grass, covered with raincoats. According to Suetaka "the enemy who had crossed the border south of Shachaofeng suffered losses and pulled back once as a result of our attack at about 2:30 pm". By about 4:30, Suetaka continued, the Russians had built up their strength and attacked the platoon on the heights southwest of Shachaofeng. Behind the Russian counterattack, there were now several tanks. Earlier, Suetaka noted ominously that several rounds of artillery had been fired from the Changkufeng area; "therefore, we reinforced our units too, between 5 and 6 pm., and both sides are confronting each other." Details as to the fate of Sakuma's platoon are not given, but it is now admitted that casualties were incurred on both sides. The Korea Army Headquarters consequently reported to Tokyo in the evening that, according to information from the division, 20 Japanese had driven out the Russians near Shachaofeng; 25 men from Senda's unit were occupying the heights 600 meters west of Changkufeng; and another 16 men were deployed in ambush at Yangkuanping. Such an enumeration would have tended to suggest that only a few dozen Japanese were across the Tumen on the 29th. But a review of the numbers of combat troops committed and the reinforcements sent by Senda reveals that Japanese strength across the river was in the hundreds by nightfall. In Moscow, Tass reported that on 29 July detachments of Japanese-Manchukuoan intruders had attempted to seize high ground apparently located 0.5 miles north of a Russian position. The assailants had been "completely repelled from Soviet territory, as a result of measures taken by Russian frontier guards," and instructions had been sent to the embassy in Tokyo to protest strongly. Walter Duranty, the veteran American correspondent in Moscow, heard that the Japanese press had published reports, likely intended for internal consumption, that hours of furious fighting had occurred at the points in question. Since the dispatches were unsubstantiated and "failed to gain credence anywhere outside Japan," Duranty claimed this may have forced the Japanese to translate into action their boast of "applying force" unless their demands were satisfied. "Now, it appears, they have applied force, unsuccessfully." The Soviet communiqué on the Shachaofeng affair, despite its firm tone, appeared unostentatiously in the following day's Pravda and Izvestiya under the headline, "Japanese Militarists Continue Their Provocation." The Japanese Embassy in Moscow heard nothing about the Shachaofeng affray until the morning of the 30th, when a wire was received from the Gaimusho that ten Russian soldiers had occupied a position northwest of Changkufeng and had begun trench work until ejected by frontier guards. Since the Russian communiqué spoke of afternoon fighting, American correspondents concluded that Soviet troops must have counterattacked and driven off the Japanese. No additional information was available to the public in Moscow on the 30th, perhaps because it was a holiday. Nevertheless, in the afternoon, Stalin's colleague Kaganovich addressed an immense crowd in Moscow on "Railroad Day" and at the conclusion of a long, vigorous speech said:  "The Soviet Union is prepared to meet all enemies, east or west." It certainly was not a fighting speech and there is no reason to suppose the Soviet will abandon its firm peace policy unless Japan deliberately forced the issue. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. Diplomacy flickered as Moscow pressed restraint and Tokyo whispered calculated bravado. As July wore on, both sides massed troops, built trenches, and sent scouts across the river. A tense, hidden war unfolded, skirmishes, patrols, and small advances, until a fleeting moment when force collided with restraint, and the hill's future hung in the frost.

durée : 03:59:25 - La Grande matinale - par : Sonia Devillers, Benjamin Duhamel, Florence Paracuellos, Anne-Laure Sugier - La grande matinale du mardi 25 novembre 2025 avec Aya Nakamura, Sébastien Chenu et Jean Louis Etienne. Vous aimez ce podcast ? Pour écouter tous les autres épisodes sans limite, rendez-vous sur Radio France.

This episode examines how low-load Blood Flow Restriction (BFR) training can enhance outcomes during Phase 2 of ACL reconstruction rehabilitation. Building on Part 1—which covered pre-operative and acute post-operative strategies—this instalment focuses on integrating BFR into early strengthening when high mechanical loads are still contraindicated.   Key findings from several clinical trials demonstrate that BFR can:   • Improve early quadriceps strength recovery compared with traditional low-load rehabilitation. • Produce hypertrophy comparable to heavy-load training but with much lower joint stress. • Reduce pain, swelling, and functional deficits during the early post-operative period. • Assist with restoring long-term limb symmetry, even months after surgery, through modalities such as BFR walking.   Together, these studies highlight BFR as a valuable adjunct in ACL rehabilitation, particularly when protecting the graft and surrounding joint structures while still driving meaningful physiological adaptation.  

Join SP3, Miss Krssi Luv and Top Guy JJ for an all-new edition of our flagship podcast Tru Heel Heat 355 discussing the latest wrestling news including: Time Stamps: 0:00 Intro 3:54 SP3 as HHH opens the show as objectively as possible 6:10 SP3 & Top Guy JJ welcome you to the show 11:44 TNA talk early on Santana reports 20:18 Cody Rhodes vs Randy Orton at WrestleMania? 33:24 AEW Dynamite: Blood & Guts and Collision 42:51 Was AEW Blood & Guts the best TV show of the year? 1:05:15 Miss Krssi Luv joins the show to talk Blood & Guts 1:18:00 Chris Jericho praises TNA in latest AEW exit tease 1:32:40 Nixon Newell & Miranda Alize AEW walkout fallout 1:35:52 Miss Krssi Luv shoots on Newell & Alize; the cau-casity 1:42:38 Andrade, Ric Flair, MJF, MVP & JR updates; Mercedes Mone #1 in PWI & ROH TV 2:06:38 NJPW New Japan Road in Anjo ft.Kazuchika Okada returns to confront Tanahashi; Nakamura rumor killer & should Okada/Tana headline WK20? 2:17:28 WWE Raw on Netflix ft. John Cena wins Intercontinental Title 2:28:46 Cena/Dom fallout; Survivor Series & WrestleMania 42 updates, Westside Gunn vs WWE 2:47:10 WWE SmackDown ft. Zack Ryder returns & Drew McIntyre joins Vision for WARGAMES 2:52:24 SmackDown returns to 3 hours in January, Drew McIntyre & Bianca Belair updates & more 3:09:42 WWE NXT & Evolve, Joe Hendry signs; NOAH Star Navigation 3:16:07 TNA IMPACT & Turning Point, plus Santana angle 3:23:40 Best, Worst, Moments & Matches of the Week 3:27:39 TIK TOK TIME - Grading every WWE & AEW free agent signings in 2025 Leave your thoughts on this podcast in the live chat and comments section. Like, share, superchat and subscribe to support! #WWE #AEW #BloodAndGuts #ChrisJericho #TNA #NJPW #ROH #CMLL #STARDOM #noah_ghc #WWENXT #TNATurningPoint #JohnCena #MikeSantana #FrankieKazarian #KazuchikaOkada #HiroshiTanahashi #njwk20 Welcome to the Tru Heel Heat Wrestling YouTube channel where we cover  the sport of professional wrestling including all WWE TV shows (Raw,  Smackdown, & NXT), AEW Dynamite/Dark, IMPACT Wrestling, NJPW, ROH,  Dark Side of the Ring and more. Our weekly podcast hosted by SP3, Top  Guy JJ & Miss Krssi Luv breaking down the weekly wrestling news and  present unfiltered, honest thoughts and opinions for wrestling fans by  wrestling fans, drops every Saturday. We also include PPV reviews,  countdowns, and exclusive interviews with wrestlers from all promotions  hosted by a wide range of personalities such as Romeo, Chris G, Ness,  StatKing, Drunk Guy JJ, J-News and more. Subscribe and enable ALL  notifications to stay posted for the latest wrestling WWE news,  highlights, commentary, updates and more.Become a member of Tru Heels Facebook community: www.facebook.com/groups/1336177103130224/Subscribe to Tru Heel Heat on YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UC0AmFQmsRyQYPKyRm5hDwNgFollow Tru Heels on Twitter: twitter.com/truheelheatFollow Tru Heels on Instagram: www.instagram.com/truheelheat/Music composed by JPM

Last time we spoke about the Soviet-Japanese Border Conflict. The border between Soviet Manchuria and Japanese-occupied territories emerges not as a single line but as a mosaic of contested spaces, marks, and memories. A sequence of incidents, skirmishes along the Chaun and Tumen rivers, reconnaissance sorties, and the complex diplomacy of Moscow, Tokyo, and peripheral actors to trace how risk escalated from routine patrols to calibrated leverage. On the ground, terrain functioned as both obstacle and argument: ridges like Changkufeng Hill shaping sightlines, river valleys shaping decisions, and markers weathered by snow, wind, and drift. In command tents, officers translated terrain into doctrine: contingency plans, supply routes, and the precarious calculus of restraint versus escalation. Both nations sought to establish firmer defensive barriers against the other. Inevitably they were destined to clash, but how large that clash would become, nobody knew.   #176 The Changkufeng Incident Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. In the last episode we broke down a general history of the Soviet-Japanese Border Conflict and how it escalated significantly by 1938. Colonel Inada Masazum serving as chief of the 2nd Operations Section within the Operations Bureau in March of 1938 would play a significant role in this story. When the Japanese command's attention was drawn to the area of Changkufeng, consideration was given to the ownership and importance of the disputed high ground. Inada and his operations section turned to an appraisal of the geography. The officers had been impressed by the strategic importance of the Tumen, which served to cut off the hill country from North Korea. In the Changkufeng area, the river was a muddy 600 to 800 meters wide and three to five meters deep. Japanese engineers had described rowing across the stream as "rather difficult."  Russian roads on the left bank were very good, according to Japanese intelligence. Heavy vehicles moved easily; the Maanshan section comprised the Russians' main line of communications in the rear. To haul up troops and materiel, the Russians were obliged to use trucks and ships, for there were no railways apart from a four-kilometer line between the harbor and town of Novokievsk. Near Changkufeng, hardly any roadways were suitable for vehicular traffic. On the right, or Korean, bank of the Tumen, there were only three roads suitable for vehicular traffic, but even these routes became impassable after a day or two of rain. In the sector between Hill 52 to the south and Shachaofeng to the north, the most pronounced eminences were Chiangchunfeng and the humps of Changkufeng. Rocky peaks were characteristically shaped like inverted T's, which meant many dead angles against the crests. The gentle slopes would allow tanks to move but would restrict their speed, as would the ponds and marshes. In general, the terrain was treeless and afforded little cover against aircraft. Against ground observation or fire, corn fields and tall miscanthus grass could provide some shielding. Between Chiangchunfeng and the Tumen, which would have to serve as the main route of Japanese supply, the terrain was particularly sandy and hilly. This rendered foot movement difficult but would reduce the effectiveness of enemy bombs and shells. The high ground east of Khasan afforded bases for fire support directed against the Changkufeng region. Plains characterized the rest of the area on the Soviet side, but occasional streams and swamps could interfere with movement of tanks and trucks. The only towns or villages were Novokievsk, Posyet, Yangomudy, and Khansi. At Kozando there were a dozen houses; at Paksikori, a few. The right bank was farmed mainly by Koreans, whose scattered cottages might have some value for billeting but offered none for cover. On the left bank, the largest hamlets were Fangchuanting, with a population of 480 dwelling in 73 huts, and Yangkuanping, where there were 39 cottages. Shachaofeng was uninhabited. Japanese occupation of Changkufeng would enable observation of the plain stretching east from Posyet Bay, although intelligence made no mention of Soviet naval bases, submarine pens, or airstrips in the immediate area of Posyet, either in existence or being built in 1938. As Inada knew, the Japanese Navy judged that Posyet Bay might have another use, as a site for Japanese landing operations in the event of war. In Russian hands, the high ground would endanger the Korean railway. This line, which started from Najin in northeastern Korea, linked up with the vital system in Manchuria at the town of Tumen and provided a short cut, if not a lifeline, between Japan and the Kwantung Army and Manchuria from across the Sea of Japan. Even from relatively low Changkufeng, six or seven miles of track were exposed to Soviet observation between Hongui and Shikai stations. The port of Najin, with its fortress zone, lay 11 miles southwest; Unggi lay even nearer. It was not the danger of Japanese shelling of Vladivostok, at an incredible range of 80 miles that was at stake but the more realistic hypothesis of Russian shelling of the rail line, and Russian screening of the Soviet side of the border. Hills and questions were thought to have two sides. It was the consensus of Japanese that Changkufeng Hill's potential value to the Russians far outweighed its possible benefits to them, or at least that the Japanese had more to lose if the Russians took the high ground by the Tumen. Inada nurtured few illusions concerning the intrinsic value of the heights. Despite the fact that the high command always had good reasons for quiescence in the north, Inada believed that the latest border difficulty could not be overlooked. By mid-July 1938 Inada's thoughts crystallized. The Japanese would conduct a limited reconnaissance in force known as iryoku teisatsu in the strategic sense. Whereas, at the tactical schoolbook level, this might mean the dispatch of small forces into enemy territory to seek local combat intelligence, at the Imperial General Headquarters level the concept was far more sweeping. There would also be useful evidence of mobilization and other buildup procedures. The affair at Changkufeng was merely a welcome coincidence, something started by the Russians but liable to Japanese exploration. Inada had no intention of seizing territory, of becoming involved in a war of attrition at a remote and minor spot, or of provoking hostilities against the USSR. The Russians would comprehend the nature of the problem, too. If they were interested in interfering seriously with the Japanese, there were numberless better locations to cause trouble along the Manchurian front; those were the places to watch. The cramped Changkufeng sector, described as "narrow like a cat's brow," could too readily be pinched off from Hunchun to render it of strategic value to either side. The bog land to the north interfered with the use of armored forces, while artillery sited on the heights along the Tumen in Korea could as easily control the area as batteries emplaced east of the lake. It was Inada's professional opinion that the Russians could commit three or four infantry divisions there at most, with no mechanized corps—no heavy tanks, in particular. No decisive battle could be waged, although, once the Russians became involved, they might have to cling to the hill out of a sense of honor. The military action would be meaningless even if the Japanese let the Russians have the heights. For their part, the Japanese would ostensibly be fighting to secure the boundary and to hold Changkufeng peak, beyond which they would not move a step onto Soviet soil. There would be no pursuit operations. Troop commitment would be limited to about one division without tank support. Japanese Air Force intervention would be forbidden. Matters would be directed entirely by Imperial General Headquarters working through the Korea Army chain of command and carried out by the local forces. Calm, clear, and dispassionate overall estimates and instructions would be based on materials available only in Tokyo. The command would not allow the Kwantung Army to touch the affair. Inada foresaw that the Japanese government might also seek a settlement through diplomacy. Although border demarcation was desirable and should be sought, the command would not insist on it, nor would it demand permanent occupation of Changkufeng summit. As soon as reconnaissance objectives had been achieved, the local forces would be withdrawn. As Inada described it "In the process, we would have taught the Russians some respect and given them a lesson concerning their repeated, high-handed provocations and intrusions. If a show of force sufficed to facilitate the negotiations and cause the Russians to back down, so much the better; the affair would be over and my point proved." The instrument for carrying out Inada's strategic design appeared to be ideal, the 19th Division, strenuously trained and high-spirited. It could be expected to perform very well if unleashed within defined limits. Colonel Suetaka was just the commander to direct local operations. Since he had been pleading to fight in China, an operation at Changkufeng might prove to be an excellent "safety valve." His staff was full of experienced, fierce warriors eager for battle. Until recently, the Korea Army commanding general had wisely kept the aggressive division away from Changkufeng Hill, but now Imperial general headquarters had its own overriding ideas and needs. How could the Japanese ensure that any military action would remain limited if the Russians chose to respond with vigor? Naturally, one infantry division, without armor or air support, could not withstand all of the Soviet forces in the maritime province. Inada answered that the mission to be assigned the 19th Division was merely the recapture of Changkufeng crest. If the Japanese side had to break off the operation, evacuation would be effected voluntarily and resolutely on Imperial general headquarters responsibility, without considerations of "face." At worst, the Japanese might lose one division, but the affair would be terminated at the Tumen River without fail. "Even so, we ought to be able to prove our theory as well as demonstrate our true strength to the Russians." In case the Soviets opted for more than limited war, the Japanese were still not so overextended in China that they could not alter their strategic disposition of troops. Although the Kwantung Army's six divisions were outnumbered four to one and the Japanese were not desirous of a war at that moment, the first-class forces in Manchuria could make an excellent showing. In addition, the high command possessed armor, heavy artillery, fighters, and bombers, held in check in Manchuria and Korea, as well as reserves in the homeland. There was also the 104th Division, under tight Imperial general headquarters control, in strategic reserve in southern Manchuria. Inada recalled "How would the Russians react? That was the answer I sought. Victory in China depended on it." By mid-July, the high command, at Inada's urging, had worked out a plan titled, "Imperial General headqaurters Essentials for Dealing with the Changkufeng Incident." Tada's telegram of 14 July to Koiso described succinctly the just-decided policy: the central authorities concurred with the Korea Army's opinion regarding the Changkufeng affair, then in embryo. Considering that Changkufeng Hill posed a direct threat to the frontier of Korea, Imperial General headqaurters would immediately urge the foreign ministry to lodge a stern protest. Next day, Tojo sent a telegram stating the Japanese policy of employing diplomacy; whether the Russians should be evicted by force required cautious deliberation in case the USSR did not withdraw voluntarily. On the basis of the guidance received from Imperial General headqaurters, the Korea Army drew up its own plan, "Essentials for Local Direction of the Changkufeng Incident," on 15 July. Intelligence officer Tsuchiya Sakae was sent promptly to the front from Seoul. At the same time, military authorities allowed the press to release news that Soviet troops were constructing positions inside Manchurian territory in an "obvious provocation." The government of Manchukuo was demanding an immediate withdrawal. Even then, those Japanese most closely connected with the handling of the Changkufeng Incident were not in agreement that everybody at command level was as ardent a proponent of reconnaissance in force as Inada claimed to be. Some thought that most, if not all, of his subordinates, youthful and vigorous, were in favor of the notion; others denied the existence of such an idea. Inada remained clear-cut in his own assertions. Everything done by the local Soviet forces, he insisted, must have been effected with the permission of Moscow; it was customary for the USSR not to abandon what it had once started. The Japanese Army never really thought that the Soviet Union would withdraw just as the result of diplomatic approaches. Therefore, from the outset, preparations were made to deal the Russians one decisive blow. Inada had recommended his plan, with its clear restrictions, to his colleagues and superiors; the scheme, he says, was approved 14 July "all the way up the chain of command, through the Army general staff and the ministry of war, with unexpected ease." The only real opposition, Inada recalled, came from the navy, whose staff advised the army operations staff, in all sincerity, to give up the idea of strategic reconnaissance. Inada adhered to his opinion stubbornly. He never forgot the grave look on the face of Captain Kusaka, the UN operations section chief, as the latter gave in reluctantly. The navy view was that the Changkufeng affair typified the army's aggressive policies as opposed to relative passivity on the part of the navy. Like Kusaka, Japanese Navy interviewees shared the fear that Changkufeng might prove to be the most dangerous military confrontation ever to occur between the USSR and Japan. In view of navy objections, one wonders where Inada could have drawn support for his concept of reconnaissance in force. If one accepts the comments contained in a letter from a navy ministry captain, Takagi Sokichi, to Baron Harada Kumao at the beginning of August, in the army and in a portion of the navy there existed "shallow-minded fellows who are apt to take a firm stand in the blind belief that the USSR would not really rise against us, neglecting the fact that the Russians had foreseen our weak points." Takagi also had violent things to say about "white-livered" Gaimusho elements that were playing up to the army. Although Takagi's remarks, expressed in confidence, were sharp, cautious injunctions were being delivered by the high command to the new Korea Army commander, General Nakamura Kotaro, who was about to leave for Seoul to replace Koiso. Nakamura's attitude was crucial for the course and outcome of the Changkufeng Incident. More of a desk soldier than a warrior, he characteristic ally displayed a wariness that was reinforced by the guidance provided him. This personal quality assumes even greater significance if one believes that the Russians may have initiated the Changkufeng Incident by exploiting the special opportunities afforded them by the routine replacement of the Korea Army commander, the temporary absence from Moscow of Ambassador Shigemitsu Mamoru, and the geographical as well as subjective gap between the Kwantung and Korea armies that was exposed during the Lyushkov affair. At 10:00 on 15 July Nakamura was designated army commander by the Emperor at the palace. Soon afterward, he was briefed by Imperial General headquarters officers. Hashimoto, the operations bureau chief, recalled that when he saw Nakamura off on 17 July, Hashimoto stressed prudence, limitation of any military action, and diplomatic solution of the problem. The new commanding general, Inada asserted, promised full cooperation. There was no mention, at this level, of Inada's concept of reconnaissance in force. When Nakamura reached Seoul, he found an Imperial order from Tokyo dated 16 July awaiting him. This important document stipulated that he could concentrate units under his command in Korea near the border against the trespassing Soviet forces in the Changkufeng area. Resort to force, however, was dependent upon further orders. This message was followed by a wire from Kan'in, the Army general staff chief. The Imperial order, it was explained, had been designed to support diplomatic negotiations. Simultaneous approval was granted for concentrating forces to respond swiftly in case the situation deteriorated. As for implementation of the Imperial order, discretion should be exercised in line with the opinion expressed earlier by Korea Army Headquarters. Negotiations were to be conducted in Moscow and Harbin, the location of a Soviet consulate in Manchukuo. Meanwhile, the command was dispatching two officers for purposes of liaison: Lt. Colonel Arisue Yadoru in Operations and Major Kotani Etsuo a specialist in Soviet intelligence. Inada advised Arisue that, apart from liaison flights inside the frontiers, particular care should be exercised with regard to actions that might lead to air combat. Nevertheless, although Inada stated that the Imperial order called for "a sort of military demonstration," he admitted that it meant preparatory action for an attack. The Korea Army senior staff officer, Iwasaki, recalled hearing nothing about secret intentions. Nakamura briefed his staff about the need for restraint, especially during this key period of the Wuhan operation. Koiso had disposed of speculation that he had issued an order to concentrate the 19th Division before Nakamura arrived, although he and Nakamura did have the opportunity to confer in Seoul before he departed for Japan. The Imperial order of 16 July, in response to Koiso's inquiry received in Tokyo on 14 July, had arrived in Seoul addressed to Nakamura; thereupon, the Korea Army chief of staff, Kitano, had the message conveyed to the division. By 21 July Koiso was back in Tokyo where, the day afterward, he advised the war minister, Itagaki, "to act prudently with respect to the Changkufeng problem." Why did the high command dispatch two field-grade liaison officers to Korea from the outset of the Changkufeng Incident? The Korea Army lacked operations staff. Its commander had been allotted prime responsibility, within the chain of command, for defense of northeastern Korea. At the beginning, the highest-ranking staff officer at the front was a major. Since there were no fundamental differences of opinion between the command and the forces in Korea, it was proper to send experts from Tokyo to assist. Imperial General headqaurters would observe the situation carefully, devise measures on the basis of the overall view, and issue orders which the Korea Army would implement through ordinary channels. It had not been the type of incident which required the army commander to go to the front to direct. This was the Korea Army's first test, and political as well as diplomatic problems were involved that the army in the field should not or could not handle. If Tokyo had left decisions to the division and its regiments, the latter would have been held to account, which was not proper. Imperial General headquarters had to assume responsibility and reassure local commanders of its full support. Imaoka Yutaka explained that operational guidance by Imperial General headquarters and line operations conducted by the 19th Division formed the core of the affair; the Korea Army, placed between, was "shadowy." Koiso had not been enthusiastic; this set the mood among the staff. Nakamura, who arrived with a thorough comprehension of AGS thinking, was basically passive. The Korea Army staff, in general, included no "wild boars."    There was an urgent need to monitor developments. Not only was the Korea Army unfamiliar with handling this type of incident, but many hitches occurred. There had been no practice in emergency transmission of coded wires between the Korea Army and Tokyo. Now telegram after telegram had to be sent; most were deciphered incorrectly and many were not decoded at all. Another problem centered on the lack of knowledge in Tokyo about the situation on the spot, which only visual observation could rectify. As a result, the two Army general staff experts, Arisue and Kotani, arrived in Korea on 16 July. Kotani recalled that he was to collect intelligence and assist the local authorities. One of the first duties that he and Arisue performed was to disseminate the principle that use of force required a prior Imperial order. Also on 16 July, Japanese newspapers reported that the USSR was still concentrating troops, that the Manchukuoan government was watching intently, "decisive punitive measures" were being contemplated by the Japanese-Manchukuoan authorities, and there were signs of a worsening of the crisis. Despite good reasons for this gloomy appraisal, the Japanese press had not yet given the incident page-one treatment. More alarming news was being disseminated abroad. Domei, the official Japanese news agency, reported that the situation would probably become worse unless Soviet troops were withdrawn. The position of the Japanese government impressed foreign correspondents as unusually firm. Informants characterized the Changkufeng Incident as the most serious affair since the clash on the Amur River in 1937. Irked by the Korea Army's timidity and eager for first-hand information, the Kwantung Army dispatched two observers to the front: from Intelligence, Ogoshi Kenji, and from Operations, Tsuji Masanobu. If you listen to my pacific war week by week podcast or echoes of war, you know I highlight Tsuji Masanobu as one of the most evil Japanese officers of WW2. No other way to describe this guy, he was a shithead. In his memoirs, Tsuji asserted that he and Ogoshi climbed Changkufeng Hill, discerned Soviet soldiers digging across the peak in Manchurian territory, and concluded that "probably even Tokyo could not overlook such a clear-cut case of invasion." Although his account aligned with the general thrust, Ogoshi contended that Tsuji could not have accompanied him. According to sources with the 19th Division, when Koiso learned that Tsuji and Ogoshi were disparaging the Korea Army's ability to defend Changkufeng, he ordered "those spies" ousted. Ogoshi replied that the army staff was not angry, but Koiso did become furious and ordered Ogoshi "arrested for trespassing." Ogoshi surmised that Koiso's concern was that emotional outsiders such as Tsuji could provoke trouble, perhaps even war, if they visited Changkufeng. This view was widely shared. Inada stated that he made a practice of keeping away to maintain the degree of detachment and impartiality required of high command authorities. One sidelight to the "fraternal" visit to the Changkufeng area by observers from Hsinking was provided by Lt. Colonel Katakura Tadashi, chief of the Kwantung Army's 4th Section, which handled Manchukuo affairs, primarily political direction. When Katakura visited the Operations Section, Tsuji and Ogoshi told him that an intrusion had been confirmed and that the Kwantung Army staff was studying ways to evict the Soviets. Katakura consulted Maj. General Ishiwara Kanji, acting chief of staff, who was already in possession of the draft of an operations order calling for offensive preparations by the Kwantung Army against the Russians at Changkufeng. Katakura asked for reconsideration of the order. This was not a matter to be handled solely by the operations staff. Borders and international affairs were involved; hence the 4th Section, along with the Manchukuoan government, the Gaimusho, and other agencies, were concerned. Field observers were expressing exaggerated personal opinions based on having seen Soviet sentries on a hilltop. If the matter fell within the Korea Army's defensive prerogative, that army ought to handle it. Apparently the Kwantung Army commander and Ishiwara agreed with Katakura, for the draft order was not approved. The so-called private message dispatched by a Kwantung Army staff officer just before Koiso's departure may have been provoked by this rejection of direct participation by forces under Kwantung Army command. Staff officers in Tokyo believed that Hsinking could not see the forest for the trees. In the high command's view, the Kwantung Army's deliberate escalation of a negligible frontier incident undoubtedly stemmed from a failure to grasp the strategic requirements of national defense—pursuit of the campaign in China, the nurturance of Manchukuo, and the buildup of operational readiness for the ultimate solution of the Soviet problem. The high command felt obliged to remind the Kwantung Army that, in dealing with the Changkufeng Incident, the central authorities pressed for a Russian pullback through diplomacy. Consequently, the Korea Army had been instructed to be ready to concentrate troops near Changkufeng as a "background." Meanwhile, it remained the Imperial will that utmost prudence be exercised. The Kwantung Army commander accordingly issued cautious instructions to subordinate units, especially those on the eastern border. The high command's injunctions did not end the discontent and recrimination at the lower levels of Kwantung Army Headquarters, nor did they quiet the concern felt in Tokyo. A former war minister told Baron Harada repeatedly in late July that the Kwantung Army was "no good," while the superintendent of police added that the Kwantung Army was embarrassing Foreign Minister Ugaki. Nevertheless, the Kwantung Army did exert self-restraint. For its part, the Korea Army naïvely sought to achieve entente with an antagonist who considered the case nonnegotiable. First, the government of Manchukuo was asked to lodge a formal protest with the USSR. The commissioner for foreign affairs at Harbin phoned V. V. Kuznetzov, the acting consul, on the night of 14 July and saw him on the 18th. Basing its contentions on maps, the Haensing regime demanded Soviet withdrawal from Changkufeng. The Japanese government was lodging similar protests within the framework of Japanese-Manchukuoan joint defense agreements. On the spot, the situation inflamed. During the afternoon of 15 July, a Japanese military police patrol from Korea reconnoitered at the foot of Hill 52, southeast of Changkufeng. The party came under Soviet gunfire and was driven back, abandoning the body of Corp. Matsushima Shakuni. Japanese sources claimed that a Russian ambush had been set inside Manchuria. The Russian side insisted that it was the Soviet frontier that had been violated by thirty meters. Kuzma Grebennik, the colonel commanding the 59th BGU, which covered the Posyet sector, asserted that Matsushima's effects included a notebook containing reconnaissance results and a camera with film of Soviet-claimed terrain, particularly Changkufeng Hill. According to Maj. Gilfan Batarshin, a subordinate of Grebennik, two Russian border guards from Podgornaya opened fire when the Japanese fled after being challenged. Japanese protests to the USSR about the death of Matsushima and the taking of his body were added to the negotiations concerning the disputed border and the alleged trespassing. Charge Nishi Haruhiko lodged a vigorous complaint in Moscow on 15 July but was answered by a counterprotest. Ambassador Shigemitsu underwent an identical experience during a conversation with Foreign Commissar Maxim Litvinov on 20 July. Shigemitsu retorted that the murder tended to exacerbate the negotiations. In his memoirs, he stated that the killing of Matsushima provoked the local Japanese border garrison unit. The shooting occurred as the Soviet military buildup continued, according to Japanese sources. Mechanized units were reported moving in the direction of Kyonghun from Barabash and Posyet Bay. Biplanes were reconnoitering the Hunchun Valley, within Manchurian territory, from the afternoon of 16 July. To the local Japanese authorities, it seemed that the Russians were adopting a challenging attitude. Although the Japanese-Manchukuoan side remained willing to negotiate—that is, to take no forceful actions if the Russians would withdraw, the latter appeared not to share such an intention. The Soviets were not only misinterpreting the Hunchun treaty to their advantage but were encroaching beyond what they claimed to be the line; they "lacked sincerity." Decisive use of force might have been imperative to secure the Manchurian border, which was Japan's legal responsibility. As far north as Tungning on the eastern Manchurian frontier, two Soviet ground divisions and considerable numbers of tanks and aircraft were reported massed in full view. At Changkufeng, Russian soldiers fortified the crest. Mountain guns were now seen with muzzles pointed toward Manchuria, and Japanese intelligence estimated that Soviet troop strength near Changkufeng had grown to 120 or 130 by the evening of 18 July. As Sawamoto Rikichiro, an Imperial aide, noted in his diary, "It would seem that settlement of the affair had become increasingly difficult." Korea Army staff officer Tsuchiya sent two emissaries bearing the notice to the Soviet border. The pair, "blazing with patriotic ardor,"set out on 18 July, carrying a message in one hand and a white flag in the other. From Kyonghun came the report the next day that there had been an urgent, well-attended Soviet staff meeting at BGU Headquarters in Novokievsk all night, and that the Russian side had been discomfited by the Japanese request, which had been transmitted to higher authorities. Still, the emissaries did not return, while a stream of reports indicated a Soviet buildup along a dozen frontier sectors. Russian authorities had reportedly forced the natives to evacuate an area twenty miles behind their borders. From Japanese observation posts, Soviet convoys of men, guns, and horses could be sighted moving toward Novokievsk after being unloaded from transports originating at Vladivostok. Japanese Army Intelligence reported that on 18 July a regimental-size force had arrived at Novokievsk; artillery displacements forward were particularly visible by night east of Khasan. A confidential Gaimusho message indicated that Soviet truck movements between Posyet, Novokievsk, and the front had increased since the 20th. Russian intrusions, kidnappings, and sniping incidents were reported along the Manchurian borders, from Manchouli on the west to Suifenho on the east, between 18 and 25 July. Aircraft on daytime reconnaissance were detected as far as three miles inside Manchurian territory in the Hunchun area. Although the Japanese asserted that their forbearance was being tested, Izvestiya charged "Japanese militarists" with manufacturing an affair at Ussuri as well as at Changkufeng. The Japanese themselves received reports from the Changkufeng front that by 20 July the Soviets had 250 soldiers, armed with field pieces, trench mortars, howitzers, and light and heavy machine guns, on the southern slopes. The Russians were putting up tents capable of holding 40 men each; officers could be observed for the first time. On the evening of the 20th, the Soviets lobbed illuminating shells toward Manchurian territory. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. Inada Masazum, studying maps and mud, saw Changkufeng Hill as a prize with peril, a test of nerve rather than a conquest. Tokyo's orders pulsed through Seoul and Harbin: guard, probe, and deter, but avoid full-scale war. Across the border, Soviet units pressed closer, lights and tents flickering on the hillside. The sea within sight whispered of strategy, diplomacy, and a warning: a single misstep could redraw Asia. And so the standoff waited, patient as winter.

Jey Uso picked up a big win over The Miz, which sparked discussion about why Miz—Cena's most frequent opponent—wasn't included in the legend's retirement tour. Meanwhile, Rusev stunned Damien Priest, and Matt Cardona (formerly Zack Ryder) made his surprise return as a mystery challenger before falling to LA Knight, just as #FBCBeKnowin predicted. Is Cardona officially on his way back to WWE? Sheamus toppled Nakamura, while upcoming matches include GUNTHER vs. Je'Von Evans and Solo Sikoa vs. a mystery opponent on Raw, plus Carmelo Hayes vs. Bronson Reed and Penta vs. Finn Balor on SmackDown. The crew debates who got “snubbed” from the tournament after Cena captured the Intercontinental Championship to become a certified Grand Slam Champion. Attention then turns to Survivor Series War Games, with predictions nearly finalized. Team Punk—CM Punk, Cody Rhodes, The Usos, and a mystery partner—are slated to face The Vision's crew of Bron Breakker, Bronson Reed, Logan Paul, Drew McIntyre, and another TBA. Bang's bold call: Damien Priest joins Team Punk while Aleister Black aligns with The Vision. Could Lesnar and Reigns return to shake up the card? And more importantly… do we care? Women's War Games is heating up as Nikki Bella's shocking heel turn against Stephanie Vaquer sets the stage: Rhea Ripley, Iyo Sky, Alexa Bliss, and two TBD teammates take on Nia Jax, Lash Legend, and The Kabuki Warriors. Meanwhile, SmackDown may stage a classic 5-on-5 Survivor Series Elimination match featuring MFT versus Sami Zayn, Rey Fenix, Nakamura, and The Motor City Machine Guns.

Benno and JP on another Wednesday Spotlight talk the announcement of Okada vs Tanahashi for WrestleKingdom, Nakamura and Naito rumours, and more drama between AEW and WWE, plus the Nixon Newell and Miranda Alize story, Ridge Holland's confusing statements and the other big news stories of the week.They also talk the state of Eddie Kingson, the US indies, Pro Wrestling Eve, Chris Jericho, NOAH and Rev Pro, as well as a bizarre Jey Uso and Chelsea story, Michael Owen and Hulk Hogan, CM Punk's hair and a Linkin Park Lucha show.SHOWNOTES0:00 Intro, Plugs26:01 WrestleKingdom, Okada vs Tanahashi, Nakamura, Naito rumours48:03 Nixon Newell, Mirana Alize, Ridge Holland1:02:11 Deadlock, Prestige, state of the US Indies, EVE1:22:39 AEW Cardiff, Manchester sales, Eddie Kingson, Full Gear1:33:19 Chris Jericho, TNA Bound for Glory1:41:22 WWE, Raw, CM Punk, Dom vs John1:57:42 NOAH, Rev Pro, And Finally2:14:25 5 to 1 TIERLIST PREVIEWGRAPPL Spotlight is produced with support from our Patrons and YouTube members, with special thanks to Patreon Kings and Queen Of The Mountain - Conor O'Loughlin, Eddie Sideburns, Chris Platt, Carl Gac, Sophia Hitchcock, Simon Mulvaney & Marty Ellis!You can find all of our live shows on YouTube by becoming a Member at ⁠http://www.Youtube.com/@GRAPPL,⁠ or join us on Patreon for both live video and audio replays at ⁠http://www.patreon.com/GRAPPL!⁠You can also join us on the GRAPPL Discord for free athttps://discord.gg/KqeVAcwctS⁠ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this week's episode of the Wade Keller Pro Wrestling Post-show from five years ago (10-30-2020), PWTorch editor Wade Keller was joined by PWTorch's Rich Fann. They discussed WWE Friday Night Smackdown on Fox with callers and emails including Roman Reigns gives Jey Uso the ultimatum and Jey responds, Kevin Owens vs. Dolph Ziggler, Daniel Bryan vs. Jey Uso, Cesaro & Shinsuke Nakamura vs. The Street Profits, and more.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/wade-keller-pro-wrestling-post-shows--3275545/support.

Welcome to Mysteries to Die For.I am TG Wolff and am here with Jack, my piano player and producer. This is a podcast where we combine storytelling with original music to put you in the heart of a mystery. All stories are structured to challenge you to beat the detective to the solution. Jack and I perform these live, front to back, no breaks, no fakes, no retakes.The rules for law and order create the boundaries for civil co-existence and, ideally, the backdrops for individuals, families, and companies to grow and thrive. Breaking these rules puts civil order at risk. And while murder is the Big Daddy of crimes, codified ordinances across municipal divisions, counties, states, and countries show the nearly endless ways there are to create mayhem. This season, we put our detective skills to the test. This is Season 8, Anything but Murder. This is Episode 20, menacing is the featured crime. This is Audubon's Ghost by Margaret S. HamiltonDeliberationNick isn't getting the crime free honeymoon Lizzie promised him. With our help, they can close the book on this bird-brained caper. A real Audubon painting was hidden away and someone is willing to menace to get it. Here are the suspects in the order that we met themAl McGuire, actor who claimed to be an Australian touristSam Broussard, professional thief and con artistOfficer Landry, police officer who saved Ed and CarolTony Robichaux, curator of the Audubon Museum at Oakley PlantationDr. Nakamura, rightful owner of the Audubon watercolorsABOUT Menacing as a crimeIn general, menacing is where a person uses a threat or action to cause another person to be in fear of serious bodily damage or death. It can range from a misdemeanor to a felony depending on the severity. Definitions do vary somewhat by state. There aren't “famous” cases of menacing because, alone, it is not considered a serious crime. Menacing does often end up being a component of other charges such as stalking and harassment. A few cases for you to gnaw on. In 2008, Christopher Szaz pleaded guilty to federal civil rights charges for threatening employees of the National Council of La Raza and the Council on American Islamic Relations. He sent emails threatening to bomb offices and kill employees, which met the legal definition of menacing. ABOUT Margaret S. HamiltonMargaret S. Hamilton is the author of forty short stories, many of them set in the fictional small town of Jericho, Ohio. She has also published stories set in the Dordogne region of southwest France, Cape Cod, New Orleans, and 1950's Cincinnati.Margaret's debut traditional mystery, What the Artist left Behind, is on submission. It was a 2019 Daphne Mainstream Mystery Finalist. She is writing the next two books in her Jericho Mysteries series about amateur sleuth Lizzie Christopher and her husband Nick Cameron.Margaret is a member of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America, and blogs monthly on the Writers Who Kill blog. She lives in suburban Cincinnati with her husband and two standard poodles, Jazz and Louie. She is an avid traveler, gardener, and photographer.WRAP UPThat wraps this episode of Mysteries to Die For. Support our show by subscribing, telling a mystery lover about us, and giving us a five-star review. Check out our NEW website m2d4podcast.com for links to this season's authors.Mysteries to Die For is hosted by TG Wolff and Jack Wolff. Audubon's Ghost was written by Margaret S. Hamilton. Music and production are by Jack Wolff. Episode art is by TG Wolff. Join us next week for a Toe Tag, which is the first chapter from a fresh release in the mystery, crime, or thriller genre. Then come back in two weeks for our...

NXT's Halloween Havoc 2025 brought big moments and fresh direction across the board. Je'Von Evans & Leon Slater shined in the opener, Ethan Page retained in a brutal Day of the Dead match, and new champions emerged with Blake Monroe, Tatum Paxley, and DarkState all capturing gold. Ricky Saints closed the night with a clean win over Trick Williams, keeping his title reign steady as new challengers line up. In WWE, Seth Rollins' injury forced changes to Survivor Series: WarGames, but the CM Punk–Roman Reigns alliance remains intact. Bron Breakker and Bronson Reed now anchor The Vision, ensuring the match still delivers major star power. Over in AEW, Tony Khan officially launched the Women's World Tag Team Title Tournament, featuring Jamie Hayter's return, Mercedes Moné & Athena's alliance, and Storm & Shirakawa's pairing, with the finals expected at Full Gear. Meanwhile, Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Shinsuke Nakamura is heavily rumored for Wrestle Kingdom 20, potentially serving as Tanahashi's retirement match. Elsewhere, AAA's Heroes Inmortales saw Dominik Mysterio retain his title, and The Wyatt Sicks escalate their eerie takeover. It was a week defined by new champions, shifting alliances, and dream match rumors — proof that wrestling's global storytelling keeps getting bigger and bolder.

The last time we spoke, Ishiwara had been spending considerable amounts of time with the Kwantung Army staff trying to figure out a way to push the envelope on seizing Manchuria. Ishiwara and his like minded colleagues had tried everything to persuade the Imperial Japanese army high command to initiate a course of action, but everytime the message was the same “wait, wait until next year, we can't do this at this time”. In 1931 Ishiwara and Itagaki organized the last major expedition into Northern Manchuria to get the newest recruited Kwantung officers up to speed and ready for plans they had been cooking up. Captain Nakamura Shintaro disappeared on the way back to Port Arthur. The Kwantung officers took the initiative, one could call it “Gekokujo / ruling from below” because without approval, in fact basically against the orders of high command they mobilized their forces outside their designated railway zone and headed for Mukden to quote “get the Chinese military to help investigate the Nakamura disappearance”. When Tokyo HQ got a whiff of this they dispatched a telegram immediately demanding the Kwantung officers get their men back and not use the Nakamura incident as a way of “solving the Manchurian problem”   For Ishiwara this was the last straw. He doubled down and pushed for a plot to provoke military conflict outside of Mukden. As he wrote in almost a messianic Nichiren conviction ‘I will be the pillar of Japan; I will be the eyes of Japan; I will be the great vessel of Japan” . During the last hectic weeks, General Honjo Shigeru arrived to take command of the Kwantung Army and there is no solid evidence Ishiwara and his radical group had disclosed their plans to him. However when everything began to move into motion, Honjo agreed to Ishiwara's military solution for the Manchurian problem.   On september 18th of 1931, a bomb was planted by the Kwantung army upon the south manchurian railway tracks at Liutiaokou. There was an explosion and the Kwantung army immediately claimed it to be a Chinese plot and moved with skill and precision to overrun the Peitaying Barracks. General Honjo's first reaction was hesitation, but then he committed additional units to aid the radicals and upon seeing the chaos unfold, ordered the seizure of all of Mukden in the process. Investigators would find the actions of Honjo over the course of the next few days to be quite indecisive. At first he seemed to be attempting to localize the incident, but then, likely as a result of Ishiwara and Itagaki pressuring him, relented to ordering a general assault on all Chinese positions in the area. Thus what was a isolated incident, transformed into a major offensive, and that major offensive was largely directed by two of Honjo's subordinates, as you may guess Ishiwara and Itagaki.   Now after the bomb explosion, the next 10 days saw southern and central Manchuria suddenly under the control of the Kwantung army. Itagaki as a senior staff officer and full colonel, was technically Ishiwara's superior, but for the next 4 months it appears Ishiwara was the main driver behind the military actions. Itagaki was quote to say to a friend during the offensive “Never mind Honjo, it's Ishiwara's War”. And indeed, being so far from Tokyo HQ's control, it really was Ishiwara's war. Tokyo dispatched official orders on September the 19th opposing the offensive, despite a lot of sympathy for the cause amongst the high commanders. Ishiwara and Inagaki had been planning this for months, they were willing to risk it all, so they disobeyed and carried on. Ishiwara began by first coercing Honjo for reinforcements and freedom to take initiative, as he was quoted asking ‘to pursue actively the security and order of all of Manchuria”.   Now obviously Ishiwara and Itagaki wanted to expand the offensive through the officials means firstmost, but they definitely went around the officials channels as well. One devious method they employed was to create chaos for civilians in Manchurian cities, thus increasing the need for better security for Japanese residents. This would allow the Kwantung army troops to deploy past their set perimeters. Immediately after what is now called “the Mukden incident”, military agents were dispatched to Kirin to create some chaos within the city. Reports of incidents from Kirin began to poor into the Kwantung Army HQ alongside Ishiwara demanding Honjo dispatch forces to Kirin to protect Japanese residents there. He also advocated for demanding reinforcements from the Korea Army, but Honjo was unwilling to go that far. It seems Ishiwara feared missing a golden opportunity and chose another course of action. On the night of the 20th, he gathered together a bunch of younger Kwantung officers such as Itagaki's assistant, Captain Katakura Tadashi and told them “I can't do anything more to budge the commander and so i'm giving up my responsibilities for the direction of operations. Katakura, you take over”. Well it seems this little ploy had the intended effect as all the young officers immediately began pressuring Honjo to support Ishiwara's demands to advance to Kirin, many of them threatening to resign. After several hours of the officers nagging, Honjo related and authorized the despatch of troops.    The operation against Kirin was carried out in lightning fast speed. Ishiwara directed the bulk of the 2nd division led by General Tamon Jiro to rush over to Kirin by rail. They entered the city without firing a single shot and forced the local Chinese commander to proclaim the independence of the province from Zhang Xueliang's regime. Within hours after this, the Korea army responded to a aid request sent out by the Kwantung Army staff on september 21st and began moving into Manchuria. Within only 48 hours the Japanese military had seized Kirin which lay outside the Kwantung operational zone and the Korea army was invading Manchuria without any approval from Tokyo, military discipline thus had been shattered.    Chief of staff Kanaya Hanzo had issued specific orders to limit the scope of the Kwantung army's operations and entrusted discretionary authority to the field commanders for certain emergency situations, usually of a local nature. The Kirin expedition did not exactly fall within any of these boundaries. Bolstered by their success, Ishiwara and Itagaki followed up the Kirin operation by pressing for an advance upon Harbin. As you might recall from the previous episode, the entire idea of taking Manchuria was built upon speed and precision. The Kwantung army had tiny forces compared to the immediate Chinese forces in Manchuria. However here they were blocked by directives sent from Tokyo HQ which forbade the movement of Kwantung troops beyond the south manchuria railway, up to this point they had limited their actions along those margins. Ishiwara attempted arguing something on more political lines. He argued Japan should aid Manchurian independence and sent the idea straight to Tokyo central HQ. In a sharp rebuff on October 3rd, Tokyo HQ affirmed its opposition to expanding the hostilities and rejected the political idea.   With the hard no from Tokyo HQ, the Kwantung radicals thought the only course of action was to cause even more chaos to force the issue. Ishiwara took the lead again, trying to toss Tokyo HQ off balance. Ishiwara personally went out on October the 8th, dressed in military pilot gear and slipped into one of five Chinese aircraft that had been seized at Mukdens airfield. He then personally led a raid, though later in life, such as at the Tokyo War crimes trials he would argue the flight was supposed to be just a reconnaissance of enemy activities at Chinchou. As he asserted, it was only at the last minute, some intelligence sprang up that anti-aircraft guns had been installed at Chinchou and thus the Kwantung army Commander had given permission to neutralize them if fired upon. Ishiwara stated that he and the 4 other aircraft accompanying him were fired upon and thus they dropped around 75 bombs on Chinchou, yes quite the course of events. As you might guess, more contemporary accounts would indicate this was a premeditated effort designed to freak out Tokyo.    The raid against Chinchou did indeed freak out Tokyo, the staff there began to fear the west would begin tossing condemnation upon them. Tokyo high command was in a bad spot. They felt obliged to back up the Kwantung army publically, by issuing post-facto approval of the many chaotic attacks, but internally they were livid. Major Endo Saburo of the intelligence division was sent to Manchuria to investigate the Chinchou situation. Saburo said upon asking Ishiwara what occurred, he responded that he had acted under the principle of field initiative and that was the reason why he never informed Tokyo in advance. Saburo also noted the manner in which he spoke to him indicated that Saburo alongside the intelligence division should mind their own business. Saburo also found out there were murmurs in Manchuria that if Tokyo high command did not get onboard, the Kwantung army was prepared to go it alone. It seemed the radical Kwantung officers would even go against the imperial japanese army command to get what they wanted. Ishiwara went as far as to send this telegram to Tokyo “For the sake of the nation we are doing our very best in Manchuria, but if the Japanese government constantly interferes we cannot complete our great work. Then the Kwantung army will have to come to the point where we will have to break the glorious history of the imperial army and separate ourselves from the empire”.If you thought this was pretty nuts, a rumor also emerged that Ishiwara and Itagaki were going to use an independent Manchuria as a base to perform a coup d'etat against the Japanese government, to overthrow the capitalists strangling the people and to establish a national socialist regime built around the emperor. For those of you who know your 1930's Japanese government by assassination history, you know exactly what this rumor is about, a little something that will occur in 1936. Whether Ishiwara and Itagaki actually intended to do this is unknown, but they certainly put out the word.   On october 18th, war minister Minami Jiro sent a telegram over to the Kwantung army ordering them to cease any and all talk of making Manchuria independent or trying to take control of it. Alongside that, they sent operations section, Colonel Imamura Hitoshi to Manchuria to talk some sense into Ishiwara and Itagaki. They all met at a restaurant in Mukden where Imamura began by explaining the purpose of his mission, but before he could even really begin, Ishiwara blurted out “whats the matter? Doesn't central headquarters have any backbone?” A great way to start a meeting to be sure. Imamura tried to explain the situation, but Ishiwara said “if we follow the spineless Tokyo approach we'll never settle the Manchurian problem”. Imamura replied “we can't accomplish anything by following the arbitrary decision of field elements, which may create a crisis that will shake the whole army. In such a problem it is essential for the whole nation to be unified”. To this Ishiwara apparently said really loudly in the restaurant that he was sleepy, rolled over on the tatami and closed his eyes. Imamura furious haha, get up quickly after denouncing his so called hosts for conducting official IJA business at a restaurant and left. The next day they all met again, where Ishiwara and Itagaki kept speaking about the necessity to create an independent state, since there was no hope of the Chinese reforming Manchuria. After Imamura left that meeting, Ishiwara said to Itagaki “Imamura is a fine fellow, but he doesn't understand China”.   And so despite the chaos and mania, the Kwantung Army had been restrained from pursuing any sustained military action through october. Ishiwara as you would imagine kept arguing they had to advance into northern manchuria. In early november Ishiwara got lucky again, finding a pretext in more destroyed railways. The rail bridges over the Nonni river south of Tsitsihar had allegedly been blown up by hostile Chinese forces. When Japanese engineer units showed up to repair the damaged tracks they were fired upon by Chinese forces. To the high officials in Tokyo it looked like a justifiable reason to take defensive measures. This was also being meet with Kwantung intelligence information being sent to Tokyo that Chinese forces in northern Manchuria were planning a southward offensive. Ishiwara had provided some rather exaggerated reports to the Japanese public to manipulate their opinion through the press which in turn put pressure on Tokyo into supporting an advance into northern manchuria.   Tokyo authorized a defensive operation, limited to time and distance aimed at defending the Japanese positions at the Nonni River bridges. Kwantung army forces began moving north and soon were engaged in heavy fighting around the railway area of Tahsing. Ishiwara personally led men during this, it would actually be the only time in his military career to do so. General Honjo, rightfully feared the Kwantung forces were getting out of hand sent a cabled on November 5th announcing under the “rinsan inmei / provisional mandate”, the general staff was assuming direct command authority in Manchuria. As you can imagine Ishiwara and his like minded Kwantung officer colleagues were livid. Honjo followed this up by stating he would resign if they did not comply, but Ishiwara brushed off the provisional mandate stating “that the directive from the chief of staff is just a personal, not an imperial order. No matter how many we get of those we shouldn't' care. We'll just go ahead with our plans”. On november 17, the Kwantung army began advancing upon the city of Tsitsihar seizing it 2 days later.    Facing yet another terrible situation publicly, the IJA high command allowed the Kwantung to advance upon Tsitsihar, but then uproar started abroad, forcing them to order the city evacuated. Ishiwara then began a huge argument amongst the staff stating the evacuation was unacceptable because of the sacrifices the forces had already made. But Honjo was standing firm. Then a few days later, Chinese forces began to assemble at Chinchou  and there had been some conflicts emerging between Japanese and chinese forces at Tientsin. Well Ishiwara immediately went to work demanding Honjo launch an offensive on Chinchou as a first step of linking their forces closer to Tientsin incase they were overwhelmed. To secure the advance, they also asked the Korea army to help out. Yet again Tokyo was tossed the hot potato. Tokyo high command ordered an immediate cease to the offensive and a withdrawal east of the Liao river. The Kwantung army paused, not so much before of the order, but because the Korea army refused to participate in the offensive against Chinchou, and they were most definitely needed.    Ishiwara faced a dilemma, without the reinforcements the entire offensive might be doomed. And then fatefully, Premier Wakatsuki was outed on December 11th.War Minister Minami and Chief of staff Kanaya, both who tried to moderate the Kwantung army's offensives were replaced by Araki Sadao an aggressive leader of the Kodoha Faction, known in english as “the imperial way faction”. To explain a bit, within the Japanese military there were cliques, kind of like the warlords cliques in many ways. They fought to direct the future operations of the IJA and even IJN to an extent. There were two main ones that influenced the 1930's heavily, the Kodoha and Toseiha (control faction). The Kodoha were not an organized political party, nor did they have an official standing within the IJA, but they were certainly influential. Kodoha members tended to be younger officers in the IJA, particularly those in the Kwantung army. General Sadao Araki was a founder of the faction and they were heavily influenced by Bushido, Fascism and the Kokutai. They sought a return to “the good old days” as one says. They say liberal democracy as a poison hurting Japan. They viewed the capitalists, industrialists and elites of Japan, ie the politicians, bureaucrats and Zaibatsu leaders to be responsible for ruining the once great nation. They wanted to see the Emperor take back full power, in what they would call a “showa restoration”. Their number one enemy, as was viewed by most of the Japanese military at this time, was the USSR and communism as a whole. Thus they were also by proxy in favor of the Hokushin-ron “northern strike policy” which was the Japanese theoretical war plan to invade the USSR. Now I don't want to go to far down the rabbit whole, but due note they were counter balanced by another faction known as the Toseiha faction, who were I guess to put it lightly, more moderate. The Toseiha were headed by Hideki Tojo famously and they opposed the Kodoha faction on a few grounds, one important one being, they did not want to cause a violent revolution to usher in the Emperor dominance. The Toseiha shared a lot of principles with the Kodoha, but they did not favor the Hokushin-ron strategy and instead adopted the Nanshin-ron strategy “southern strike” into southeast asia and the resource rich dutch east indies. It goes without saying the Toseiha faction enjoyed better relations with the IJN. So just to place this story within the political realm we are speaking, these two factions began to compete heavily for dominance 1931 onwards.   With Araki Sadao and some help from Prince Kan'in who was a Kodoha sympathizer things dramatically changed in Tokyo command. All of a sudden, offensive operations against Chinese forces in Manchuria became “bandit suppression” campaigns. The Kwantung army with Tokyo's full backing soon pursued all their military objectives, set out by Ishiwara and Itagaki since September. Chinchou and Shanhaikwan were seized in early January of 1932; Tsitsihar by February and by spring of 1932 Ishiwara argued to the staff they should complete the full seizure of Manchuria both north and south. In April that year he laid out “Manshu haiti heiryaku / the program for pacification of manchuria”. This new plan called for the seizure of Hailar in the north because “it was pivotal to the defense against the USSR”. It also called for seizing Jehol province because “it was an important condition to the independence of Manchuria”. By the end of the year Hailar was taken and in 1933 the Kwantung army was marching upon Jehol.   It goes without saying Ishiwara was central to the conquest of Manchuria. The Kwantung Army and IJA overall had numerous options laid bare to them to solve the Manchurian problem, but Ishiwara's primary concern was total control over Manchuria for its resources, strategic position and to obtain a continental base for a war against America. To Ishiwara, taking all of Manchuria was necessary to prepare for the Final War. Without Ishiwara it is certain there would have been conflict in Manchuria between Japan and China, but would Japan have outright seized the province? Ishiwara spent years planning and pushing the envelope. When the plan was unleashed, it would turn out Ishiwara and his colleagues did not have a concrete timetable for conquest and lacked quite a few contingency plans. Despite the chaotic nature of it all, the conquest of Manchuria was a stunning success. So much so, Ishiwara said to a friend of his, Satomi Kishio in 1932 “Even if Japan has to face the entire world, she can't be beaten”.   Ironically as many of you know, Japan's actions in Manchuria cost her greatly. Japan was now hated by the Chinese, well much more so. The west condemned Japan's actions, alongside the USSR. As my professor first taught me in a class about the Pacific War when I was a wee lad in his early 20's “It all was about Manchuria, everything started with Manchuria, and it ended with Manchuria in 1945”. The Manchuria affair started Japan on an inevitable course to fight the China War, which inturn led her to fight the west. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. The entire affair also brings into question the subject of military discipline. Many look at the Gekokujo variable as an explanation as to how people like Ishiwara and Itagaki got away with all they did. You know, these militarist hardtype junior officers just ran amok, performed some rebellious acts defying their superiors, forcing their hands to become accomplices. Now don't get me wrong Gekokujo definitely played a hand, particularly when you look at Ishiwara. But it does not take away from the fact there simply was a high level of indiscipline within the Japanese army.   Ishiwara would have been 100% fully aware what his actions might result in, hell the guy before him, Colonel Komoto Daisaku is a great example. Ishiwara spent a long time with Komoto and saw the man's career broken as he was exiled for the Huanggutun incident. But Ishiwara was not only focus on Manchuria, he had a close eye on the political situation in Tokyo. Ishiwara knew the 1931 cabinet was crumbling, he knew certain high officials like Araki Sadao were in fast track position for promotions and their sympathies were with his cause. Ishiwara was betting, certain sympathizers such as Kodoha faction aligned ones would take seats of power necessary to help push his cause. His gamble more than paid off. All the main actors in the Manchurian affair were rewarded for their accomplishments. Ishiwara received the Order of the Golden Kite 3rd class. More importantly he returned to Japan as a rockstar hero, the younger IJA officers were enthralled by him. Ironically Ishiwara had fostered indiscipline within the army more so, that when he went up the ladder becoming a member of the Tokyo staff it would bite him in the ass.   Manchukuo and racial harmony   Now Ishiwara's dream of taking control over Manchuria was almost purely a means to end end: ie to obtain resources and a strategic position to face America. Once Manchuria was under their control, Ishiwara directed his attention towards another goal aside from this, that of racial cooperation among the asian peoples. Manchukuo or rather Ishiwara's view of what it could be was a springboard of his vision for a East-Asian league, something that had a firm basis in his Final War theory. During Ishiwara's tour of duty in Manchuria in 1932, this Pan-Asian idea of what Manchukuo could be is what set him apart from many of his Kwantung Army colleagues, it also marked him to be very unorthodox within the IJA.    Manchukuo as many of you probably know, was a sham puppet state created to legitimize Japan's seizure of Manchuria. The Japanese high command simply sought to use the guise of an indigenous movement for independence to hide the fact the simply invaded a part of China and stole it. To do this they went as far as grabbing the last Qing emperor, Puyi and tossing him upon the throne of the new state of Manchukuo while they tossed up principles of racial harmony. For obvious reasons this was all done. You can't control a region full of a population that rightfully hates you without trying to win them over. Now what the Japanese did have going for them, was there did exist elements in Manchuria who sought independence. This was Manchuria, the heart of Nurhaci's Manchu people, don't get me started on what a Manchu exactly is by the way, listen to the fall and rise of China podcast for that. The Japanese had a lot to work with, it could be seen as a righteous Qing revival, or simply giving power back to the Manchu. There was also a large presence of Mongolians, and yes Inner Mongolia would come into all of this. Manchuria came into the nationalist fold late and not exactly willingly. Also the fear of the USSR was not something Japan had alone, Manchuria had struggled against the USSR for a very long time. There was also of course a large Japanese settler population in Manchuria who obviously welcomed the seizure. The Zhang Xueliang regime was not exactly too too friendly to the Japanese within the borders and a lot of discriminatory measure had been exacted upon them. When Zhang Xueliang had joined the Nationalists this had basically spelt doom upon them, at some point they knew they would be kicked out.   While the offensives were in full swing, Ishiwara and Itagaki met with other influential Kwantung Officers to figure out how they could exert control over Manchuria. Officer Katakura, chief of staff Miyake, Dohihara Kenji of the Mukden special service organ all met, looking over a previous plan created by Colonel Dohihara, for a multi racial autonomous nation of Manchuria. It was to be headed by the last Qing emperor, Puyi and needed to possess complete autonomy in internal matters, but its defense and foreign relations would be entrusted to Japan. Ishiwara drafted the plans by September 22nd and they were telegrammed to Tokyo on October 2nd. Tokyo high command disproved of the objectives, but nonetheless worked with the Kwantung army for 5 months on the creation of a new state based on two major principles: the so-called indigenous movement for Manchurian independence and the administrative planning for the Kwantung army to control it.    The Kwantung army went to work using the traditional structure of Manchuria, local self governing bodies. They bribed, persuaded and threatened as many as they could throughout 1931 carefully cultivating a local autonomy movement against the Kuomintang hardliners. One of the first things they created was “Jichi Shidobu self-government guidance board”, whose organ was responsible for coordinating various regional movements for independence to work with the Kwantung army to, in the words of Miyake “guide Manchuria to self-government”. The head of this board was appointed to the Mukden elder statesmen Yu Ch'ung-han, a man educated in Japan and previous advisor to Zhang Zuolin. His board would consist of 20 Japanese and 10 Manchurian members. Such organs were opened Japanese civilians in Manchuria and they flocked to them to support the so called multiracial political structure, because they could bend it to their own benefit.   The Kwantung army began tossing the slogans “racial harmony, racial equality and the righteous way” around heavily. The Kwantung army control over Manchuria was hashed out easily by establishing Japanese advisors over all organs who held ultimate veto authority, they would be appointed at all levels of government, thus everything was in reality Japanese controlled. Everything was going according to Ishiwara's vision….or was it? You would think so, and Ishiwara was definitely pushing all of this forward, but by 1933 he suddenly became a ferocious critic of the very beast he had helped create. 

01:47 – 03:39 | Ticket Prices, TKO Era, and Hidden FeesAnthony breaks down the dramatic rise in wrestling ticket prices since the TKO era, including the impact of fees and taxes, and how attending live events has become more expensive.03:39 – 06:00 | The Cost of Entertainment & International ComparisonsJoe and Anthony share stories about the rising costs of entertainment, including ATM fees in the US and abroad, and how price gouging is everywhere.06:00 – 10:39 | Toy Collecting, Wrestling Figures, and AEW MerchAnthony recounts stories about rare wrestling toys, the decline in value of AEW merchandise, and the changing landscape of collectibles. The hosts discuss the local comic shop scene and the fate of AEW action figures.10:39 – 13:36 | MVP's Critique of Wrestling JournalismAnthony plays a clip of MVP criticizing wrestling journalism, star ratings, and the disconnect between wrestlers and the media. The hosts analyze MVP's points and the ongoing debate about wrestling coverage.13:36 – 22:00 | AEW's Young Talent, Veteran Advice, and Industry FrustrationsA deep dive into the challenges of getting younger wrestlers to heed veteran advice, the career prospects of AEW stars, and the realities of aging in the business. The hosts debate whether it's worth trying to change the culture.22:00 – 25:00 | Billy Gunn, Longevity, and the Next GenerationAnthony and Joe discuss Billy Gunn's career after 60, his approach to wrestling, and the prospects for his sons in WWE.25:00 – 28:00 | Andrade, Non-Competes, and Wrestling ContractsThe conversation shifts to Andrade's career moves, the complexities of non-compete clauses, and the peculiarities of wrestling contracts.28:00 – 32:00 | Vince Russo, NWA, and Wrestling's Old GuardA humorous look at Vince Russo's potential influence on NWA, the tropes he might bring, and the generational divide in wrestling creative.32:00 – 36:00 | Goldberg's Streak, Legacy, and RetirementAnthony and Joe analyze Goldberg's recent interview, his obsession with his win streak, and the broader implications for wrestling legacies.36:00 – 39:00 | Nakamura's Ambitions, Foreign Heels, and WWE StorylinesDiscussion of Shinsuke Nakamura's goal to become WWE champion, the “foreign heel” trope, and how classic wrestling storylines could be updated for today.39:00 – End (~1:05:17) | Closing Thoughts, Shoutouts, and Sign-OffBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/wrestling-soup--1425249/support.

This week, Steven and Jeremy discussed the changing landscape of pro wrestling. Is there truly a chance Shinsuke Nakamura is Hiroshi Tanahashi's final opponent? They also looked at how the sale of Warner Brothers Discovery could affect the wrestling business, the CMLL-STARDOM alliance and Taichi's homecoming show in Ishikari. Plus, opening night of the Super Junior Tag League tournament.      

Sean Ross Sapp is joined by his guest Tempest (@Hey_Its_Tempest) to talk the week's wrestling news!– Andrade– Aquariums– Shinsuke Nakamura– World TitleGrab your EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal by going to nordvpn.com/fightful to get a Huge Discount off your NordVPN Plan + a Bonus Gift! It's completely risk free with Nord's 30 day money-back guarantee! ➼ https://nordvpn.com/fightful You can check out the betting odds for this week, courtesy of MyBookie, below. If you want to bet on Wrestling, or any other sport, check out our new partner where we get ALL of our odds! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Get ad-free and premium content at patreon.com/themikeandjdshowMike & JD discuss AEW WrestleDream and all the fallout about the show's length and scorned former employee Sarah Stock's call to arms to protect children from drowning in fish tanks. Plus, TNA takes a month off, is their TV deal in trouble? Finally a news roundup discussing AJ Styles retirement, Jericho returning to WWE, Nakamura in New Japan and more!Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

I would like to thank Patreon member Xizer for suggesting this one, as Xizer put it    “An in depth look at General Kanji Ishiwara would be interesting. The man was the architect for the Mukden Incident that led to the Second Sino Japanese War, but he was vehemently opposed to the abuse and exploitation Japan's colonialism indulged in. His vocal condemnation of the brutality and excesses of the Imperial Japanese military foreign policy and Tojo in particular led to his removal, but he couldn't be executed for popularity in the rank and file. Even at the trials after the war he remained defiant, declaring that President Truman should be tried alongside the Axis War criminals for firebombing Japanese cities. He was truly a fascinating figure.   Indeed Kanji Ishiwara is a fascinating character and his story has a startling impact on the Pacific War and global history as a whole. Now by the time I am reading this the script got out of hand, its a long one haha, so it might have to be a multi parter, but I want to limit the first part to Ishiwara and how the Mukden Incident occurred first. It might come further down the road but I will finish the story of this fascinating man later on after hitting up more Patrons desired subjects, without further adieu enjoy part one of Kanji Ishiwara.    Kanji Ishiwara was born in Tsuruoka, Yamagata prefecture on January 18th of 1889. He was the second son of a policeman who was a descendent of a samurai family serving the Shonai Domain. His clan supported the Tokugawa Shogunate during the Boshin War and as a result of their defeat, alongside other Shogunal allied clans would see themselves shut off from larger governmental positions in Meiji Era Japan. Not to go too deep down that rabbit hole, but domains like Choshu and Satsuma would see the lionshare of higher positions, while domains who served on the opposite side would be cast out more.   Ishiware began his army career at the military preparatory school in Sendai at the age of 13, followed up by 2 years at the Central military preparatory school in tokyo. In 1907 he entered the military academy as a member of its 21st class. He left the academy in july of 1909 with the commission of Lieutenant and an assignment as platoon commander of an infantry regiment in Tohoku. After the annexation of Korea in 1910 his regiment was shipped over to the peninsula and he served at Ch'unch'on in a small garrison. After two years of occupation duty, Ishiwara returned to Tohoku and in 1915 passed the examinations necessary to enter the Army Staff college. He held an outstanding record, graduating top of his class in november of 1918 and would be amongst the elite ranks of the Gunto Gumi, receiving the imperial sword.   Now in 1920 he had a frustrating assignment with the department of military training he applied for service in China and received an assignment to the Central china garrison in Hankow. He spent a year traveling through central china before returning back to Tokyo in 1921 where he worked as a lecturer at the army staff college. He sought another China assignment, but his superiors sent him instead to Europe, as they did with all their promising young officers. He went to Germany for 3 years, studying languages and military history. In 1925, he was now a Major, 36 years of age and he received an assignment to the faculty of the army staff college to lecture about the history of war. Now from the very beginning of his character, Ishiwara proved himself a very unconventional officer. He was on the eccentric side, quite argumentative and burdened with a lot of health problems. He had multiple kidney infections, gastro-intestinal problems, tympanitis and other ailments that clawed at him. You also cant forget his ancestry which was important to the Japanese military even in the 1930s. Many of those that came from a disgraced clan had the habit of going above and beyond in terms of imperial loyalty, sort of like a way to rid themselves of the stigma of distrust that was seen in the early Meiji years.   Ishiwara was a bit bizarre, he was nonconforming, quite an independent spirit you would say. Many biographers of his point out, while he held an outstanding record in his education, this went alongside things like his disregard for military punctilio, such as his dress and appearance. In his early career he spoke out against inequalities he saw within the military such as what he saw as favoritism for staff college graduates. Such talk was quite reckless. He read a lot about politics, religion, history and philosophy, he seemed to have quite the restless mind. His behavior drew attention from his colleagues, many deeming him brilliant.   Now everyone in any military has to learn about military history, but not all seek to learn it outside the required readings and such. Ishiwara is one of those rare individuals who was obsessed with learning more about military history. He read about the Russo Japanese war and took quite a critical look at it. He believed the Japanese victory was due to a large part because of luck. He thought Japan had taken the von Moltke strategy of annihilation, but Russia was simply to large to be dislodged from Asia with a swift stroke. If Russia had preserved herself better, he believed Japan would have lost and it was only by a peculiar set of circumstances that Japan had avoided a war of endurance. Ishiwara believed if such a set of circumstance occurred again, Japan defense planning would need to change dramatically to base itself on the realities of modern warfare. This led him to read thoroughly about WW1 in europe and he looked critically at the differences between a short duration vs long duration war. How prolonged conflicts eventually became total wars where politics, economics and social order played larger roles, than just that of the military. This led him to think of categories for different types of war such as “kessenteki senso / decisive war” and “jizokuteki senso / continuous war”. He viewed these two types as flowing back and forth throughout history, in a cyclical rhythm.    While in Germany he studied Clausewitz, von Moltke and the works of Hans Delbruck. He was particularly taken by Delbrucks niederwerfungstragie “strategy of annihilation, the decisive battle” and ermattungsstrategie “the strategy of exhaustion”. He could see his own theorizes more fleshed out in such works and took quite a liking to them. This brought him to analyze the Napoleonic war as the archetype of the war of annihilation and the wars of Frederick the Great as that of a war of exhaustion.    Now further on in his studies, Ishiwara became convinced like many of his colleagues, that Japan and the United States for reasons of power and ideology were on a set course for war. He also concluded such a war would be a protracted one, that of a strategy of exhaustion. But how could Japan prepare for such a protracted war when her natural resources were so clearly inadequate. This led him to think more so about Asia. Ishiwara believed Asia was an entity distinctly different from the west. He held beliefs that Asia should be liberated and unite. During the Xinhai revolution of 1911, as a young cadet in Korea, Ishiwara was quite excited by the idea China might revitalize itself, but he became disillusioned during his time in China later. In the 1920's he dealt with bandits, warlord era conflicts, chaos and disorder, seeing poverty everywhere, all of this shattered his image of China progressing and reforming herself. He wrote this during that time “Looking at the situation in China, I came to harbor grave doubts as to the political capacities of the chinese race and came to feel that, though they were a people of high cultural attainment, it was impossible for them to construct a modern state”. Despite how disappointed he was with the political problems of China, he was likewise disgusted with how his Japanese colleagues treated the Chinese. He recalled feelings of shame when he saw fellow colleagues in Hankow descending from rickshaws and tossing coins to the ground at the rickshaw mens feet. He would constantly write of how the Japanese needed to shed their racial superiority feelings, but funny enough he would write this alongside his beliefs it was necessary for Japan to help guide nations like China to their destiny. While he may have held beliefs in racial equality between Japan and China, he certainly did not think the same of China's politics. Like the majority of his colleagues he believed China required reform and modernization that Japan should usher in. To Ishiwara the issue at hand was if Japan did not help China, the west would aggressively do so and thus subjugate her further. To Ishiwara China needed liberation. Ishiwara also linked the incoming war between Japan and the United States to play a large role for what would occur between China and Japan.   Ishiwara like many Japanese officers held beliefs concerning the Kokutai. I will try to summarize exactly what the Kokutai is, but honestly its a unbelievably complex cultural phenomenon. The Kokutai was a spiritual motive force that influenced the Japanese military. It can be viewed as the national character of Japan. Japan was a constitutional monarchy that held the Kokutai (national body or character)  and Seitai (government body/structure). Thus there was in reality two ideologies, one held the traditional belief focusing on that of the emperor and that of the official government. If I were to give you a overly confusing summary, I would tell you “Japan is run by the emperor and the government simultaneously” this of course if confusing as hell, and it should be. Article 4 of the former Japanese constitution held “the emperor is the head of the empire, combining in himself the right of sovereignty, uniting the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government, although subject to the consent of the imperial diet”. Its like saying you have an absolute monarch, but he will be listening and following the democratically elected people. This contradiction would lead to the Pacific War. A large issue that would emerge is that the constitution literally said the navy and army were controlled by the Emperor and not the political diet. Thus many in the military viewed themselves subject to the Kokutai, which as an ideology would evolve dramatically from the Meiji era to the Showa Era. For example, what if you are a military high ranking officer who views the political elites as nothing more than criminals, taking the emperor hostage against his will and thus against the will of the Japanese people. Well this might lead you to try and overthrow the government to make sure the Emperor was really in charge as you think he should be. A real rabbit hole I could go down.   Ishiwara had a unique view of the Kokutai. In his early education he wrote this about his doubt on understanding it as a principal. “Even though I, myself, because of my training…had come to have an unshakeable faith in the kokutai I began to lack confidence that I could imparts this belief to others –to the common soldier, to the civilian, to non-Japanese”. His issue was how did the Kokutai apply outside Japan? How could its value transcend the national boundaries and interests of Japan? If a Japanese soldier was to sacrifice his life for the Kokutai, how did this take on any meaning for men of all races? How could the kokutai's supra-national value by linked to other outside ideologies?   Ishiwara found some answers to these questions in Nichiren Buddhism. It seems here he was able to combine his conceptions about war, history and national purpose. Now Ishiwara did not come from a religious family. He dabbled in christianity for a bit, but did not pursue it. Shinto likewise did not sufficiently fulfill Shiwara' beliefs. Nichiren Buddhism is strongly patriotic, has a apocalyptic character to it and represents a holy mission to be the religion for all mankind with the center of propagation as Japan. There was this kind of quasi idea of world regeneration behind it with Japan as the moral righteous leader. Thus as you can imagine the Kokutai and Nichiren buddhism sort of fit like a glove in many ways.    Utilizing Nichiren Buddhism, the kokutai could be raised from its purely national dogma and be amplified to the entire world. Ishiwara was introduced to all of this by Tanaka Chigaku who was part of the Kokuchukai “national pillar society” a nichiren nationalist organization with an HQ in tokyo. After attending a public meeting held by Tanaka, he quickly converted to Kokuchukai and he would write down in his journal “I was attracted to the Nichiren faith's view of the kokutai”. Nichiren buddhism.    One aspect of Kokuchukai's nichirenism that greatly appealed to Ishiwara was its combative passages. Ishiwara would justify and attribute much of the military force Japan used on the asian continent drawing parallels to Nicherns idea of drawing the sword to defend righteousness. He often quoted nichirens statement “that the significance of the art of war appears in the wonderful law”. Ishiwara become engulfed by the nichiren doctrine and came to believe in its prediction that there would be a “Zendai mimon no dai toso / titanic world conflict, unprecedented in human history”, something like a global armageddon. After this would come a reign of universal and eternal peace under the harmony of “the wonderful law”.   While in Germany Ishiwara became convinced that if Japan and the United States were destined for war and the US won that war, the kokutai would be destroyed. He took the trans-siberian railway enroute back to Japan and stopped in Harbin. There he met with Nichiren believers and he spoke to them about his idea of “a final war”. He stated he believed it would come through religious prediction and his military analysis. He warned everyone Japan must hasten herself for it and that “the final war is fast approaching”. Ishiwara came back to Japan in 1925 fired up with conviction to lecture at the army staff college about his final war. His audience was the army's bright and youthful officers. He taught them Frederican and Napoleonic campaigns, Moltke and WW1 and of course his thoughts on the future conflict before them all. The Army staff college continuously called for him to expand his lectures because they were so popular. Then in 1927 he drafted an essay titled “Genzai oyobi shorai Nihon no kokubo / Japan's present and future national defense”. Here he spoke about the inevitable war between the US and Japan. These were quite provocative and took a hell of a lot of attention from colleagues. Later on in april of 1931, he would brief his fellow Kwantung officers using the essay, arguing the need for decisive action on the asian mainland.   In 1928 he would have given another course on European war, but he came down with influenza and was forced to take leave. As he was getting better he was hit with a case of tympanitis in his ear and had to be hospitalized for 6 months. It was to be one of many ailments that would grind at his health. He eventually was drawn into an elite study circle to talk about war theories led by Major Suzuki. The group consisted of young reformist type officers who talked about political and military issues. He carried on his work on the final war and eventually wrote “Sensoshi taikan / general outline of the history of war” which was delivered as a lecture before Kwantung officers at Changch'un in Manchuria on July 4th of 1929. It would receive revisions in 1931, 1938 and became a book of the same title after 1941. As he began lecturing using Sensoshi taiken he also circulated amongst an inner circle within the Kwantung army “kokuun tenkai no konpon kokusakutaru man-mo mondai kaiketsuan / Plan for the solution of the Manchuria and Mongolia problem as a basic national policy to revolutionize our country's destiny”, what a title. As you might guess the plan called for occupying Manchuria in preparation for the upcoming war with America. By the way, all of his lectures and works would gain so much fame, he was asked in 1936 to adapt the materials for a text on military history for Emperor Hirohito.    Now the 1930's were quite a tense time for Japan. The Japanese leadership saw Marxism everywhere, and believed it was withering away their nation. Japanese liberal types were arguing the military budget was out of hand, many were calling for reduction. To Ishiwara it was insanity, how could Japan not arm itself? Marxists preached communism would save Japan; Liberals preached true democracy would save Japan; Ishiwara and many in the army preached the Kokutai would save Japan. Ishiwara preached his final war theories and that the coming apocalypse would not see an American synthesis, but a supreme victory for the Japanese kokutai that would unify the world. “Japan must be victorious not for the sake of her own national interest, but for the salvation of the world. The last war in human history is approaching, Nichiren's titanic world conflict, unprecedented in human history”.   From the offset of his initial theories, Ishiwara believed the final war would be a strategy of exhaustion. But WW1 and the 1920's brought technological advances such as tanks, poison gas and the airplane. The airplane in particular made Ishiwara believe the defensive stalemate seen in WW1 was coming to an end. Airpower could deliver bomb loads past all known defenses such as naval surface units, fortresses, armies with automatic weapons. He believed the final war would see absolute horrors brought upon the greatest cities of the world. London, Shanghai, Paris even Tokyo would be wiped out within a day of the commencement of hostilities. Air bombardment would deliver victory and he would be quite right about that in regards to what would happen to Japan. He believed such a war would be waged only once and “we will enter an age where war will become impossible because of the ultimate development of war technology”.   Ishiwara argued Japan must directly or indirectly control Manchuria and to a lesser degree over parts of China. He asserted Japan had a moral obligation to the asian continent and a special relationship to Manchuria and China. China must be stabilized, for her people were threatened by turmoil, corruption and conflict. He argued Japan would be eventually obliged for the sake of peace and the welfare of the Chinese people to take a more active effort to stabilize her, particularly in Manchuria. He wrote in 1930 “To save China, which has known no peace, is the mission of Japan, a mission, which, at the same time, is the only means for the salvation of Japan itself. To accomplish this task it is an urgent matter that the interference of the United States be eliminated”. Ironically, he was advocating that in order to prepare for a conflict with the US, Japan must take a stronger hand in Manchuria and China…which would probably force the United States to confront her. He advocated against the strategy of a decisive battle at sea, instead emphasizing a continental strategy. “If the worst comes about and the war at sea turns against us, if proper measures have been taken, Japanese forces on the Asian mainland can be made self-sufficient and the war continued.” Above all else, Manchuria was the key, alongside parts of Mongolia and China.    In 1931 he began writing about how China needed to reform and it would be in her best interest to accept Japanese guidance. He saw China as the most valuable ally to be beside Japan in the event of war with the United States. If anything he argued Japan must try to not become involved in a war with China, every effort should be made to avoid provoking such an event. Yet as he continued his writing he began to see the diplomatic issues play out between China and Japan and came to the conclusion, “every attempt should be made to avoid provoking China, but in the event that it is impossible to bring about China's understanding, then Nanking should be swiftly attacked and north and central China occupied” way to go 0-60. His attitudes to Britain and Russia were quite similar, every effort should be made to remain friendly, but in the case of war Hong Kong and Malaya should be quickly occupied or in the case of the USSR, predetermined objectives inside Siberia should be seized quickly.    Now lets talk about Manchuria, specifically Manchuria in the late 1920's. Manchuria was in a huge tug of war between Russia, China and Japan. Her ties to China proper were severed by years of warlordism allowing Japan to grow her position. For Japan, the quote “manchurian problem” as it would be known centered on a single question “how to consolidate and expand it under Japanese influence in the face of an expanding China”. Japan saw 3 viable methods, taking control over the south manchuria railway, using the kwantung army and Japanese colonists, the good old filibuster approach. Each of these 3 methods offered different approaches to the same problem which of course would have very different outcomes.    Controlling the railway allowed quite a lot of control over southern Manchuria. The issue with this of course being Japan having to constantly fight off Chinese political efforts against such control. Zhang Zuolin, the Tiger of Manchuria and arguably greatest of the warlords of China held control over Manchuria and was firmly acting in Japanese interests, but for how long would he play ball? To the Kwantung Army members operating in and around Manchuria, the northern expedition of Chiang Kai-shek was getting out of hand and threatening Zhang Zuolin and thus their interests as well. Anti-Japanese sentiment was only getting worse as the northern expedition climbed north. The Kwangtung army sought more than anything to assert and retain their control over Manchuria, because it offered a buffer against the USSR. Anything that threatened that control had to be dealt with. Ultimately it was believed by many in the Kwantung Army that Manchuria would have to be separated officially from China and in order for this to occur, Japan would most likely need to use force.    Senior officers of the Kwantung army were invited in June of 1927 for a meeting called upon by Premier Tanaka Giichi. The purpose of the meeting was to formulate Japan's policy toward China and Manchuria. A more radical Kwantung army group headed by Colonel Komoto Daisaku sought to eliminate Zhang Zuolin, as he was increasingly being seen as a major obstacle to Japanese ambitions in Manchuria. Well they would do just that in 1928 when Zhang Zuolin was assassinated via a bomb placed on train tracks known as the Huanggutun incident. The assassination did not work out as the Kwantung Army officers thought it would. Instead of their groomed puppet General Yang Yuting taking up the role as leader of Manchuria, it went instead to Zhang Zuolin's son, Zhang Xueliang, who lets just say was not too happy the Japanese had obviously killed his father. Thus the Kwantung Army did not assert the forceful policy they wanted in Manchuria, they had actually made it worse for them.   The half-hearted investigation into those responsible for killing Zhang Zuolin, led to the removal of Colonel Komoto from his post. Tanaka's cabinet was toppled. The Kwantung army were now embarrassed and angry that their stance in Manchuria was weakened. The Japanese colonists within Manchuria felt more threatened and called more so upon the Kwantung army for protection against Chinese nationalists wishing to kick them out. The Kwantung army was grasping at straws trying to think of a way to sever Manchuria from China. In 1928, Ishiwara was a lt colonel and he was consulted in length by Kwantung officers about his views on the Manchurian problem. While he had not fully hashed out his Final War theory by this point, he nonetheless spoke about the fundamentals of it, arguing the necessity of taking action to control Manchuria. For the next few years, all efforts were made by Kwantung officers to influence policy towards Manchuria. Ishiwara's ideas were being stimulated and influencing the debate over Manchuria amongst his high ranking colleagues. In October of 1928, Ishiwara sought and received an appointment to the Kwantung army staff. The assignment was to be as an operations officer and his number one backer was Colonel Komoto Daisaku. It seemed Komoto saw Ishiwara as the firebrand necessary to push the Manchurian policies they wanted.   When Ishiwara arrived at Port Arthur, he found the Kwantung Army HQ in a state of confusion and demoralization. This of course was a large part due to the cluster fuck of a failure from the bombing of Zhang Zuolin. The investigation into the assassination led to many shifts within the Kwantung army staff, many quite restrictive. Even though Komoto's career was shattered by the Zhang Zuolin failure, he kept arguing to his colleagues that the Manchurian crisis hamukdend to be resolved by force. Ishiwara it seems agreed with this and during the early months of 1929 worked alongside Komoto, planning operations against Chinese forces in the Mukden area. By spring of 1929, Komoto was officially being kicked out. By May he was relegated to a divisional backwater in Japan and by June he was out of the army. This did not mean however that he lost influence on Manchurian affairs. Komoto's replacement was Lt Colonel Itagaki Seishiro and old comrade of Ishiwara since Sendai military preparatory school.    For the next two and a half years, Ishiwara and Itagaki worked alongside other Kwantung Army staff to solve the Manchurian problem as they saw it. By the mid 1931's the idea Manchuria needed to be seized via force was now the mainstream viewpoint for the Kwantung army in general. Ishiwara believed firmly that Japan could no longer stand idle in Manchuria, because every day that went by saw little by little, Japan relinquishing rights and interests in Manchuria to China, and at some point they would simply be kicked out. To “quit manchuria” would be a national disaster, they would lose their buffer state, the resources and the land for their booming population to emigrate to. Simply put Manchuria was the steroid keeping Japan alive, she needed it to continue to grow. Ishiwara would often say “manchuria provides Japan with breathing space” where have we heard that type of talk before?. To the military heads in Tokyo Ishikawa would often assert Manchuria had to be seized via force, because of the soviethreat of the USSR and communism as a whole “In view of the traditional russian policy in that area, once the soviets advanced into manchuria, it would become a base for the communization of asia. Not only would the internal stability of manchuria become impossible to maintain, but Japan would be unable to maintain its own national defense, and China's defenses, too, would become imperialized". The Army HQ in Tokyo likewise agreed Manchuria was the vital defensive line against the USSR. But unlike the Kwantung army who sought all of Manchuria, the heads in Tokyo sought to absorb southern Manchuria via the south manchurian railway and did not seek anything north of it. Ishiwara however assumed the only way Japan could prevent the USSR from placing pressure on southern Manchuria was no less that Japan having to occupy northern Manchuria and even further north towards the Amur River so Japan could control the mountain ranges flanking western and eastern frontiers of northern manchuria.  Once Japan controlled northern Manchuria, Ishiwara stated in 1931 “With the solution of our defense problems in the north, we would then be free to plan an advance in any direction: to China proper, for example, or even to Southeast Asia”.   Ishiwara took all of this a step further, after Manchuria was conquered, Japan would have to somehow administer and pacify the peoples of it. Ishiwara argued the stability of Manchuria would be developed through the special talents of various races living there. The Chinese would develop the small businesses in the region, the Koreans would use their paddy farming knowledge, etc. These racial ideas would contribute to the development of Manchukuo and the greater east asia co-prosperity sphere. But above all else, Manchuria would serve the interests of Japan, many of which would be exploitative and economic in nature.    By early 1930 Ishiwara and Itagaki worked out a plan using the same strategy used during the Russo-Japanese war, a surprise night attack. The Kwantung army would assault the Liaoning area hitting important Chinese garrisons. The plans had to be meticulous as the Kwantung army was severely smaller than most of the Manchurian forces led by Zhang Xueliang. Around Mukden alone Zhang held 20,000 men well equipped with aircraft and tanks. Throughout all of Manchuria, if a war arose, Zhang could assemble roughly 250,000 troops to bear down on an enemy. The Kwantung army meanwhile could muster 10,000 men which were basically garrison units around the railway. They did not have significant aircraft nor mechanized forces at hand, and were pretty poorly equipped to boot. Ishiwara's answer to the disparity in forces called for the use of intelligence and rigorous training. He sought to perfect specific assault techniques so that when the conflict broke out, the Japanese would use lightning speed and effective concentration of force to overwhelm the Chinese. The plan overall was remarkably simplistic, wagering everything on dealing a crushing blow at the center of Zhang Xueliangs military powerbase at the Peitaying barracks at Mukden. If this fell, he predicted the enemy's morale would break, giving the Kwantung the necessary military and psychological momentum to subdue the surrounding areas. If the USSR got involved, the plan would have gone to utter shit.   One important variable Ishiwara highlighted was the necessity to pull off the operation before any attempt to restructure the domestic order in Japan occurred. Ishiwara knew his arguments and those of his colleagues would influence the heads in Tokyo, and they had to act before they did. However the heads at Tokyo and the Kwantung army held very different perspectives on when to act. In June of 1931 the Central army HQ stated in its General Outline of a solution to the Manchurian problem “we must defer the question of military action for a whole year. During this time the foreign ministry would attempt to dampen anti japanese activities in manchuria through negotiations with the government of Nanking. In the meantime the government would launch an information campaign to try and drive acquiescence at home and aboard for military action ”. Ishiwara as you can imagine was very bitter about the idea of prolonging for a year and argued the international environment meant they must strike immediately. The Soviet 5 year plan was still in mid course; the US, Britain and France had yet to overcome their financial crisis and could offer limited resistance in the far east and most obviously the Nationalist regime in China was still busy in its unification efforts south of the Great wall, but that would change soon. If they waited a year all of this would change for the worse, the time was now or never to Ishiwara.   In july of 1931 Ishiwara and Itagki organized a final major staff reconnaissance designed to get the newest Kwantung officers up to date with northern Manchuria. To cover for what they were doing they told high command it was a survey against the USSR, but it was of course to investigate the Chinese power in northern manchuria. On their return trip, the party heard of the disappearance of one Kwantung staff officer, captain Nakamura Shintaro. Ishiwara and the others found out when they reached Port Arthur and the rumor spread that Captain Nakamura had been killed by Chinese soldiers under “mysterious circumstances”. Now over the past few months there had been violent riots, murders, work strikes and other incidents occurring in Manchuria. The Nakamura affair flared all of these tensions up. Seeing the paint on the wall, Chinese and Japanese foreign ministries tried to negotiate the issue, but those at the central army HQ like Nagata Tetsuzan who were sympathetic to the impatience of their Kwantung colleagues felt compelled to aid them. For Ishiwara the issue was clear as he wrote “the Nakamura incident adds just one more issue to the others. What the army should do now is to ignore the foreign ministry and solve the problem by taking matters into its own hands”. And that is just what he did. The Kwantung officers took their forces outside the railway zone, which they had been restricted to and without waiting for approval from Itagaki who was in Japan at the time, initiated the steps to despatch an armored train and a mixed regiment of infantry and artillery forces to go to Mukden to get the Chinese military to help investigate the Nakamura disappearance. Tokyo got word of this and dispatched a telegram to stop their departure from the railway and to not use the Nakamura incident as a way to use force to solve the manchurian problem.   For Ishiwara this was the last straw. On August 20th he sent a message to Nagata condemning the current diplomatic situation and that negotiations were an utter waste of time. “There is no way to settle the matter except by placing it in the hands of the army. If central hq finds it so difficult to trust its field personnel then it had better replace them with representatives more suitable to the conditions it imagines to exist in Manchuria”. Ishiwara doubled down and pushed for a plot to provoke military conflict outside of Mukden. As he wrote in almost a messianic Nichiren conviction ‘I will be the pillar of Japan; I will be the eyes of Japan; I will be the great vessel of Japan” .   “Gekokujo / ruling from below” is a Japanese historical term referring to when subordinates defy or manipulate their superiors. Ishiwara and his like minded close colleagues were about to perform Gekokujo. On september 18th, 1931 a bomb was planted by the Kwantung army on the tracks of the south manchuria railway at Liutiaokou and it exploded. Japanese troops under the guise the bomb was a “chinese terrorist attack” moved to swiftly overrun the Peitaying barracks. Ishiwara's plot had finally unfolded. 

Today's wrestling news, including...REVEALED: Why Sami Zayn Lost WWE United States Title!Seth Rollins WWE Injury Latest!Jericho/Billy Gunn AEW Update!Nakamura vs. Tanahashi?!ENJOY!Follow us on Twitter:@AdamWilbourn@AndyHMurray@WhatCultureWWE Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week's Hot Tags include WWE releasing Zayda Steel, Kylie Rae, and Santos Escobar (temporarily), predictions for Crown Jewel and more.

Takeaki Nakamura is a school principal at Brisbane International Japanese School, a Japanese community language school in Brisbane. Mr Nakamura believes that there is no boundary between study and play, he leads unique initiatives to make learning enjoyable. As part of this initiative, he also created an original toilet calendar in Japanese. - ブリスベンにある日本語補習校、ブリスベン国際日本語学校で校長を務める中村岳昭（たけあき）さん。勉強と遊びに境界線はない、という思いから楽しく学べるよう独自の取り組みを進めています。オリジナルのトイレカレンダー「ブリス便太郎（ぶりす・べんたろう）」も作りました。

This week on Fat Science, Dr. Emily Cooper, Andrea Taylor, and Mark Wright break down five eye-opening research studies from 2025 that challenge everything you thought you knew about obesity, dieting, and metabolism. The hosts explore surprising new evidence on fitness trackers, the metabolic power of joy (and dessert!), the risks of intermittent fasting, how yo-yo dieting can damage kidney health, and the permanent impact of dieting on your brain-gut connection.Dr. Cooper shares clinical insights and explains why simple fixes—strict diets, calorie counting, and food restriction—can actually backfire, causing more harm than good. From the science of hormone signaling to the pitfalls of diet culture, the conversation reveals powerful new reasons to embrace flexibility, balance, and self-kindness on the journey to metabolic health.Key Takeaways:Fitness trackers can dramatically underestimate calorie burn—errors can reach 93%, especially for people with higher body weight. Companies rarely test enough real-world diversity and may fudge numbers for marketing.Including dessert and “forbidden foods” in your diet leads to better metabolic outcomes, greater mental stability, and less risk of binge eating or weight regain. Joyful eating helps regulate critical hormones like leptin and ghrelin.Intermittent fasting is linked to hair loss. Energy deficits force the body to use fatty acids as fuel, which can damage hair follicle stem cells. Long-term fasting negatively disrupts glucose/insulin balance and destabilizes metabolism.Yo-yo dieting (weight cycling) now shows a direct connection with kidney damage—even in those at normal weight. Rapid weight shifts restrict kidney blood flow, raise cortisol, and cause irreversible damage.Dieting creates lasting changes in the microbiome and brain-gut signaling that promote weight regain and appetite dysregulation. Even a single round of weight cycling can create stubborn metabolic obstacles.Personal Stories & Practical Advice:Andrea shares why dessert is a staple of her happiness—and how mental restriction backfires. Dr. Cooper gives real-world examples from patients: eating favorite foods can unlock better weight results, while “diet damage” often lingers until medical treatment repairs it. Resources from the episode:Fat Science is a podcast on a mission to explain where our fat really comes from and why it won't go and stay away. We are committed to creating a world where people are empowered with accurate information about metabolism and recognize that fat isn't a failure. This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended to replace professional medical advice.Check out our new website where you can ask a mailbag question. If you have a question for Dr. Cooper, a show idea, feedback, or just want to connect, email us at questions@fatsciencepodcast.com or dr.c@fatsciencepodcast.com.Connect with Dr. Emily Cooper on LinkedIn.Connect with Mark Wright on LinkedIn.Connect with Andrea Taylor on Instagram.REFERENCES FOR THIS EPISODEAlshurafa, N., et al. (2025). “More accurate fitness tracking for people with obesity.” *Scientific Reports*, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.Alfouzan, N.W., & Nakamura, M.T. (2025). “Reduced food cravings correlated with a 24-month period of weight loss and weight maintenance.” *Physiology & Behavior*, Vol. 291.Chen, H., Liu, C., Cui, S., et al. (2025). “Intermittent fasting triggers interorgan communication to suppress hair follicle regeneration.” *Cell*, Vol. 188.The Endocrine Society (2025). “Yo-yo dieting may significantly increase kidney disease risk in people with type 1 diabetes.” *Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism*, February 2025.Fouesnard, M., et al. (2025). “Weight cycling deregulates eating behavior via the induction of durable gut dysbiosis.” *Advanced Science*, 2025

In this week's 5 Yrs Ago Flashback episode of the Wade Keller Pro Wrestling Post-show (9-7-2020), PWTorch columnist Zack Heydorn and PWTorch Dailycast host Tom Stoup to talk about WWE Monday Night Raw including Retribution speaks, Cedric Alexander turns, Dominik vs. Murphy, Cesaro & Nakamura show up and issue a challenge, Drew McIntyre torments Adam Pearce and kicks Randy Orton, Raw Underground with Kevin Owens vs. Aleister Black, and more with live callers. Then in the VIP-Exclusive Aftershow, Wade and Tom read and respond to Mailbag topics from Raw.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/wade-keller-pro-wrestling-post-shows--3275545/support.

Last time we spoke about the surrender of Japan. Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender on August 15, prompting mixed public reactions: grief, shock, and sympathy for the Emperor, tempered by fear of hardship and occupation. The government's response included resignations and suicide as new leadership was brought in under Prime Minister Higashikuni, with Mamoru Shigemitsu as Foreign Minister and Kawabe Torashiro heading a delegation to Manila. General MacArthur directed the occupation plan, “Blacklist,” prioritizing rapid, phased entry into key Japanese areas and Korea, while demobilizing enemy forces. The surrender ceremony occurred aboard the Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, with Wainwright, Percival, Nimitz, and UN representatives in attendance. Civilians and soldiers across Asia began surrendering, and postwar rehabilitation, Indochina and Vietnam's independence movements, and Southeast Asian transitions rapidly unfolded as Allied forces established control. This episode is the Aftermath of the Pacific War Welcome to the Pacific War Podcast Week by Week, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800's until the end of the Pacific War in 1945.  The Pacific War has ended. Peace has been restored by the Allies and most of the places conquered by the Japanese Empire have been liberated. In this post-war period, new challenges would be faced for those who won the war; and from the ashes of an empire, a defeated nation was also seeking to rebuild. As the Japanese demobilized their armed forces, many young boys were set to return to their homeland, even if they had previously thought that they wouldn't survive the ordeal. And yet, there were some cases of isolated men that would continue to fight for decades even, unaware that the war had already ended.  As we last saw, after the Japanese surrender, General MacArthur's forces began the occupation of the Japanese home islands, while their overseas empire was being dismantled by the Allies. To handle civil administration, MacArthur established the Military Government Section, commanded by Brigadier-General William Crist, staffed by hundreds of US experts trained in civil governance who were reassigned from Okinawa and the Philippines. As the occupation began, Americans dispatched tactical units and Military Government Teams to each prefecture to ensure that policies were faithfully carried out. By mid-September, General Eichelberger's 8th Army had taken over the Tokyo Bay region and began deploying to occupy Hokkaido and the northern half of Honshu. Then General Krueger's 6th Army arrived in late September, taking southern Honshu and Shikoku, with its base in Kyoto. In December, 6th Army was relieved of its occupation duties; in January 1946, it was deactivated, leaving the 8th Army as the main garrison force. By late 1945, about 430,000 American soldiers were garrisoned across Japan. President Truman approved inviting Allied involvement on American terms, with occupation armies integrated into a US command structure. Yet with the Chinese civil war and Russia's reluctance to place its forces under MacArthur's control, only Australia, Britain, India, and New Zealand sent brigades, more than 40,000 troops in southwestern Japan. Japanese troops were gradually disarmed by order of their own commanders, so the stigma of surrender would be less keenly felt by the individual soldier. In the homeland, about 1.5 million men were discharged and returned home by the end of August. Demobilization overseas, however, proceeded, not quickly, but as a long, difficult process of repatriation. In compliance with General Order No. 1, the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters disbanded on September 13 and was superseded by the Japanese War Department to manage demobilization. By November 1, the homeland had demobilized 2,228,761 personnel, roughly 97% of the Homeland Army. Yet some 6,413,215 men remained to be repatriated from overseas. On December 1, the Japanese War Ministry dissolved, and the First Demobilization Ministry took its place. The Second Demobilization Ministry was established to handle IJN demobilization, with 1,299,868 sailors, 81% of the Navy, demobilized by December 17. Japanese warships and merchant ships had their weapons rendered inoperative, and suicide craft were destroyed. Forty percent of naval vessels were allocated to evacuations in the Philippines, and 60% to evacuations of other Pacific islands. This effort eventually repatriated about 823,984 men to Japan by February 15, 1946. As repatriation accelerated, by October 15 only 1,909,401 men remained to be repatriated, most of them in the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, the Higashikuni Cabinet and Foreign Minister Shigemitsu Mamoru managed to persuade MacArthur not to impose direct military rule or martial law over all of Japan. Instead, the occupation would be indirect, guided by the Japanese government under the Emperor's direction. An early decision to feed occupation forces from American supplies, and to allow the Japanese to use their own limited food stores, helped ease a core fear: that Imperial forces would impose forced deliveries on the people they conquered. On September 17, MacArthur transferred his headquarters from Yokohama to Tokyo, setting up primary offices on the sixth floor of the Dai-Ichi Mutual Life Insurance Building, an imposing edifice overlooking the moat and the Imperial palace grounds in Hibiya, a symbolic heart of the nation.  While the average soldier did not fit the rapacious image of wartime Japanese propagandists, occupation personnel often behaved like neo-colonial overlords. The conquerors claimed privileges unimaginable to most Japanese. Entire trains and train compartments, fitted with dining cars, were set aside for the exclusive use of occupation forces. These silenced, half-empty trains sped past crowded platforms, provoking ire as Japanese passengers were forced to enter and exit packed cars through punched-out windows, or perch on carriage roofs, couplings, and running boards, often with tragic consequences. The luxury express coaches became irresistible targets for anonymous stone-throwers. During the war, retrenchment measures had closed restaurants, cabarets, beer halls, geisha houses, and theatres in Tokyo and other large cities. Now, a vast leisure industry sprang up to cater to the needs of the foreign occupants. Reopened restaurants and theatres, along with train stations, buses, and streetcars, were sometimes kept off limits to Allied personnel, partly for security, partly to avoid burdening Japanese resources, but a costly service infrastructure was built to the occupiers' specifications. Facilities reserved for occupation troops bore large signs reading “Japanese Keep Out” or “For Allied Personnel Only.” In downtown Tokyo, important public buildings requisitioned for occupation use had separate entrances for Americans and Japanese. The effect? A subtle but clear colour bar between the predominantly white conquerors and the conquered “Asiatic” Japanese. Although MacArthur was ready to work through the Japanese government, he lacked the organizational infrastructure to administer a nation of 74 million. Consequently, on October 2, MacArthur dissolved the Military Government Section and inaugurated General Headquarters, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, a separate headquarters focused on civil affairs and operating in tandem with the Army high command. SCAP immediately assumed responsibility for administering the Japanese home islands. It commandeered every large building not burned down to house thousands of civilians and requisitioned vast tracts of prime real estate to quarter several hundred thousand troops in the Tokyo–Yokohama area alone. Amidst the rise of American privilege, entire buildings were refurbished as officers' clubs, replete with slot machines and gambling parlours installed at occupation expense. The Stars and Stripes were hoisted over Tokyo, while the display of the Rising Sun was banned; and the downtown area, known as “Little America,” was transformed into a US enclave. The enclave mentality of this cocooned existence was reinforced by the arrival within the first six months of roughly 700 American families. At the peak of the occupation, about 14,800 families employed some 25,000 Japanese servants to ease the “rigours” of overseas duty. Even enlisted men in the sparse quonset-hut towns around the city lived like kings compared with ordinary Japanese. Japanese workers cleaned barracks, did kitchen chores, and handled other base duties. The lowest private earned a 25% hardship bonus until these special allotments were discontinued in 1949. Most military families quickly adjusted to a pampered lifestyle that went beyond maids and “boys,” including cooks, laundresses, babysitters, gardeners, and masseuses. Perks included spacious quarters with swimming pools, central heating, hot running water, and modern plumbing. Two observers compared GHQ to the British Raj at its height. George F. Kennan, head of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, warned during his 1948 mission to Japan that Americans had monopolized “everything that smacks of comfort or elegance or luxury,” criticizing what he called the “American brand of philistinism” and the “monumental imperviousness” of MacArthur's staff to the Japanese suffering. This conqueror's mentality also showed in the bullying attitudes many top occupation officials displayed toward the Japanese with whom they dealt. Major Faubion Bowers, MacArthur's military secretary, later said, “I and nearly all the occupation people I knew were extremely conceited and extremely arrogant and used our power every inch of the way.” Initially, there were spasms of defiance against the occupation forces, such as anonymous stone-throwing, while armed robbery and minor assaults against occupation personnel were rife in the weeks and months after capitulation. Yet active resistance was neither widespread nor organized. The Americans successfully completed their initial deployment without violence, an astonishing feat given a heavily armed and vastly superior enemy operating on home terrain. The average citizen regarded the occupation as akin to force majeure, the unfortunate but inevitable aftermath of a natural calamity. Japan lay prostrate. Industrial output had fallen to about 10% of pre-war levels, and as late as 1946, more than 13 million remained unemployed. Nearly 40% of Japan's urban areas had been turned to rubble, and some 9 million people were homeless. The war-displaced, many of them orphans, slept in doorways and hallways, in bombed-out ruins, dugouts and packing crates, under bridges or on pavements, and crowded the hallways of train and subway stations. As winter 1945 descended, with food, fuel, and clothing scarce, people froze to death. Bonfires lit the streets to ward off the chill. "The only warm hands I have shaken thus far in Japan belonged to Americans," Mark Gayn noted in December 1945. "The Japanese do not have much of a chance to thaw out, and their hands are cold and red." Unable to afford shoes, many wore straw sandals; those with geta felt themselves privileged. The sight of a man wearing a woman's high-buttoned shoes in winter epitomized the daily struggle to stay dry and warm. Shantytowns built of scrap wood, rusted metal, and scavenged odds and ends sprang up everywhere, resembling vast junk yards. The poorest searched smouldering refuse heaps for castoffs that might be bartered for a scrap to eat or wear. Black markets (yami'ichi) run by Japanese, Koreans, and For-mosans mushroomed to replace collapsed distribution channels and cash in on inflated prices. Tokyo became "a world of scarcity in which every nail, every rag, and even a tangerine peel [had a] market value." Psychologically numbed, disoriented, and disillusioned with their leaders, demobilized veterans and civilians alike struggled to get their bearings, shed militaristic ideologies, and begin to embrace new values. In the vacuum of defeat, the Japanese people appeared ready to reject the past and grasp at the straw held out by the former enemy. Relations between occupier and occupied were not smooth, however. American troops comported themselves like conquerors, especially in the early weeks and months of occupation. Much of the violence was directed against women, with the first attacks beginning within hours after the landing of advance units. When US paratroopers landed in Sapporo, an orgy of looting, sexual violence, and drunken brawling ensued. Newspaper accounts reported 931 serious offences by GIs in the Yokohama area during the first week of occupation, including 487 armed robberies, 411 thefts of currency or goods, 9 rapes, 5 break-ins, 3 cases of assault and battery, and 16 other acts of lawlessness. In the first 10 days of occupation, there were 1,336 reported rapes by US soldiers in Kanagawa Prefecture alone. Americans were not the only perpetrators. A former prostitute recalled that when Australian troops arrived in Kure in early 1946, they “dragged young women into their jeeps, took them to the mountain, and then raped them. I heard them screaming for help nearly every night.” Such behaviour was commonplace, but news of criminal activity by occupation forces was quickly suppressed. On September 10, 1945, SCAP issued press and pre-censorship codes outlawing the publication of reports and statistics "inimical to the objectives of the occupation." In the sole instance of self-help General Eichelberger records in his memoirs, when locals formed a vigilante group and retaliated against off-duty GIs, 8th Army ordered armored vehicles into the streets and arrested the ringleaders, who received lengthy prison terms. Misbehavior ranged from black-market activity, petty theft, reckless driving, and disorderly conduct to vandalism, arson, murder, and rape. Soldiers and sailors often broke the law with impunity, and incidents of robbery, rape, and even murder were widely reported. Gang rapes and other sex atrocities were not infrequent; victims, shunned as outcasts, sometimes turned to prostitution in desperation, while others took their own lives to avoid bringing shame to their families. Military courts arrested relatively few soldiers for these offenses and convicted even fewer; Japanese attempts at self-defense were punished severely, and restitution for victims was rare. Fearing the worst, Japanese authorities had already prepared countermeasures against the supposed rapacity of foreign soldiers. Imperial troops in East Asia and the Pacific had behaved brutally toward women, so the government established “sexual comfort-stations” manned by geisha, bar hostesses, and prostitutes to “satisfy the lust of the Occupation forces,” as the Higashikuni Cabinet put it. A budget of 100 million yen was set aside for these Recreation and Amusement Associations, financed initially with public funds but run as private enterprises under police supervision. Through these, the government hoped to protect the daughters of the well-born and middle class by turning to lower-class women to satisfy the soldiers' sexual appetites. By the end of 1945, brothel operators had rounded up an estimated 20,000 young women and herded them into RAA establishments nationwide. Eventually, as many as 70,000 are said to have ended up in the state-run sex industry. Thankfully, as military discipline took hold and fresh troops replaced the Allied veterans responsible for the early crime wave, violence subsided and the occupier's patronising behavior and the ugly misdeeds of a lawless few were gradually overlooked. However, fraternisation was frowned upon by both sides, and segregation was practiced in principle, with the Japanese excluded from areas reserved for Allied personnel until September 1949, when MacArthur lifted virtually all restrictions on friendly association, stating that he was “establishing the same relations between occupation personnel and the Japanese population as exists between troops stationed in the United States and the American people.” In principle, the Occupation's administrative structure was highly complex. The Far Eastern Commission, based in Washington, included representatives from all 13 countries that had fought against Japan and was established in 1946 to formulate basic principles. The Allied Council for Japan was created in the same year to assist in developing and implementing surrender terms and in administering the country. It consisted of representatives from the USA, the USSR, Nationalist China, and the British Commonwealth. Although both bodies were active at first, they were largely ineffectual due to unwieldy decision-making, disagreements between the national delegations (especially the USA and USSR), and the obstructionism of General Douglas MacArthur. In practice, SCAP, the executive authority of the occupation, effectively ruled Japan from 1945 to 1952. And since it took orders only from the US government, the Occupation became primarily an American affair. The US occupation program, effectively carried out by SCAP, was revolutionary and rested on a two-pronged approach. To ensure Japan would never again become a menace to the United States or to world peace, SCAP pursued disarmament and demilitarization, with continuing control over Japan's capacity to make war. This involved destroying military supplies and installations, demobilizing more than five million Japanese soldiers, and thoroughly discrediting the military establishment. Accordingly, SCAP ordered the purge of tens of thousands of designated persons from public service positions, including accused war criminals, military officers, leaders of ultranationalist societies, leaders in the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, business leaders tied to overseas expansion, governors of former Japanese colonies, and national leaders who had steered Japan into war. In addition, MacArthur's International Military Tribunal for the Far East established a military court in Tokyo. It had jurisdiction over those charged with Class A crimes, top leaders who had planned and directed the war. Also considered were Class B charges, covering conventional war crimes, and Class C charges, covering crimes against humanity. Yet the military court in Tokyo wouldn't be the only one. More than 5,700 lower-ranking personnel were charged with conventional war crimes in separate trials convened by Australia, China, France, the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Of the 5,700 Japanese individuals indicted for Class B war crimes, 984 were sentenced to death; 475 received life sentences; 2,944 were given more limited prison terms; 1,018 were acquitted; and 279 were never brought to trial or not sentenced. Among these, many, like General Ando Rikichi and Lieutenant-General Nomi Toshio, chose to commit suicide before facing prosecution. Notable cases include Lieutenant-General Tani Hisao, who was sentenced to death by the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal for his role in the Nanjing Massacre; Lieutenant-General Sakai Takashi, who was executed in Nanjing for the murder of British and Chinese civilians during the occupation of Hong Kong. General Okamura Yasuji was convicted of war crimes by the Tribunal, yet he was immediately protected by the personal order of Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek, who kept him as a military adviser for the Kuomintang. In the Manila trials, General Yamashita Tomoyuki was sentenced to death as he was in overall command during the Sook Ching massacre, the Rape of Manila, and other atrocities. Lieutenant-General Homma Masaharu was likewise executed in Manila for atrocities committed by troops under his command during the Bataan Death March. General Imamura Hitoshi was sentenced to ten years in prison, but he considered the punishment too light and even had a replica of the prison built in his garden, remaining there until his death in 1968. Lieutenant-General Kanda Masatane received a 14-year sentence for war crimes on Bougainville, though he served only four years. Lieutenant-General Adachi Hatazo was sentenced to life imprisonment for war crimes in New Guinea and subsequently committed suicide on September 10, 1947. Lieutenant-General Teshima Fusataro received three years of forced labour for using a hospital ship to transport troops. Lieutenant-General Baba Masao was sentenced to death for ordering the Sandakan Death Marches, during which over 2,200 Australian and British prisoners of war perished. Lieutenant-General Tanabe Moritake was sentenced to death by a Dutch military tribunal for unspecified war crimes. Rear-Admiral Sakaibara Shigematsu was executed in Guam for ordering the Wake Island massacre, in which 98 American civilians were murdered. Lieutenant-General Inoue Sadae was condemned to death in Guam for permitting subordinates to execute three downed American airmen captured in Palau, though his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1951 and he was released in 1953. Lieutenant-General Tachibana Yoshio was sentenced to death in Guam for his role in the Chichijima Incident, in which eight American airmen were cannibalized. By mid-1945, due to the Allied naval blockade, the 25,000 Japanese troops on Chichijima had run low on supplies. However, although the daily rice ration had been reduced from 400 grams per person per day to 240 grams, the troops were not at risk of starvation. In February and March 1945, in what would later be called the Chichijima incident, Tachibana Yoshio's senior staff turned to cannibalism. Nine American airmen had escaped from their planes after being shot down during bombing raids on Chichijima, eight of whom were captured. The ninth, the only one to evade capture, was future US President George H. W. Bush, then a 20-year-old pilot. Over several months, the prisoners were executed, and reportedly by the order of Major Matoba Sueyo, their bodies were butchered by the division's medical orderlies, with the livers and other organs consumed by the senior staff, including Matoba's superior Tachibana. In the Yokohama War Crimes Trials, Lieutenant-Generals Inada Masazumi and Yokoyama Isamu were convicted for their complicity in vivisection and other human medical experiments performed at Kyushu Imperial University on downed Allied airmen. The Tokyo War Crimes Trial, which began in May 1946 and lasted two and a half years, resulted in the execution by hanging of Generals Doihara Kenji and Itagaki Seishiro, and former Prime Ministers Hirota Koki and Tojo Hideki, for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes against peace, specifically for the escalation of the Pacific War and for permitting the inhumane treatment of prisoners of war. Also sentenced to death were Lieutenant-General Muto Akira for his role in the Nanjing and Manila massacres; General Kimura Heitaro for planning the war strategy in China and Southeast Asia and for laxity in preventing atrocities against prisoners of war in Burma; and General Matsui Iwane for his involvement in the Rape of Nanjing. The seven defendants who were sentenced to death were executed at Sugamo Prison in Ikebukuro on December 23, 1948. Sixteen others were sentenced to life imprisonment, including the last Field Marshal Hata Shunroku, Generals Araki Sadao, Minami Hiro, and Umezu Shojiro, Admiral Shimada Shigetaro, former Prime Ministers Hiranuma Kiichiro and Koiso Kuniaki, Marquis Kido Koichi, and Colonel Hashimoto Kingoro, a major instigator of the second Sino-Japanese War. Additionally, former Foreign Ministers Togo Shigenori and Shigemitsu Mamoru received seven- and twenty-year sentences, respectively. The Soviet Union and Chinese Communist forces also held trials of Japanese war criminals, including the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials, which tried and found guilty some members of Japan's bacteriological and chemical warfare unit known as Unit 731. However, those who surrendered to the Americans were never brought to trial, as MacArthur granted immunity to Lieutenant-General Ishii Shiro and all members of the bacteriological research units in exchange for germ-w warfare data derived from human experimentation. If you would like to learn more about what I like to call Japan's Operation Paper clip, whereupon the US grabbed many scientists from Unit 731, check out my exclusive podcast. The SCAP-turn to democratization began with the drafting of a new constitution in 1947, addressing Japan's enduring feudal social structure. In the charter, sovereignty was vested in the people, and the emperor was designated a “symbol of the state and the unity of the people, deriving his position from the will of the people in whom resides sovereign power.” Because the emperor now possessed fewer powers than European constitutional monarchs, some have gone so far as to say that Japan became “a republic in fact if not in name.” Yet the retention of the emperor was, in fact, a compromise that suited both those who wanted to preserve the essence of the nation for stability and those who demanded that the emperor system, though not necessarily the emperor, should be expunged. In line with the democratic spirit of the new constitution, the peerage was abolished and the two-chamber Diet, to which the cabinet was now responsible, became the highest organ of state. The judiciary was made independent and local autonomy was granted in vital areas of jurisdiction such as education and the police. Moreover, the constitution stipulated that “the people shall not be prevented from enjoying any of the fundamental human rights,” that they “shall be respected as individuals,” and that “their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness shall … be the supreme consideration in legislation.” Its 29 articles guaranteed basic human rights: equality, freedom from discrimination on the basis of race, creed, sex, social status or family origin, freedom of thought and freedom of religion. Finally, in its most controversial section, Article 9, the “peace clause,” Japan “renounce[d] war as a sovereign right of the nation” and vowed not to maintain any military forces and “other war potential.” To instill a thoroughly democratic ethos, reforms touched every facet of society. The dissolution of the zaibatsu decentralised economic power; the 1945 Labour Union Law and the 1946 Labour Relations Act guaranteed workers the right to collective action; the 1947 Labour Standards Law established basic working standards for men and women; and the revised Civil Code of 1948 abolished the patriarchal household and enshrined sexual equality. Reflecting core American principles, SCAP introduced a 6-3-3 schooling system, six years of compulsory elementary education, three years of junior high, and an optional three years of senior high, along with the aim of secular, locally controlled education. More crucially, ideological reform followed: censorship of feudal material in media, revision of textbooks, and prohibition of ideas glorifying war, dying for the emperor, or venerating war heroes. With women enfranchised and young people shaped to counter militarism and ultranationalism, rural Japan was transformed to undermine lingering class divisions. The land reform program provided for the purchase of all land held by absentee landlords, allowed resident landlords and owner-farmers to retain a set amount of land, and required that the remaining land be sold to the government so it could be offered to existing tenants. In 1948, amid the intensifying tensions of the Cold War that would soon culminate in the Korean War, the occupation's focus shifted from demilitarization and democratization toward economic rehabilitation and, ultimately, the remilitarization of Japan, an shift now known as the “Reverse Course.” The country was thus rebuilt as the Pacific region's primary bulwark against the spread of Communism. An Economic Stabilisation Programme was introduced, including a five-year plan to coordinate production and target capital through the Reconstruction Finance Bank. In 1949, the anti-inflationary Dodge Plan was adopted, advocating balanced budgets, fixing the exchange rate at 360 yen to the dollar, and ending broad government intervention. Additionally, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry was formed and supported the formation of conglomerates centered around banks, which encouraged the reemergence of a somewhat weakened set of zaibatsu, including Mitsui and Mitsubishi. By the end of the Occupation era, Japan was on the verge of surpassing its 1934–1936 levels of economic growth. Equally important was Japan's rearmament in alignment with American foreign policy: a National Police Reserve of about 75,000 was created with the outbreak of the Korean War; by 1952 it had expanded to 110,000 and was renamed the Self-Defense Force after the inclusion of an air force. However, the Reverse Course also facilitated the reestablishment of conservative politics and the rollback of gains made by women and the reforms of local autonomy and education. As the Occupation progressed, the Americans permitted greater Japanese initiative, and power gradually shifted from the reformers to the moderates. By 1949, the purge of the right came under review, and many who had been condemned began returning to influence, if not to the Diet, then to behind-the-scenes power. At the same time, Japanese authorities, with MacArthur's support, began purging left-wing activists. In June 1950, for example, the central office of the Japan Communist Party and the editorial board of The Red Flag were purged. The gains made by women also seemed to be reversed. Women were elected to 8% of available seats in the first lower-house election in 1946, but to only 2% in 1952, a trend not reversed until the so-called Madonna Boom of the 1980s. Although the number of women voting continued to rise, female politicisation remained more superficial than might be imagined. Women's employment also appeared little affected by labour legislation: though women formed nearly 40% of the labor force in 1952, they earned only 45% as much as men. Indeed, women's attitudes toward labor were influenced less by the new ethos of fulfilling individual potential than by traditional views of family and workplace responsibilities. In the areas of local autonomy and education, substantial modifications were made to the reforms. Because local authorities lacked sufficient power to tax, they were unable to realise their extensive powers, and, as a result, key responsibilities were transferred back to national jurisdiction. In 1951, for example, 90% of villages and towns placed their police forces under the control of the newly formed National Police Agency. Central control over education was also gradually reasserted; in 1951, the Yoshida government attempted to reintroduce ethics classes, proposed tighter central oversight of textbooks, and recommended abolishing local school board elections. By the end of the decade, all these changes had been implemented. The Soviet occupation of the Kurile Islands and the Habomai Islets was completed with Russian troops fully deployed by September 5. Immediately after the onset of the occupation, amid a climate of insecurity and fear marked by reports of sporadic rape and physical assault and widespread looting by occupying troops, an estimated 4,000 islanders fled to Hokkaido rather than face an uncertain repatriation. As Soviet forces moved in, they seized or destroyed telephone and telegraph installations and halted ship movements into and out of the islands, leaving residents without adequate food and other winter provisions. Yet, unlike Manchuria, where Japanese civilians faced widespread sexual violence and pillage, systematic violence against the civilian population on the Kuriles appears to have been exceptional. A series of military government proclamations assured islanders of safety so long as they did not resist Soviet rule and carried on normally; however, these orders also prohibited activities not explicitly authorized by the Red Army, which imposed many hardships on civilians. Residents endured harsh conditions under Soviet rule until late 1948, when Japanese repatriation out of the Kurils was completed. The Kuriles posed a special diplomatic problem, as the occupation of the southernmost islands—the Northern Territories—ignited a long-standing dispute between Tokyo and Moscow that continues to impede the normalisation of relations today. Although the Kuriles were promised to the Soviet Union in the Yalta agreement, Japan and the United States argued that this did not apply to the Northern Territories, since they were not part of the Kurile Islands. A substantial dispute regarding the status of the Kurile Islands arose between the United States and the Soviet Union during the preparation of the Treaty of San Francisco, which was intended as a permanent peace treaty between Japan and the Allied Powers of World War II. The treaty was ultimately signed by 49 nations in San Francisco on September 8, 1951, and came into force on April 28, 1952. It ended Japan's role as an imperial power, allocated compensation to Allied nations and former prisoners of war who had suffered Japanese war crimes, ended the Allied post-war occupation of Japan, and returned full sovereignty to Japan. Effectively, the document officially renounced Japan's treaty rights derived from the Boxer Protocol of 1901 and its rights to Korea, Formosa and the Pescadores, the Kurile Islands, the Spratly Islands, Antarctica, and South Sakhalin. Japan's South Seas Mandate, namely the Mariana Islands, Marshall Islands, and Caroline Islands, had already been formally revoked by the United Nations on July 18, 1947, making the United States responsible for administration of those islands under a UN trusteeship agreement that established the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. In turn, the Bonin, Volcano, and Ryukyu Islands were progressively restored to Japan between 1953 and 1972, along with the Senkaku Islands, which were disputed by both Communist and Nationalist China. In addition, alongside the Treaty of San Francisco, Japan and the United States signed a Security Treaty that established a long-lasting military alliance between them. Although Japan renounced its rights to the Kuriles, the U.S. State Department later clarified that “the Habomai Islands and Shikotan ... are properly part of Hokkaido and that Japan is entitled to sovereignty over them,” hence why the Soviets refused to sign the treaty. Britain and the United States agreed that territorial rights would not be granted to nations that did not sign the Treaty of San Francisco, and as a result the Kurile Islands were not formally recognized as Soviet territory. A separate peace treaty, the Treaty of Taipei (formally the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty), was signed in Taipei on April 28, 1952 between Japan and the Kuomintang, and on June 9 of that year the Treaty of Peace Between Japan and India followed. Finally, Japan and the Soviet Union ended their formal state of war with the Soviet–Japanese Joint Declaration of 1956, though this did not settle the Kurile Islands dispute. Even after these formal steps, Japan as a nation was not in a formal state of war, and many Japanese continued to believe the war was ongoing; those who held out after the surrender came to be known as Japanese holdouts.  Captain Oba Sakae and his medical company participated in the Saipan campaign beginning on July 7, 1944, and took part in what would become the largest banzai charge of the Pacific War. After 15 hours of intense hand-to-hand combat, almost 4,300 Japanese soldiers were dead, and Oba and his men were presumed among them. In reality, however, he survived the battle and gradually assumed command of over a hundred additional soldiers. Only five men from his original unit survived the battle, two of whom died in the following months. Oba then led over 200 Japanese civilians deeper into the jungles to evade capture, organizing them into mountain caves and hidden jungle villages. When the soldiers were not assisting the civilians with survival tasks, Oba and his men continued their battle against the garrison of US Marines. He used the 1,552‑ft Mount Tapochau as their primary base, which offered an unobstructed 360-degree view of the island. From their base camp on the western slope of the mountain, Oba and his men occasionally conducted guerrilla-style raids on American positions. Due to the speed and stealth of these operations, and the Marines' frustrated attempts to find him, the Saipan Marines eventually referred to Oba as “The Fox.” Oba and his men held out on the island for 512 days, or about 16 months. On November 27, 1945, former Major-General Amo Umahachi was able to draw out some of the Japanese in hiding by singing the anthem of the Japanese infantry branch. Amo was then able to present documents from the defunct IGHQ to Oba ordering him and his 46 remaining men to surrender themselves to the Americans. On December 1, the Japanese soldiers gathered on Tapochau and sang a song of departure to the spirits of the war dead; Oba led his people out of the jungle and they presented themselves to the Marines of the 18th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Company. With great formality and commensurate dignity, Oba surrendered his sword to Lieutenant Colonel Howard G. Kirgis, and his men surrendered their arms and colors. On January 2, 1946, 20 Japanese soldiers hiding in a tunnel at Corregidor Island surrendered after learning the war had ended from a newspaper found while collecting water. In that same month, 120 Japanese were routed after a battle in the mountains 150 miles south of Manila. In April, during a seven-week campaign to clear Lubang Island, 41 more Japanese emerged from the jungle, unaware that the war had ended; however, a group of four Japanese continued to resist. In early 1947, Lieutenant Yamaguchi Ei and his band of 33 soldiers renewed fighting with the small Marine garrison on Peleliu, prompting reinforcements under Rear-Admiral Charles Pownall to be brought to the island to hunt down the guerrilla group. Along with them came former Rear-Admiral Sumikawa Michio, who ultimately convinced Yamaguchi to surrender in April after almost three years of guerrilla warfare. Also in April, seven Japanese emerged from Palawan Island and fifteen armed stragglers emerged from Luzon. In January 1948, 200 troops surrendered on Mindanao; and on May 12, the Associated Press reported that two unnamed Japanese soldiers had surrendered to civilian policemen in Guam the day before. On January 6, 1949, two former IJN soldiers, machine gunners Matsudo Rikio and Yamakage Kufuku, were discovered on Iwo Jima and surrendered peacefully. In March 1950, Private Akatsu Yūichi surrendered in the village of Looc, leaving only three Japanese still resisting on Lubang. By 1951 a group of Japanese on Anatahan Island refused to believe that the war was over and resisted every attempt by the Navy to remove them. This group was first discovered in February 1945, when several Chamorros from Saipan were sent to the island to recover the bodies of a Saipan-based B-29. The Chamorros reported that there were about thirty Japanese survivors from three ships sunk in June 1944, one of which was an Okinawan woman. Personal aggravations developed from the close confines of a small group on a small island and from tuba drinking; among the holdouts, 6 of 11 deaths were the result of violence, and one man displayed 13 knife wounds. The presence of only one woman, Higa Kazuko, caused considerable difficulty as she would transfer her affections among at least four men after each of them mysteriously disappeared, purportedly “swallowed by the waves while fishing.” According to the more sensational versions of the Anatahan tale, 11 of the 30 navy sailors stranded on the island died due to violent struggles over her affections. In July 1950, Higa went to the beach when an American vessel appeared offshore and finally asked to be removed from the island. She was taken to Saipan aboard the Miss Susie and, upon arrival, told authorities that the men on the island did not believe the war was over. As the Japanese government showed interest in the situation on Anatahan, the families of the holdouts were contacted in Japan and urged by the Navy to write letters stating that the war was over and that the holdouts should surrender. The letters were dropped by air on June 26 and ultimately convinced the holdouts to give themselves up. Thus, six years after the end of World War II, “Operation Removal” commenced from Saipan under the command of Lt. Commander James B. Johnson, USNR, aboard the Navy Tug USS Cocopa. Johnson and an interpreter went ashore by rubber boat and formally accepted the surrender on the morning of June 30, 1951. The Anatahan femme fatale story later inspired the 1953 Japanese film Anatahan and the 1998 novel Cage on the Sea. In 1953, Murata Susumu, the last holdout on Tinian, was finally captured. The next year, on May 7, Corporal Sumada Shoichi was killed in a clash with Filipino soldiers, leaving only two Japanese still resisting on Lubang. In November 1955, Seaman Kinoshita Noboru was captured in the Luzon jungle but soon after committed suicide rather than “return to Japan in defeat.” That same year, four Japanese airmen surrendered at Hollandia in Dutch New Guinea; and in 1956, nine soldiers were located and sent home from Morotai, while four men surrendered on Mindoro. In May 1960, Sergeant Ito Masashi became one of the last Japanese to surrender at Guam after the capture of his comrade Private Minagawa Bunzo, but the final surrender at Guam would come later with Sergeant Yokoi Shoichi. Sergeant Yokoi Shoichi survived in the jungles of Guam by living for years in an elaborately dug hole, subsisting on snails and lizards, a fate that, while undignified, showcased his ingenuity and resilience and earned him a warm welcome on his return to Japan. His capture was not heroic in the traditional sense: he was found half-starving by a group of villagers while foraging for shrimp in a stream, and the broader context included his awareness as early as 1952 that the war had ended. He explained that the wartime bushido code, emphasizing self-sacrifice or suicide rather than self-preservation, had left him fearing that repatriation would label him a deserter and likely lead to execution. Emerging from the jungle, Yokoi also became a vocal critic of Japan's wartime leadership, including Emperor Hirohito, which fits a view of him as a product of, and a prisoner within, his own education, military training, and the censorship and propaganda of the era. When asked by a young nephew how he survived so long on an island just a short distance from a major American airbase, he replied simply, “I was really good at hide and seek.”  That same year, Private Kozuka Kinshichi was killed in a shootout with Philippine police in October, leaving Lieutenant Onoda Hiroo still resisting on Lubang. Lieutenant Onoda Hiroo had been on Lubang since 1944, a few months before the Americans retook the Philippines. The last instructions he had received from his immediate superior ordered him to retreat to the interior of the island and harass the Allied occupying forces until the IJA eventually returned. Despite efforts by the Philippine Army, letters and newspapers left for him, radio broadcasts, and even a plea from Onoda's brother, he did not believe the war was over. On February 20, 1974, Onoda encountered a young Japanese university dropout named Suzuki Norio, who was traveling the world and had told friends that he planned to “look for Lieutenant Onoda, a panda, and the abominable snowman, in that order.” The two became friends, but Onoda stated that he was waiting for orders from one of his commanders. On March 9, 1974, Onoda went to an agreed-upon place and found a note left by Suzuki. Suzuki had brought along Onoda's former commander, Major Taniguchi, who delivered the oral orders for Onoda to surrender. Intelligence Officer 2nd Lt. Onoda Hiroo thus emerged from Lubang's jungle with his .25 caliber rifle, 500 rounds of ammunition, and several hand grenades. He surrendered 29 years after Japan's formal surrender, and 15 years after being declared legally dead in Japan. When he accepted that the war was over, he wept openly. He received a hero's welcome upon his return to Japan in 1974. The Japanese government offered him a large sum of money in back pay, which he refused. When money was pressed on him by well-wishers, he donated it to Yasukuni Shrine. Onoda was reportedly unhappy with the attention and what he saw as the withering of traditional Japanese values. He wrote No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War, a best-selling autobiography published in 1974. Yet the last Japanese to surrender would be Private Nakamura Teruo, an Amis aborigine from Formosa and a member of the Takasago Volunteers. Private Nakamura Teruo spent the tail end of World War II with a dwindling band on Morotai, repeatedly dispersing and reassembling in the jungle as they hunted for food. The group suffered continuous losses to starvation and disease, and survivors described Nakamura as highly self-sufficient. He left to live alone somewhere in the Morotai highlands between 1946 and 1947, rejoined the main group in 1950, and then disappeared again a few years later. Nakamura hinted in print that he fled into the jungle because he feared the other holdouts might murder him. He survives for decades beyond the war, eventually being found by 11 Indonesian soldiers. The emergence of an indigenous Taiwanese soldier among the search party embarrassed Japan as it sought to move past its imperial past. Many Japanese felt Nakamura deserved compensation for decades of loyalty, only to learn that his back pay for three decades of service amounted to 68,000 yen.   Nakamura's experience of peace was complex. When a journalist asked how he felt about “wasting” three decades of his life on Morotai, he replied that the years had not been wasted; he had been serving his country. Yet the country he returned to was Taiwan, and upon disembarking in Taipei in early January 1975, he learned that his wife had a son he had never met and that she had remarried a decade after his official death. Nakamura eventually lived with a daughter, and his story concluded with a bittersweet note when his wife reconsidered and reconciled with him. Several Japanese soldiers joined local Communist and insurgent groups after the war to avoid surrender. Notably, in 1956 and 1958, two soldiers returned to Japan after service in China's People's Liberation Army. Two others who defected with a larger group to the Malayan Communist Party around 1945 laid down their arms in 1989 and repatriated the next year, becoming among the last to return home. That is all for today, but fear not I will provide a few more goodies over the next few weeks. I will be releasing some of my exclusive podcast episodes from my youtube membership and patreon that are about pacific war subjects. Like I promised the first one will be on why Emperor Hirohito surrendered. Until then if you need your fix you know where to find me: eastern front week by week, fall and rise of china, echoes of war or on my Youtube membership of patreon at www.patreon.com/pacificwarchannel.

From the coolest $10 aviator safeties to a future “van-cast,” Dylan and Zap catch up on shop projects and a mountain of listener Q&A. Dylan shares a smart coolant-dosing build, a bio-renewing parts washer win, PH Horn saw success, and ballbar/linear guide fixes that tightened up the Speedios. Zap details big wins on a project, Mastercam Mill-Turn on a Nakamura, and rolling out prepaid-hours plus Asana API automation. We dig into roughing tool holders (powRgrip, hydraulic, shrink), mist collectors, workholding vs toolholding, and more!Check out Zap's IG @zap.consulting-----------------------------------------Help support the podcast www.patreon.com/withintolerancepodcast

In Episode 429 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Weston Nakamura, a Tokyo-based financial analyst and the creator of “Across the Spread,” a market analysis and information service that identifies key market developments from the Asia-Pacific trading session, exploring their impact on equities, bonds, currencies, and commodities across global markets. Weston recently spoke with members of the Hidden Forces Genius community, helping them make sense of the Japanese elections that took place over the weekend. He explained what the results mean for what he calls “the world's most dangerous market” and why a new governing coalition made up of Japan's opposition parties could cause significant dislocations in international bond markets, raising government financing costs and inciting further political turmoil in countries already riled by debates about trade and immigration. This is the audio from that conversation. Subscribe to our premium content—including our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports—by visiting HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you'd like to join the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community—with benefits like Q&A calls with guests, exclusive research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners—you can also sign up on our subscriber page at HiddenForces.io/subscribe. If you enjoyed today's episode of Hidden Forces, please support the show by: Subscribing on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud, CastBox, or via our RSS Feed Writing us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify Joining our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/ Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe and support the podcast at https://hiddenforces.io. Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 07/22/2025

Giuseppe Castellano talks to children's book illustrator and character designer, Toshiki Nakamura, about the all-important three months before and after a picture book's publication; what his approach is to character design for clients like DreamWorks and Netflix; what your past, creatively or otherwise, has to do with your future; and more.To learn more about Toshi, visit artoftoshi.com. If you find value in this podcast, you can support it by subscribing to our best-selling publication, Notes On Illustration, on Substack. Among other benefits, you will gain access to bonus episodes we call “Extra Credit”. | Visit illustrationdept.com for offerings like mentorships and portfolio reviews, testimonials, our alumni showcase, and more. | Music for the podcast was created by Oatmello.

In this episode of Wrestling Soup, the hosts delve into various topics within the wrestling world. They discuss comedic wrestling characters and the struggle to balance humor with in-ring performance. The episode also covers WWE's current strategy of scouting AEW talents, including Private Party and Britt Baker, and the surprising potential of comedic gimmicks like Grande Americano. The podcast transitions into a heartfelt segment featuring Randy Orton's emotional revelations on Stephanie McMahon's new podcast, where he opens up about mental health, family, and his career. Additionally, the hosts touch on the potential return of Goldberg, speculating about his health and his future in wrestling, along with the quirky possibility of signing Boogeyman. The show wraps up with updates on Chad Gable's injury and the upcoming vacation plans for the 4th of July.00:00 Introduction and Casual Banter00:33 Critique of a Music Video and Band06:58 Fireworks and Fourth of July Plans18:03 WWE's Potential Move to Las Vegas30:05 Talent Signings and Future Plans31:10 Nakamura's Uncertain Future31:24 Darren Young's AEW BOUND...?31:43 Tony's Interest in Isla Dawn34:33 The Trend of Viral Moments in Wrestling37:53 Britt Baker's Future in AEW/WWE59:03 WWE's Tag Team Division Challenges01:04:19 The Boogeyman's Potential Return?01:08:16 Chad Gable's Shoulder Injury Update01:10:10 Ludwig Kaiser and the Grande Americano Gimmick01:19:47 Goldberg's Health and Future in Wrestling01:28:14 Randy Orton's Deepest Interview01:40:18 Podcast Recommendations and Sign-OffBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/wrestling-soup--1425249/support.

All the news from Hang's domination at the Pan American Championships, Sugihara podiuming all over the place at Asian Championships.  TICKETS ON SALE NOW FOR LIVE SHOW CHICAGO  Friday, July 18th at the world famous iO Theater. Attend virtually or in-person for games, prizes and a secret guest Q&A.  HEADLINES Can we please prioritize athlete safety? There were A LOT of issues with the mens' equipment at the Pan American Championships, but luckily everyone survived Jayla Hang (USA) and Felix Dolci (Canada) won the all-around titles The USA's mens and women teams won the Pan American team titles Chuso got injured in the vault final at Asian Championships, but the Olympic Channel is reporting she will still compete in Tashkent on her 50th birthday GYMTERNET NEWS MyKayla Skinner supports Riley Gaines and says Simone Biles "belittled, dismissed, and ostracized" her behind the scenes Are we taking the bait by discussing this at all? Mailie O'Keefe receives the Operations Specialist Award and will be staying at Utah for another year NCAA Coaching updates Geralen Stack-Eaton, former Alabama gymnast and Minnesota associate coach, is the new head coach at Cal Simone Brown switched her commitment from Clemson to Arkansas Former Utah gymnast, Jessie (Duke) McDonough, is the new Clemson assistant coach Former Oklahoma gymnast, Olivia Trautman, is now the assistant coach at Utah State Ragan Smith is the new associate coach at Iowa State Corinne Tarver, former Fisk head coach, was named the head coach at Southern Connecticut State University Mary Lou Retton pled "no contest" and said her actions were "completely unacceptable" 2025 Pan American Championships The US women won the team gold comfortably. Watch on PanAm Sports Why bronze was an extremely promising finish for this Brazilian team Helzly Rivera gave us all the drama during the team and all-around competitions Are the beam judges OK? What was up with all the raised scores? Something was definitely off about scoring because our favorite Argentinian beam worker, Isabella Ajalla, didn't even make the beam final??! The Panamanian women had an AMAZING competition  Karla Navas won vault gold with her legit round-off, half-on, full-off Panama qualified for team finals in fourth, AHEAD OF BRAZIL! Jayla Hang Simone'd this meet by winning a medal in every round of competition including team and all-around gold Why Lia Monica Fontaine is Canada's new "it-girl" 2025 Asian Championships China won the team final by about 0.4 over Japan We don't have any pity for Japan's leadership because they only competed with four gymnasts!!! China and Japan finish Asian Championships tied with seven medals each Can someone get Chuso to take a nap?? Chusovitina was injured after her first vault in event finals Nakamura Haruka (Japan) won the "Pussilanimouses Will Never be Heroes" award with her huuuge Def Should Qin Xinyi (China) have won bars gold over Nakamura? Let's discuss Hwang Seohyun (South Korea) upset Zhou Yaqin (China) for beam gold with her stellar BHS to back-full series Sugihara Aiko won four medals here, including all-around gold which she finally is getting 10 years after her Asian Championships debut Tonya Paulsson made her international debut for Taiwan, why her fourth-place all-around finish is huge for the program Feedback Did Chuso make a mistake with her Paris qualifiying strategy  LA2028 Mixed Team Final - can alternates be used How can an Xcel parent learn from GymCastic Has an emergency team ever been called in to replace another Eligabilty Calculus DiCello 7th year This episode is dedicated to the memory of coach, judge and mentor to many, Dean Ratliff. Listen to his judging myth buster episode here. 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ACTION Indivisible Practical ideas about what you can actually do in this moment, check it out: indivisi.org/muskorus 5Calls App will call your Congresspeople by issue with a script to guide you Make 2 to your Congressional rep (local and DC office). 2 each to your US Senators (local and state offices) State your name and zip code or district Be concise with your question or demand (i.e. What specific steps is Senator X taking to stop XYZ) Wait for answer Ask for action items -  tell them what you want them to do (i.e. draft articles of impeachment immediately, I want to see you holding a press conference in front of...etc.) ResistBot Turns your texts into faxes, postal mail, or emails to your representatives in minutes ACLU Mobile Justice App Allows you to record encounters with public officials while streaming to your closest contacts and your local ACLU; REPORT any abuse by authorities to the ACLU and its networks. 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