New information confirms that Stalin was preparing to land troops on the northernmost home island of Hokkaido (home to many of Captain Kojo's soldiers). If the Red Army had seized it, Japanese casualties, extrapolating from the number of POWs who died in Soviet camps, would have reached four hundred thousand. That would have been just a part of the loss if, as a full Allied partner during ground combat from 1945 to 1946 or later, Stalin insisted on dividing Japan, like Korea and Germany.All postwar life, starting with retarded economic recovery, would have suffered heavily.
