Chapter 337
Just over a dozen kilometers west of Yokote, from Omori Ida to Omori Tokamachi, at the foot of a 2-kilometer-long mountain, the 35th Army of the Soviet Union, a combined arms force, set up a line of defense.
Under the cover of night, more than a thousand artillery pieces were deployed behind the defense line. The bare-backed Soviet artillerymen transported shells to the front and carried out intermittent bombardment on the jungle-covered mountains.
The deafening artillery roars and the raging fires lit up the entire Omori area as bright as day. Many of the Soviet soldiers who could not sleep sat shirtless in the trenches, chatting, smoking, drinking, and doing all kinds of things.
At the artillery position, many shells were unloaded from trucks and piled up randomly on the artillery position. Some ragged Japanese women were mingling on the position so openly. As long as a shell shell jumped out of the gun barrel, one or two women would rush over, pick it up with sticks they had prepared in advance and run away.
For these women, they are now the main labor force in the family. They can exchange these shell casings for food. Sometimes one night's harvest is enough to feed their family for several days.
Of course, not everyone can pick up these shell casings, because they have to pay a lot of price. Generally speaking, the amount of harvest is closely related to their youth and appearance. Some women can not only drag back twenty or thirty shell casings after a busy night, but also bring back a whole bag of food. As for the price, they can't even close their legs all day.
After all, he had not been on the battlefield for a long time. Accompanied by Arseny, Yuri went to Omori's artillery position. However, he just took a look there and went back with a lot of anger. The corruption of military discipline made him not even think about taking another look. In his words, if these were his soldiers, the Japanese would not have to fight them, he would have shot them all.
If he was still the Deputy Chief of the General Staff, Yuri really wanted to ask Meretskov how he did the job as the commander-in-chief. He also wanted to ask Comrade Terenty Fomich Shtykov how he maintained military discipline as the military commissar of the front. He might even submit a report to Comrade Stalin to cancel the number of the entire Far Eastern Front and let them all go back to farming.
However, Yuri was still very clear about his current status. He had been separated from the military's front-line command system to a large extent. At the same time, he was not a member of the General Political Department or the Military Committee. He had no right to speak on the military discipline issues of the Far Eastern Front. If you rashly give suggestions to Meretskov or Shtykov, they may accept it in person, but you don't know what they will say behind your back. Therefore, people must know the limits and know when to advance and retreat. It is not easy to make friends with a straightforward personality, but it is easier to make enemies.
Yuri had completely lost the mood to experience the battlefield again. He stayed in Yokote for only one night and set off before dawn the next day. He was in a very bad mood, and it could even be said that he felt like an old cadre who had retired but was unable to do enough.
He went north from Yokote, then passed through Oshu and Kurihara, and did not enter Tomiya until the evening of the next day. The American military reception staff waiting there took him to Sendai Port overnight.
At this time, Sendai Port had become a gathering place for the US military. The small harbor was filled with all kinds of warships. The Americans even set up a blockade in the urban area of Sendai, bombing all locals within a kilometer of the port and setting up a large number of air defense positions in the city. At night, the anti-aircraft searchlights projected huge beams of light into the sky, illuminating the entire sky as bright as day.
When it comes to reception, the Americans are very disciplined. When Yuri entered the Sendai Port, many people came to greet him, including Chester William Nimitz, a representative of the US Navy, and Douglas MacArthur, a representative of the US Army.
Among the people who traveled with them was Lieutenant General Krutikov, Chief of Staff of the Far Eastern Front, who had arrived at Sendai Port earlier. He was responsible for escorting Major General Wainwright of the United States and Lieutenant General Percival of the United Kingdom to Sendai. Both generals were rescued by the Soviet army from the Japanese POW camp in Shenyang. The former was captured when the Japanese attacked the Philippines, and the latter was captured by the Japanese in Singapore.
In addition, all Allied military representatives participating in the surrender signing ceremony, including from China, France, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and other countries, were also in the welcoming team.
That same evening, representatives from various countries held a consultation meeting to determine the venue for the signing ceremony.
According to Nimitz's proposal, the United States hoped to hold the surrender signing ceremony on a U.S. aircraft carrier, but as the representative of the Soviet Union, Yuri expressed his clear opposition to this proposal and demanded that it be held in the Chowaden Hall of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo.
According to Yuri, only by holding the surrender signing ceremony in the palace where the Japanese emperor presided over government affairs could Japan's surrender be demonstrated, a profound lesson be taught to the warlike Japanese, and the surrender signing ceremony be made more historically significant.
At the same time, Yuri also expressed different opinions on the entire signing ceremony process. He believed that as the highest spiritual leader of Japan, Japanese Emperor Hirohito must attend the signing ceremony. At the same time, seats should not be provided for the Japanese signing representatives, and the signing representatives of the Japanese military must hand over their command swords to the signing representatives of the Allied Powers.
These demands put forward by Yuri were opposed by MacArthur, but were supported by representatives from Asia and Australia, including China, Australia, and New Zealand. In particular, General Thomas Blamey, who represented Australia at the signing ceremony, expressed his active agreement with every demand put forward by Yuri.
Yuri didn't know much about the situation in Australia in his previous life, but in his opinion, these Australians hated the Japanese devils even more than other Asian countries, and he didn't know why.
Because Yuri insisted on his own opinion and refused to make any concessions, the meeting came to a deadlock and no final agreement was reached until two o'clock in the morning.
MacArthur, like a child, threatened that the United States would abandon the Soviet Union and sign a surrender agreement with Japan alone. Yuri first took out the Yalta Agreement signed by the Allies and accused MacArthur of being the first to violate the content of the Yalta Agreement that no Allied country could sign a unilateral armistice agreement with Japan, and declared that if the United States was ready to do so, Moscow would accept his proposal and sign a surrender agreement with Japan alone. At the same time, the Soviet army would ignore any previous agreement reached with the United States and continue to advance towards Yamagata and even Niigata Prefecture.
In addition, Yuri also accused MacArthur, as the supreme commander of the US Army's war against Japan, of violating the consensus reached by the Allies and privately reaching a package of shady agreements with the Japanese government and the Japanese emperor. This practice seriously damaged the mutual trust among the Allies and was a shameless betrayal of the world anti-fascist war.
The tit-for-tat at the meeting even escalated into personal attacks. MacArthur criticized Yuri for being too young and not understanding politics or diplomacy. He also mocked that Yuri was not even born when he joined the army and joined the war.
Yuri sneered at him, saying that when he was only in his twenties, he commanded a battered army and fought a desperate hand-to-hand battle with the German army at its peak at the gates of Stalingrad. For several months, the German offensive line was less than 50 meters away from his headquarters. At that time, General MacArthur, who was nearly 40 years older than him, abandoned his own army of more than 100,000 and fled to the Philippines like a stray dog when the Japanese were still hundreds of kilometers away from him.
The representatives of various countries at the conference were stunned by the heated argument between the two, while the military journalists from various countries who were allowed to enter the conference were excited as if they had been injected with chicken blood. Everyone knew that if such an argument was published in the newspaper, it would be explosive news. They even thought of a title, which was "The Duel between Soviet and American Gods of War". Perhaps adding a comparison of the two's combat records in this report would have a better effect.
However, no one present would have expected that decades later, when talking about the history of the US-Soviet rivalry, there would be a voice that would regard tonight's meeting as the beginning of the US-Soviet rivalry.
As the chief , Yuri and MacArthur were arguing so much that the meeting naturally could not continue. Therefore, at nearly four o'clock in the morning, the negotiations ended in failure. Everyone went back to take a shower and go to bed, and continue the discussion tomorrow.
Like representatives from other countries, Yuri was also accommodated on a US warship, because the entire Sendai was almost bombed into ruins and there was no decent house at all. No matter how thick-skinned the Americans were, they would not arrange the military representatives of the Allies in the shacks left behind by the Japanese.
On the U.S. warship, he used his own telegraph machine to send a telegram to Moscow, reporting the process and main content of today's meeting. These things did not need to be kept confidential, so no secret code was used.
As Moscow's plenipotentiary, Yuri had the power to choose his own attitude during the talks. However, he also needed to report important content to Comrade Stalin in a timely manner. As for the tough stance, it had been determined before he came. Only by being tough enough during the negotiations could the Soviet army's victory outside Hokkaido be preserved.
