The Yalta Agreement was stridently criticized in the United States after Stalin’s duplicity became apparent. But the War Department took a realistic view as early as the spring of 1945:
“The concessions to Russia on Far Eastern matters which were made at Yalta are generally matters which are within the military power of Russia to obtain regardless of United States military action short of war.... The Russians can, if they choose, await the time when United States efforts will have practically completed the destruction of Japanese military power and can then seize the objectives they desire at a cost to them relatively much less than would be occasioned by their entry into the war at an early date.”[4]
[4] U. S. War Dept memo for Acting Sec of State, 21 May 45, quoted in Joseph C. Grew, _Turbulent Era: A Diplomatic Record of Forty Years_ (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1952), 2:1457–1458.
This was precisely what happened. Moscow waited to declare war until 8 August 1945--6 days before the imminent collapse of Japan. Soviet forces fought only a few actions in Siberia with a Japanese army stripped of planes for home defense. As a consequence, Russian propagandists found it hard to paint a convincing picture of “the heroic deeds of our brave Far Eastern warriors.”[5] Obviously they had met little resistance while overrunning Manchuria and northern Korea to accept the surrender of nearly 600,000 Japanese troops, including 148 generals. These prisoners were sent to Siberia for years of servitude; and the “conquerors” despoiled Manchuria of heavy machinery, turbines, dynamos and rolling stock.[6]
[5] David J. Dallin, _Soviet Russia and the Far East_ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948), 213.
[6] _Ibid._, 214, 244. Such seizures were in violation of international law, of course, and Soviet Russia had pledged the prompt repatriation of Japanese prisoners at the Potsdam Conference in July 1945.
The value of this booty has been estimated at a billion dollars, and the forced labor of Japanese war prisoners during the next 5 years was worth at least another billion. Not satisfied with these spoils, Moscow also demanded a share in the occupation of Japan. This design was balked by General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, supreme Allied commander, who made it plain that he needed no such assistance.[7]