Pacific War (Communist World)

The Pacific War (Russian: Советско-японская война, lit. Soviet-Japanese War) began on December 7, 1941 to March 2, 1946, with the Japanese invasion of the Soviet puppet state of Mongolia and the bombing of Vladivostok. After Japanese air strike on the port of Vladivostok, Japanese invasion of western Siberia and Mongolia began. Simultaneously, Japanese forces strike southward, attacking Australia and the European colonies in Southeast Asia. It was known by many different names depending on the nation, notably the Eastern War (Russian: Восточная война) in the Soviet Union, while known in Japan as the Northern Front (Japanese: Kita no Shōmen), the Northern Campaign (Japanese: Kita no Kyanpēn) or the Russian Campaign (Japanese: Roshia no Kyanpēn).

It is generally considered the Pacific War began on 7/8 December 1941 with the invasion of Thailand for the invasion of British Malaya, and the attack on Vladivostok in the Soviet Union by the Empire of Japan. Some authors consider that the conflict in Asia dates back to 7 July 1937, beginning with the Second Sino-Japanese War between the Empire of Japan and the Republic of China, or possibly 19 September 1931, beginning with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. However, it is more widely accepted that the Pacific War itself started in early December 1941, with the Sino-Japanese War then becoming part of it as a theater of the greater Great Patriotic War.

The Pacific War saw the United Allied Coalition powers pitted against the Empire of Japan, the latter briefly aided by Thailand and to a much lesser extent by its Axis allies, France and Italy. The war culminated in the Soviet atomic bombing of Toyama, and other large aerial bombing attacks by the United States Army Air Forces, accompanied by the US invasion of Japan on 1 November 1945, resulting in the surrender of Japan and the end of fighting during Great Patriotic War on 2 March 1946. The formal and official surrender of Japan occurred aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on 2 August 1946.