Historical Dictionary of United States-Japan ... - Bakumatsu Films

264 • YALTA CONFERENCE
fall rendered Prime Minister Tōjō Hideki’s position untenable, and
he was replaced in July 1944 by General Koiso Kuniaki. Koiso’s
cabinet fell in April 1945, coinciding rather neatly with the death of
President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Germany surrendered in May
1945 (Italy had surrendered in September 1943), and most major
urban centers in Japan were subjected to American aerial attack.
The Battle of Okinawa, which began in April 1945, ended in June
1945 in total defeat for the Japanese forces. It was, at this point,
quite clear that Japan had been defeated, yet Tokyo was unable to
make the political decision to surrender. The Emperor on 15 August
1945 finally announced his nation’s surrender, after Hiroshima and
Nagasaki had been subjected to the world’s first—and, to date,
only—atomic attacks and after the Soviet Union had discarded its
neutrality to enter the war against Japan. See also ABSOLUTE
SPHERE OF IMPERIAL DEFENSE; AMERICA FIRST COM-
MITTEE; ATLANTIC CONFERENCE; ATOMIC BOMB AT-
TACKS; BURMA ROAD; CAIRO CONFERENCE; DOOLITTLE
RAID; HORNBECK, STANLEY; HULL, CORDELL; INTERNA-
TIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNAL FOR THE FAR EAST; IN-
TERNMENT; JAPANESE–AMERICAN NEGOTIATIONS; JOHN
DOE ASSOCIATES; KONOE–ROOSEVELT SUMMIT MEET-
ING; LEND LEASE; MAGIC; NOMURA–GREW CONVERSA-
TIONS; POTSDAM DECLARATION; SAN FRANCISCO
PEACE TREATY; SINO–JAPANESE WAR; SOUTHWARD
ADVANCE; SOVIET–JAPANESE NEUTRALITY TREATY;
TOKYO FIREBOMBING; UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER;
YAMAMOTO, ISOROKU.
– Y –
YALTA CONFERENCE. From 4–11 February 1945, United States
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston
Churchill, and Soviet leader Josef Stalin met at Yalta in the Russian
Crimea. Coming at a time when the Allies’ war against Germany and
Japan was drawing to a close—Italy had surrendered in 1943—the
conferees discussed, among other things, the terms of Soviet Russia’s
entry into the war against Japan. Both the U.S. and British governments
had long been convinced that Soviet military intervention in