The Second World War ended in Europe in May of 1945, but the war in the Far East raged on. At the conference in Yalta in February of 1945, the Big Three signed a secret document regarding the protocol of Japan which said, among other things, that the Soviets would enter the war against Japan two to three months after the fighting ended in Europe -- and so they did. In the 27 days between the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima and the formal capitulation of Japan to the Allied Powers, the Russians succeeded in destroying the mighty Japanese Kwantung army in Manchuria. They also reclaimed for the Soviet Union the Kuril Islands and southern Sakhalin, which had been lost in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 and 1905. These battles were the last in World War II.
