China / USSR: Chinese residents of the city of Harbin welcome Soviet liberators from Japanese...

Chinese residents of the city of Harbin welcome Soviet sailors of the Amur Military Flotilla, 1st Brigade following the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation. The campaign began on 9 August 1945, with the Soviet and Mongolian invasion of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo in northeastern China and was the largest campaign of the 1945 Soviet-Japanese War, which resumed hostilities between the Soviet Union and the Empire of Japan after almost six years of peace. The rapid defeat of Japan’s Kwantung Army has been argued to be a significant factor in the Japanese surrender and the end of World War II, as Japan realized the Soviets were willing and able to take the cost of invasion of its Japanese Home Islands, after their rapid conquest of Manchuria and southern Sakhalin. Harbin, Heilongjiang, Republic of China. August 1945.