Empire of Japan

====Surrender====
{{Main|Surrender of Japan|Potsdam Declaration|Victory over Japan Day}}
[[File:Japanese battleship Haruna sunk.jpg|thumb|The rebuilt battlecruiser {{ship|Japanese battleship|Haruna||2}} sank at her moorings in the naval base of [[Kure, Hiroshima|Kure]] on July 24 during a [[Attacks on Kure and the Inland Sea (July 1945)|series of bombings]].]]

By 1944, the Allies had seized or bypassed and neutralized many of Japan's strategic bases through amphibious landings and bombardment. This, coupled with the losses inflicted by [[Allied submarines in the Pacific War|Allied submarines]] on Japanese shipping routes, began to strangle Japan's economy and undermine its ability to supply its army. By early 1945, the US Marines had wrested control of the [[Ogasawara Islands]] in several hard-fought battles such as the [[Battle of Iwo Jima]], marking the beginning of the fall of the islands of Japan. After securing airfields in [[Saipan]] and [[Guam]] in the summer of 1944, the [[United States Army Air Forces]] conducted an intense [[Strategic bombing during World War II|strategic bombing campaign]] by having [[Boeing B-29 Superfortress|B-29 Superfortress]] bombers in nighttime low altitude incendiary raids, burning Japanese cities in an effort to pulverize Japan's war industry and [[demoralization (warfare)|shatter its morale]]. The [[Operation Meetinghouse]] raid on Tokyo on the night of March 9–10, 1945, led to the deaths of approximately 120,000 civilians. Approximately 350,000–500,000 civilians died in 67 Japanese cities as a result of the [[Firebombing|incendiary bombing]] campaign on Japan. Concurrent with these attacks, Japan's vital coastal shipping operations were severely hampered with extensive aerial mining by the US's [[Operation Starvation]]. Regardless, these efforts did not succeed in persuading the Japanese military to surrender. In mid-August 1945, the United States dropped [[nuclear weapon]]s on the Japanese cities of [[Hiroshima]] and [[Nagasaki]]. These bombings were the first and only combat use of nuclear weaponry. These two bombs killed approximately 120,000 people in a matter of seconds, and as many as a result of [[nuclear radiation]] in the following weeks, months and years. The bombs killed as many as 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 80,000 in Nagasaki by the end of 1945.

At the [[Yalta agreement]], the US, the UK, and the USSR had agreed that the USSR would enter the war on Japan within three months of the defeat of Germany in Europe. This [[Soviet–Japanese War]] led to the fall of Japan's Manchurian occupation, Soviet occupation of [[South Sakhalin]] island, and a real, imminent threat of Soviet invasion of the home islands of Japan. This was a significant factor for some internal parties in the Japanese decision to surrender to the US<ref>Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan Tsuyoshi Hasegawa Belknap Press (October 30, 2006) {{ISBN|978-0674022416}}</ref> and gain some protection, rather than face simultaneous Soviet invasion as well as defeat by the US and its allies. Likewise, the [[Operation Unthinkable|superior numbers of the armies of the Soviet Union in Europe]] was a factor in the US decision to demonstrate the use of atomic weapons to the USSR,{{Citation needed|reason=Is this opinion? Is this documented? Is this historians collecting welfare?|date=October 2018}} just as the Allied victory in Europe was evolving into the [[division of Germany]] and Berlin, the division of Europe with the [[Iron Curtain]] and the subsequent [[Cold War]].

Having ignored ([[mokusatsu]]) the [[Potsdam Declaration]], the Empire of Japan surrendered and [[End of World War II in Asia|ended World War II]] after the [[atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki]], the declaration of war by the Soviet Union and subsequent [[Soviet invasion of Manchuria|invasion of Manchuria]] and other territories. In a national radio address on August 15, [[Emperor Hirohito]] announced the surrender to the Japanese people by ''[[Gyokuon-hōsō]]''.