The Daily History Chronicle

On August 8, 1945, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and invaded Manchuria within hours, collapsing a million-man army in under two weeks. American memory credits the atomic bombs alone with ending World War II, but Japan's own war council pointed just as often to this invasion. This episode weighs the bomb, the invasion, and the human cost buried underneath both, from a massacred village to a decade in Soviet labor camps.