ABSTRACT
By July 1945 American officials in both the State and War Departments were growing increasingly concerned about the spread of Soviet influence in the Far East. Secretary of War Henry Stimson wrote to the President in mid-July that the absence of a firm occupation agreement with the Soviets over Korea would hurt US interests in the region. He warned that pro-communist Korean troops in Siberia would ‘probably gain control, and influence the setting up of a Soviet dominated local government. … This is the Polish question transplanted to the Far East’ (Matray, 1981: 158). Both Truman and his Secretary of State James Byrnes hoped that the use of the atomic bomb against Japan would create a power vacuum in Korea and other parts of Asia which could be filled with the United States’ power and unchallenged influence. This assumption was abruptly dispelled on 8 August when the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and ordered its troops to fight Japanese imperial forces stationed in Manchuria.
