>     Many Japanese soldiers were soon on their way home from their bases
  > around Japan and were beginning to crowd the trains and buses.  It was
  > difficult for some of them to understand the surrender.  Although most of
  > the Japanese army in the field was still unbeaten, it was stretched thin
  > all across Asia.  The string of horrendous losses at Leyte, Iwo Jima,
  > Saipan, and Okinawa and America's superior air power against the home
  > islands and the use of atomic weapons were evidence enough that the war
  > could not be won.  And then, of course, when the Soviet Union entered the
  > war against Japan after the Hiroshima bomb, there was great fear that our
  > old hypothetical enemy would take advantage of our weakened condition and
  > try to occupy us.  The Soviets seized the southern half of Sakhalin island
  > and four islands just north of Hokkaido - the closest one is in sight of
  > the Japanese mainland - and they still hold them today.  The United States
  > returned Okinawa, which they seized in 1945, to Japanese sovereignty in
  > 1972.
  >
  >     In 1945 the Russians stormed into Manchuria - our buffer against them
  > for so many years - when our forces were relatively small and weakened,
  > unable to defend against massive Russian armor.  There was chaos as
  > Japanese civilians and soldiers tried to escape from the Russians, but in
  > the end about five hundred thousand Japanese soldiers were taken prisoner
  > and sent to labor camps in Siberia and other places in the Soviet Union.
  > Some of them remained prisoners and virtual slave laborers for as long as
  > twelve years.
  >  ...
  > There are those who say to this day that the emperor's decision to
  > surrender was brought about almost as much by the fear of the Soviets - the
  > fear that they might invade the home islands or partition the country, as
  > had been done to Germany - as by the horrible events at Hiroshima and
  > Nagasaki.
  >
  > - MADE IN JAPAN AKIO MORITA and SONY (c) 1986  (any typos are mine)