Mukden incident

Mukden Incident
Japanese troops entering Shenyang during the Mukden Incident.
Date September 18, 1931 - February 18, 1932. Location Inner Manchuria, China Result Japanese Victory
Belligerents
National Revolutionary Army, Republic of China	Imperial Japanese Army, Empire of Japan
Commanders and leaders
Zhang Xueliang, Ma Zhanshan, Feng Zhanhai	Shigeru Honjo, Jiro Minami
Strength
160,000	30,000 - 66,000
Casualties and losses
?	?

The Mukden Incident of September 18, 1931, known in Japanese as the Manchurian Incident, occurred in southern Manchuria when a section of railroad, owned by Japan's South Manchuria Railway, near Mukden (today's Shenyang) was dynamited by Japanese junior officers. Imperial Japan's military accused Chinese dissidents of the act, thus providing a pretext for the Japanese occupation of Manchuria. The incident represented an early event in the Second Sino-Japanese War, although full-scale war would not start until 1937. In Chinese, this incident is referred to as the September 18 Incident (Chinese: 九·一八事变/九·一八事變) or Liutiaogou Incident (Chinese:柳條溝事變), or in Japanese as the Manchurian Incident (Kyūjitai: 滿洲事變, Shinjitai: 満州事変).

Background

After the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), Japan had replaced Russia as the dominant foreign power in Manchuria. Japan's China policy was conflicting throughout the 1930s. Japanese military in Manchuria and North China enjoyed some degree of independence from both the civilian government and the military authority in Tokyo. There were debates as to whether Japan should attempt to conquer and establish a sort of colonial relationship with China, or whether Japan should strengthen economic relations with China to make both countries more dependent on each other, thus making armed conflicts between the two less likely. Furthermore, the Japanese government wished to see China more fragmented because dealing with separate Chinese factions, which were often in conflict with each other, was easier and more beneficial to Japan. For example, Japan intervened in the Northern Expedition in the 1928 Jinan Incident to prevent the unification of China. On the other hand, Chinese policy during that time followed first internal pacification, then external resistance and seemed to be appeasing the Japanese as the Kuomintang (KMT) Nationalist Government was mired in a continuous campaign against the Chinese Communists and just recently fought and won the 1930 war against remnant warlords. Chinese foreign policy during this period followed the doctrine of nonresistance (Chinese: 不抵抗主義; pinyin: bùdǐkàngzhǔyì). Aggressive policy by the relatively independent Japanese military authority in China, coupled with the policy of nonresistance by the Chinese central government, became the main impetus toward the Mukden Incident.

The Incident

The aim of Japanese junior officers in Manchuria was to provide a pretext that would justify Japanese military invasion and replace the Chinese government in the region with either a Japanese or a puppet one. They chose to sabotage a railway section in an area near Liutiao Lake (Chinese: 柳條湖). The fact was that the area had no official name and was not militarily important to either the Japanese or the Chinese. But it was only eight hundred meters away from the Chinese garrison of Beidaying (Chinese: 北大營), which was stationed by troops under the command of the "Young Marshal" Zhang Xueliang. The alleged Japanese plan was to attract Chinese troops by an explosion and then blame them for having caused it to provide a pretext for a formal Japanese invasion. In addition, to make the sabotage appear more convincingly as a calculated Chinese attack on an essential transportation target — thereby masking the Japanese action as a legitimate measure to protect a vital railway of industrial and economic importance — the Japanese press labeled the site Liutiaogou (Chinese: 柳條"溝") or Liutiaoqiao (Chinese: 柳條"橋"), which meant "Liutiao Ditch" and "Liutiao Bridge", respectively, when in reality the site was a small railway section laid on an area of flat land. The choice to place the explosives at this site was to preclude the extensive reconstruction that would have been necessitated had the site truly been a railway bridge.

Colonel Itagaki Seishiro, Lieutenant Colonel Kanji Ishiwara, Colonel Kenji Doihara, and Major Takayoshi Tanaka had laid complete plans for the incident by May 31, 1931. An important part of the scheme was to construct a swimming pool at the Japanese officers' club in Mukden. This "swimming pool" was actually a concrete bunker for two 9.2-inch artillery pieces, which were brought in under complete secrecy.

File:Mukden 1931 rail.jpg

A section of the Liutiaogou railway. The caption reads "railway fragment"

The plan was executed when officers of the Shimamoto Regiment, which guarded the South Manchuria Railway, arranged for sappers to place explosives near the tracks, but far enough away to do no real damage. At around 10:20PM (22:20), September 18, the explosives were detonated. However, the explosion was minor and only a 1.5 meter section on one side of the rail was damaged. In fact, a train from Changchun passed by the site on this damaged track without difficulty and arrived at Shenyang at 10:30PM (22:30).

Invasion of Manchuria

Main Article: Invasion of Manchuria

On the morning of September 19, the two artillery pieces installed at the Mukden officers' club opened up on the Chinese garrison nearby, in response to the alleged (by the Japanese) Chinese attack on the railway. Zhang Xueliang's small airforce was destroyed and the Chinese soldiers fled their destroyed Beidaying barracks as five hundred Japanese troops attacked the Chinese garrison of around seven thousand. The Chinese troops, mostly irregulars or new conscripts, were no match for the experienced troops the Japanese had prepared for the attack. By the evening of September 19, 1931, the fighting was over and the Japanese had occupied Mukden at the cost of five hundred Chinese and only two Japanese lives.

Zhang Xueliang, under implicit approval from Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Government to adhere to the nonresistance policy, had already urged his men to not put up a fight or contest any attack, and to store away any weapons in case the Japanese invaded. Therefore, the Japanese soldiers proceeded to occupy and garrison the major cities of Changchun, Antung, and their surrounding areas. Whenever fighting broke out, it was usually due to miscommunication between the central government and the Chinese troops who were supposed to have been ordered to be nonresistant. However, in November, Ma Zhanshan, the governor of Heilongjiang, began resistance with his provincial army, followed in January by Generals Ting Chao and Li Du with their loyal Kirin provincial forces. Within five months of the Mukden Incident, the invasion of Manchuria had overrun all the major towns and cities in the three north-eastern provinces of Liaoning (where Mukden was), Kirin, and Heilongjiang, bringing them under Japanese control. However, opposition to the Japanese was only beginning.

Aftermath

Chinese public opinion strongly criticized Zhang Xueliang for his decision of nonresistance, even though the central government was indirectly responsible for this policy. Many had charged that Zhang's Northeastern Army of nearly a quarter million could have taken on the Kwantung Army of 11,000, and that giving up the three provinces without a fight was a great shame to the Chinese people. In addition, Zhang's arsenal in Manchuria was considered the most modern in China and that his troops had a few tanks, around sixty planes, four thousand machine guns, and a couple artillery battalions.

However, in reality, Zhang's seemingly superior force was undermined by several factors. One was that the Kwantung Army had a strong reserve force that could be transported by railway from Korea, which was a Japanese colony, directly to Manchuria. Secondly, more than half of Zhang's troops were stationed south of the Great Wall in the Hebei province, while the troops north of the wall scattered throughout Manchuria, therefore Zhang's troop could not have been deployed fast enough to fight the Japanese north of the wall. Also, Zhang's troops were undertrained and poorly led compared to their Japanese counterparts. And the most important of all, Japanese agents permeated Zhang's command because of his past (and his father Zhang Zuolin's) reliance on Japanese military advisors on equipping the originally warlord Northeastern Army. The Japanese knew the Northeastern Army inside-out and were able to conduct operations with much ease. For example, the Japanese detained Zhang's pilots on the night of the incident, rendering the airplanes useless without pilots.

The Chinese government did not resist because it was preoccupied with internal problems, including the newly independent Guangzhou government of Hu Hanmin, Communist Party of China insurrections, and terrible flooding of the Yangtze that created tens of thousands of refugees that needed help. In addition, Zhang Xueliang was in a hospital in Beijing, to raise money for the flood victims. However, in the press, Zhang was ridiculed as General Nonresistance (Chinese: 不抵抗將軍).

Because of these circumstances, the central government was unable to do much about the situation, and relied on the international community for a peaceful resolution. The Chinese foreign embassy issued a strong protest to the Japanese government and called for the immediate stop of Japanese operations in Manchuria, and appealed to the League of Nations, on September 19. On October 24, the League of Nations passed a resolution mandating the withdrawal of Japanese troops, to be completed by November 16. However, Japan rejected the League of Nations resolution and insisted on direct negotiations with the Chinese government.

Negotiations went on intermittently without much result. On November 20, a conference in the Chinese government was convened, but the Guangzhou faction of the Kuomintang insisted that Chiang Kai-shek step down for the Manchurian debacle. On December 15, Chiang stepped down as the Chairman of the Nationalist Government and the Premier of the Republic of China (head of the Executive Yuan). Sun Fo, son of Sun Yat-sen, became the Premier and vowed to defend Jinzhou, another city of Liaoning, which was lost in early January 1932. As a result, Wang Jingwei then replaced Sun Fo as the Premier.

On January 7, the United States Secretary of State Henry Stimson proclaimed that the United States would not recognize any government that was established as the result of Japanese actions in Manchuria. On January 14, the League of Nations commission, headed by the Second Earl of Lytton of Britain, arrived in Shanghai to examine the situation. In March, the puppet state of Manchukuo was established, with the last emperor of China, Puyi, installed as its head of state. On October 2, the Lytton Report was published and rejected the Japanese claim that the Mukden Incident was an act of self-defense. The report also ascertained that Manchukuo was the product of Japanese military aggression in China, while recognizing that Japan had legitimate concerns in Manchuria because of its economic ties there. The League refused to acknowledge Manchukuo as an independent nation. This caused Japan to resign from the League of Nations in March 1933.

Colonel Doihara used the Mukden Incident to continue his campaign of disinformation. Since the Chinese troops at Mukden had put up such a poor resistance, he told Manchukuo Emperor Pu Yi that this was proof that the Chinese remained loyal to him. Also, Japanese intelligence used the incident to continue the campaign to discredit the murdered Zhang Zuolin and his son Zhang Xueliang for "misgovernment" of Manchuria. In fact, drug trafficking and corruption had largely been suppressed under Zhang Zuolin.

Controversy

Different opinions still exist as to who blew up the Japanese railroad at Mukden. It is almost certain that the Japanese military planned the incident and as a result carried out the subsequent occupation of Manchuria immediately with utmost efficiency.

Strong evidence points to young officers of the Japanese Kwantung Army having conspired to cause the blast, with or without direct orders from Tokyo. While some members of the Japanese military have denied planting the bomb, Major Tadashi Hanaya, assistant to Itagaki Seishiro at the time of the incident, confessed that the bomb was planted and the incident staged by them. Post-war investigations also reviewed that the original bomb planted by the Japanese failed to explode and a replacement had to be planted. The resulting explosion enabled the Japanese Kwantung Army to accomplish their goal of invading Manchuria and the subsequent establishment of the puppet state of Manchukuo.

The "9.18 Incident Exhibition Museum" at Shenyang, opened by the People's Republic of China takes the position that the explosives were planted by Japan. However, the Yushukan Museum, neighboring Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, places the blame on Chinese militias.

David Bergamini's book Japan's Imperial Conspiracy (1971) has a detailed chronology of events in both Manchuria and Tokyo surrounding the Mukden Incident. Bergamini concludes that the greatest deception was that the Mukden Incident and Japanese invasion were planned by junior or hot-headed officers, without formal approval by the Japanese government. Bergamini contends that Emperor Hirohito had approved the plan himself.

According to a year-long research by the Yomiuri Shimbun to look into the question of war responsibility and root causes of the Japanese invasion, occupation and colonization of China, Korea, and Southeast Asia, the "Manchurian Incident" was instigated by ambitious Japanese militarists, and not Chinese terrorists.

The starting point of the Showa War [i.e. Sino-Japanese War of 1931-1945] was the Manchurian Incident that took place in September 1931. Who should be blamed for having caused the incident? The main instigators of the incident were Kanji Ishihara and Seishiro Itagaki, staff officers of the Kwantung Army, a unit of the Imperial Japanese Army.

According to the most popular view, the Japanese, Determined to conspire together to grab power and lead the country, they became the masterminds of the act of aggression into Manchuria (currently part of northeastern China) and literally dragged the nation into a series of wars.

At the core of Lt. Col. Ishihara's militarist thinking was the pursuit of the "Final World War Theory" to determine the No. 1 country of the world in a war between Japan and the United States, which he considered the greatest nations of the Eastern and Western civilizations, respectively.

In January 1928, at a meeting of the Mokuyo-kai (Thursday Society) group of elite officers who graduated from the Imperial Japanese Army's War College, Ishihara said, "The nation could stand being in a state of war for even 20 years or 30 years if we have footholds all over China and fully use them."

In June of that year, Daisaku Komoto, the predecessor of Itagaki, assassinated Zhang Zuolin, a Chinese warlord who had a strong influence in Manchuria, by blowing up the train in which he was traveling. This bears strong similarity to the Manchurian Incident.

The Kwantung Army began advancing into Jilin Province beyond its original garrison areas. Shigeru Honjo, then commander of the Kwantung Army, initially opposed sending troops to Jilin. But he eventually yielded to Itagaki's persistence and decided to give the go-ahead to the deployment.

Senjuro Hayashi, commander of the Japanese Army in Korea, also decided to dispatch his troops to Manchuria without an order. He followed advice from staff officers of the Japanese Army in Korea, who had ties with Ishihara and Itagaki.

Kingoro Hashimoto, chief of the Russia group of the Army General Staff's 2nd Bureau, had close contacts with them.

Hashimoto formed the Sakura-kai (Cherry Society) group that comprised young reformist officers, and used the group as a foothold to lead two failed coup attempts called the "March Incident" and the "October Incident." The March Incident was aimed at installing War Minister Kazushige Ugaki as prime minister. Others involved in the incident included Kuniaki Koiso, chief of the ministry's Military Affairs Bureau.

The October Incident was linked to the Manchurian Incident, although it was poorly planned. However, it would be the forerunner for a series of coups and terrorist acts, such as the May 15 Incident of 1932 and Feb. 26 Incident of 1936.

Before the Manchurian Incident, War Minister Jiro Minami strongly advocated to take hard line stance on Manchuria and Inner Mongolia. Without complaint, Prime Minister Reijiro Wakatsuki readily approved the dispatch of troops from the Japanese Army in Korea to Manchuria at its own discretion after being told about it by Minami.

The helplessness of politicians from being able to prevent military officers stationed outside the country from spinning out of control surfaced for the first time at this point.

Many victims and their descendants have pushed for the government of the People's Republic of China to designate September 18 as "National Humiliation Day". The PRC government also opened the "9.18 Incident Exhibition Museum" at Shenyang (present-day name of Mukden) on September 18, 1991. Then Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto was one of the notable visitors of the museum in 1997.

Popular culture

The Mukden Incident is depicted in the Tintin book The Blue Lotus, although the book places the bombing near Shanghai.

See also

• Zhang Xueliang
• Yoshitsugu Tatekawa
• South Manchuria Railway
• Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945)
• Sino-Japanese relations (1931-1937)
• Shantung Incident
• False flag

External links

• Manchurian Incident