Manchurian incident

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This article is about a tank battle in Manchuria in 1931. For the Mukden Incident 1931, the bombing of a South Manchurian Railway track sometimes also referred as Manchurian Incident, see the link.

The Manchurian Incident (January 1931) was an engagement of the Imperial Japanese Army with Chinese forces. In this battle, a Japanese tank force saw action for the first time. It was in

Place : Harbin, Heilongjiang province (Manchuria)
Opponent : Chinese Army

Tank Unit: 1st Special Tank Company
Commander: Captain Hyakutake
Tanks: One tank platoon (Renault FT17 and Renault NC27 tanks)

The Manchurian Incident or Mukden Incident, 1931, was a confrontation that gave Japan the impetus to set up a puppet government in Manchuria. After the Russo-Japanese War (1904–5), Japan replaced Russia as the dominant foreign power in S Manchuria. By the late 1920s the Japanese feared that unification of China under the Kuomintang party would imperil Japanese interests in Manchuria. This view was confirmed when the Manchurian general Chang Hsüeh-liang, a recent convert to the Kuomintang, refused to halt construction of railway and harbor facilities in competition with the South Manchurian Railway, referring Japan to the Nationalist central government. When a bomb of unknown origin ripped the Japanese railway near Shenyang (then known as Mukden), the Japanese Kwantung army guarding the railway used the incident as a pretext to occupy S Manchuria (Sept., 1931). Despite Japanese cabinet opposition and a pledge before the League of Nations to withdraw to the railway zone, the army completed the occupation of Manchuria and proclaimed the puppet state of Manchukuo (Feb., 1932). See Second Sino-Japanese War.