Kenji Doihara

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Kenji Doihara (土肥原 賢二) Doihara Kenji, August 8, 1883 - December 23, 1948) was a Japanese officer and spy who served in northeastern China from 1913 and who became a major military commander in Japan's invasion of China over the following decades. He was one of the main plotters of the so-called Mukden Incident, the pretext for the Japanese invasion of Manchuria prior to the Second World War. Doihara was nicknamed 'Lawrence of Manchuria', a reference to the West's Lawrence of Arabia.

Kenji Doihara was born in Okayama Prefecture on August 8, 1883. He joined the Imperial Japanese Army in 1912 from after graduating from college, working in the Japanese Army General Staff Headquarters, and was sent to China by the General Staff Headquarters in 1913. There he began his career as a spy in China. Diohara could speak fluently in the language of Beijing, and also was said to speak several other Chinese dialects.

Meanwhile he worked his way up the military ladder, attached to 2nd Regiment from 1926 to 1927 and 3rd Regiment in 1927. In 1927 he was part of an official tour to China and then attached to IJA 1st Division from 1927 to 1928. He was then made Military Adviser to the Chinese Government until 1929. In 1930 he was made Colonel and commanded 30th Regiment.

At this time Doihara's espionage work paid off for him, because of his performance he was attached to General Staff in 1930 to 1931, then transferred to its Tientsin espionage agency, and was part of another official tour to China. The following year he was again transferred to Shenyang as Head of the Houten Special Agency,Kwantung Army where he served until early 1932. There he with Colonel Itagaki Seishiro was instrumental in engineering the Mukden Incident, and as part of the following invasion of Manchuria subborning the cooperation of Northeastern Army generals Hsi Hsia in Kirin, Chang Ching-hui in Harbin and Chang Hai-peng at Taonan in the northwest of Liaoning province.

Next Colonel Doihara was dispatched by Colonel Itagaki to Tientsin to return Pu Yi to Manchuria. The plan was to pretend that Pu Yi had returned to resume his throne in answer to a popular demand of the people of Manchuria, and that Japan had nothing to do with his return, but would do nothing to oppose the popular demand of the people. In order to carry out this plan, it was necessary to land Pu Yi at Yingkou before that port became frozen; therefore, it was imperative that he arrive there before 16 November 1931.

In early 1932 Colonel Doihara was sent to Head the Harbin Special Agency of the [[Kwantung Army, where he began negotiatiating with General Ma after he had been driven from Tsitsihar by the Japanese. Ma's position was ambiguous; continued negotiations while he supported General Ting Chao in Harbin. When Doihara realized his negotiations with Generals Ma Zhanshan and Ting Chao had come to naught in early January, he requested the Manchurian puppet General Hsi Hsia to advance with his forces and take Harbin from General Ting Chao but he conducted the defense of Harbin successfully stopping Hsi Hsia. Doihara realized he would need Japanese forces to help and he engineered the Harbin Incident to justify their intervention. This resulted in the IJA 12th Division under General Jiro Tamon coming from Mukden by rail and then marching through the snow to reinforce the attack and taking the city on January 5th. 1932. By the end of February General Ma had sought terms and joined the Japanese puppet government and General Ting Chao, now retreating into northeastern Manchuria, offered to cease hostilities, seemingly ending Chinese formal resistance. Within a month the puppet state of Manchukuo was established under Doihara's supervision.

Because of his fame and heroics fighting them, Colonel Kenji Doihara, made contact with Ma and offered him a huge sum of money to join the new Manchukoan government and Army. Ma finally agreed and flew to Mukden in January 1932, where he attended the meeting that founded the puppet state of Manchukuo and he was appointed as War Minister and Governor of Heilongjiang Province. However, after secretly using the Japanese money to raise and reequip a new volunteer force he led his troops from Tsitsihar on April 1, 1932 reestablishing the Heilongjiang Provincial Government for the Republic of China and continued to resist the Japanese.

From 1932 to 1933 the newly promoted Major General Doihara was commanding 9th Brigade/IJA 5th Division. After the seizure of Jehol in Operation Nekka, Doihara was sent back to Manchukuo to head Houten Special Agency once again until 1934. He was then attached to IJA 12th Division until 1936.

From 1936 to 1937 he was the commander of the 1st Depot, in Japan until the outbreak of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, when he was given command of the IJA 14th Division under the Japanese First Army in North China. There he served in the Beiping–Hankou Railway Operation and spearheading the campaign of Northern and Eastern Honan were his division was struck by the Chinese counterattack in the Battle of Lanfeng.

Following the battle of Lanfeng, he was attached to the General Staff as head of the Doihara Special Agency until 1939 when he was given command of the Japanese Fifth Army, in Manchukuo under the Kwantung Army. In 1940 he was made a member of the Supreme War Council, Head of the Army Aeronautical Department of the Ministry of War, and Inspector-General of Army Aviation until 1943. From 1940 to 1941 he was the Commandant of the Military Academy. On November 4, 1941, as a Major-General in the Japanese Army Air Force and a member of the Supreme War Council he voted his approval of an attack on Pearl Harbor and the campaign that launched the Pacific War.

In 1943 he was made Commander in Chief of the Eastern Army District. In 1944 he was appointed the Governor of Johor State, Malaya and the Commander in Chief of the Japanese Seventh Area Army in Singapore until 1945.

Returning to Japan in 1945 he was made Inspector-General of Military Training, and Commander in Chief of the Eastern Army District and Japanese Twelfth Area Army As the war ended in 1945 he was made the Commander in Chief of the 1st General Army Afterward he retired.

After the war, Doihara was tried by the Tokyo tribunal for committing high war crimes and was sentenced to death (convicted on 8 counts). In the interim, he was imprisoned in Sugamo Prison. Then, on December 23, 1948, at the age of 65, he was hanged for his actions.

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