The Mukden Incident, also known as the Manchurian Incident, was a staged event that was engineered by Japanese military personnel as a pretext for invading the northern part of China known as Manchuria in 1931.[1][2][3]
On September 18, 1931 a small quantity of dynamite was detonated by Lt. Kawamoto Suemori[4] close to a railroad owned by Japan's South Manchuria Railway near Mukden (now Shenyang).[5] Although the explosion was so weak that it failed to destroy the lines and a train passed minutes later, the Imperial Japanese Army, accusing Chinese dissidents of the act, responded with a full invasion that led to the occupation of Manchuria, in which Japan established its puppet state of Manchukuo six months later. The ruse was soon exposed to the international community, leading Japan to diplomatic isolation and its withdrawal from the League of Nations.[6]
The actual event is known as Liutiaohu Incident (simplified Chinese: 柳条湖事变; traditional Chinese: 柳條湖事變; pinyin: Liǔtiáohú Shìbiàn, Japanese: 柳条湖事件, Ryūjōko-jiken) and the event including its aftermath is known in Japan as the Manchurian Incident (Kyūjitai: 滿洲事變, Shinjitai: 満州事変, Manshū-jihen) and in China as the September 18 Incident (simplified Chinese: 九一八事变; traditional Chinese: 九一八事變; pinyin: Jiǔyībā Shìbiàn).
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The Japanese economic presence and political interest in Manchuria had been growing ever since the end of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05). The Treaty of Portsmouth that ended the war had granted Japan the lease of the South Manchuria Railway branch (from Changchun to Lüshun) of the China Far East Railway. The Japanese government, however, claimed that this control included all the rights and privileges that China granted to Russia in the 1896 Li-Lobanov Treaty, as enlarged by the Kwantung Lease Agreement of 1898. This included absolute and exclusive administration within the South Manchuria Railway Zone. Japanese railway guards were stationed within the zone to provide security for the trains and tracks; however, these were regular Japanese soldiers, and they frequently carried out maneuvers outside the railway areas. There are many reports of raids on local Chinese villages by bored Japanese soldiers and all complaints from the Chinese government were ignored.
In Nanjing in April 1931 a national leadership conference of the Republic of China was held between Chiang Kai-shek and Zhang Xueliang; the Muslim General Ma Fuxiang, along with his vaunted personal guard, also attended. They agreed to strongly assert China's sovereignty in Manchuria.[7]
Kwantung Army Colonel Seishirō Itagaki and Lieutenant Colonel Kanji Ishiwara devised a plan to invade Manchuria. Ishiwara presented the plan at the Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo, and it was approved to be launched, but only following a major incident started by the Chinese. However, when the Japanese Minister of War Jirō Minami dispatched Major General Yoshitsugu Tatekawa to Manchuria for the specific purpose of curbing the insubordination and militarist behavior of the Kwantung Army, Itagaki and Ishiwara knew that they no longer had the luxury of waiting for the Chinese to respond to provocations, but had to stage their own.
Itagaki and Ishiwara chose to sabotage the rail section in an area near Liǔtiáo Lake (柳條湖 → liǔtiáohú). The area had no official name and was not militarily important to either the Japanese or the Chinese, but it was only eight hundred metres away from the Chinese garrison of Beidaying (北大營 → běidàyíng), where troops under the command of the "Young Marshal" Zhang Xueliang were stationed. 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 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 "Liǔtiáo Ditch" (柳條溝 → liǔtiáogōu) or "Liǔtiáo Bridge" (柳條橋 → liǔtiáoqiáo), 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 rebuilding that would have been necessitated had the site actually been a railway bridge.
Colonel Seishirō Itagaki, Lieutenant Colonel Kanji Ishiwara, Colonel Kenji Doihara, and Major Takayoshi Tanaka had laid complete plans for the incident by May 31, 1931.[8] 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.[8]
The plan was executed when 1st Lieutenant Suemori Komoto of Independent Garrison Unit (独立守備隊) of the 29th Infantry Regiment, which guarded the South Manchuria Railway, placed explosives near the tracks, but far enough away to do no real damage. At around 10:20 PM (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 10:30 PM (22:30).[9]
On the morning of the following day (September 19), the two artillery pieces installed at the Mukden officers' club opened up on the Chinese garrison nearby, in response to the alleged Chinese attack on the railway. Zhang Xueliang's small air force was destroyed and his 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 Japanese troops. By the evening the fighting was over and the Japanese had occupied Mukden at the cost of five hundred Chinese lives and two Japanese lives.[10]
At Dalian in the Kwantung Leased Territory, Commander-in-Chief of the Kwantung Army General Shigeru Honjō was at first appalled that the invasion plan was enacted without his permission,[11] but was eventually convinced by Ishiwara to give his approval after the fact. Honjō moved the Kwantung Army headquarters to Mukden, and ordered General Senjuro Hayashi of the Chosen Army of Japan in Korea to send in reinforcements. At 04:00 on 19 September, Mukden was declared secure.
Zhang Xueliang, under implicit instructions from Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Government to adhere to a nonresistance policy, had already urged his men to not put up a fight, 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 with minimal difficulty. However, in November, Muslim General Ma Zhanshan, the acting governor of Heilongjiang, began resistance with his provincial army, followed in January by Generals Ting Chao and Li Du with their local Jilin provincial forces. Despite this resistance, within five months of the Mukden Incident, the Imperial Japanese Army had overrun all major towns and cities in the provinces of Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang.
Chinese public opinion strongly criticized Zhang Xueliang for his nonresistance to the Japanese invasion, even though the Kuomintang (KMT) central government was indirectly responsible for this policy. While the Japanese presented a legitimate threat, the KMT (also known as GMD) focused their efforts mainly on eradicating the communist party. Many charged that Zhang's Northeastern Army of nearly a quarter million could have withstood the Kwantung Army of only 11,000 men. In addition, his arsenal in Manchuria was considered the most modern in China and his troops had tanks, around 60 combat aircraft, 4000 machine guns, and four artillery battalions.
Zhang Xueliang'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 adjacent 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 were scattered throughout Manchuria, therefore Zhang's troop could not have been deployed fast enough to fight the Japanese in any concentration north of the Great Wall. Most of Zhang's troops were under-trained, poorly led, and had poor morale and questionable loyalty compared to their Japanese counterparts. Japanese secret agents had permeated Zhang's command because of his past (and his father, Zhang Zuolin's) reliance on Japanese military advisors. The Japanese knew the Northeastern Army very well and were able to conduct operations with ease.
The Chinese government was preoccupied with numerous internal problems, including the issue of the newly independent Guangzhou government of Hu Hanmin, Communist Party of China insurrections, and terrible flooding of the Yangtze River that created tens of thousands of refugees. Moreover, Zhang himself was not in Manchuria at the time, but was in a hospital in Beijing, to raise money for the flood victims. However, in the Chinese newspapers, Zhang was ridiculed as 'General Nonresistance' (Chinese: 不抵抗將軍).
Because of these circumstances, the central government turned to the international community for a peaceful resolution. The Chinese Foreign Ministry issued a strong protest to the Japanese government and called for the immediate stop to Japanese military 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 to take responsibility for the Manchurian debacle. On December 15, Chiang resigned as the Chairman of the Nationalist Government and was replaced as Premier of the Republic of China (head of the Executive Yuan) by Sun Fo, son of Sun Yat-sen. Jinzhou, another city in Liaoning, was lost to the Japanese in early January 1932. As a result, Wang Jingwei replaced Sun Fo as the Premier.
On January 7, 1932, United States Secretary of State Henry Stimson proclaimed the Stimson Doctrine, stating that the United States would not recognize any government that was established as the result of Japanese actions in Manchuria. On January 14, a League of Nations commission, headed by Victor Bulwer-Lytton, 2nd Earl of Lytton, arrived in Shanghai to examine the situation. In March, the puppet state of Manchukuo was established, with the former emperor of China, Puyi, installed as head of state.
On October 2, the Lytton Report was published and rejected the Japanese claim that the Manchurian invasion and occupation was an act of self-defense, although it did not assert that the Japanese had perpetrated the initial bombing of the railroad.[12] The report 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 of Nations refused to acknowledge Manchukuo as an independent nation. Japan resigned from the League of Nations in March 1933.
Colonel Kenji 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 Puyi that this was proof that the Chinese remained loyal to him. 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.[13]
Different opinions still exist as to who blew up the Japanese railroad at Mukden. Strong evidence points to young officers of the Japanese Kwantung Army having conspired to cause the blast, with or without direct orders from Tokyo. Post-war investigations confirmed 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 on September 18, 1991, takes the position that the explosives were planted by Japan. However, the Yūshūkan museum, neighboring Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, places the blame on Chinese militias. Yūshūkan has been criticized for historical revisionism.
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. However, historian James Weland has concluded that senior commanders had tacitly allowed field operatives to proceed on their own initiative, then endorsed the result.[14]
In August 2006, the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan's top-selling newspaper, published the results of a year-long research project into the general question of who is responsible for the "Showa war". With respect to the Manchurian Incident, the newspaper blamed ambitious Japanese militarists, as well as politicians who were impotent to rein them in.[15][16]
Debate has also focused on how the Incident was handled by the League of Nations and the subsequent Lytton Report. A.J.P. Taylor wrote that "In the face of its first serious challenge", the League buckled and capitulated. The Washington Naval Conference (1921) guaranteed a certain degree of Japanese hegemony in the Far East. Any intervention on the part of America would be a breach of the already mentioned agreement. Furthermore Britain was in crisis, having been recently forced off the gold standard. Although a power in the Far East, Britain was incapable of decisive action. The only response from these powers was "moral condemnation".[17]