The Mukden incident was a false flag event staged by Japanese military personnel as a pretext for the 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria. On September 18, 1931, Lieutenant Suemori Kawamoto of the of the detonated a small quantity of dynamite close to a railway line owned by Japan's South Manchuria Railway near Mukden (now Shenyang). The explosion was so weak that it failed to destroy the track, and a train passed over it minutes later. The Imperial Japanese Army accused Chinese dissidents of the act and responded with a full invasion that led to the occupation of Manchuria, in which Japan established its puppet state of Manchukuo five months later.
Names
In English, the Mukden incident is also known as the Manchurian incident. In Japanese, 'Manchurian incident' (Kyūjitai: , Shinjitai: , ) usually refers to the entire sequence of events (including the invasion), rather than just the initial September 1931 attack on the railway line. In Chinese, the attack on the railway line is known as the Liutiao Lake incident () and the "September 18 incident" () refers to the entire sequence of events.
Background
Japanese economic presence and political interest in Manchuria had been growing ever since the end of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905). 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.
Meanwhile, the newly formed Chinese government was attempting to reassert its authority over the country after over a decade of fragmented warlord dominance. They started to claim that treaties between China and Japan were invalid. China also announced new acts, so the Japanese people (including Koreans and Taiwanese as both regions were under Japanese rule at this time) who had settled frontier lands, opened stores or built their own houses in China were expelled without any compensation. Manchurian warlord Zhang Zuolin tried to deprive Japanese concessions too, but he was assassinated by the Japanese Kwantung Army. Zhang Xueliang, Zhang's son and successor, joined the Nanjing Government led by Chiang Kai-shek from anti-Japanese sentiment. Official Japanese objections to the oppression against Japanese nationals within China were rejected by the Chinese authorities.Yamaguchi, Jūji (1967). Kieta Teikoku Manshū. The Mainichi Newspapers Co., Ltd.
The 1929 Sino-Soviet conflict (July–November) over the Chinese Eastern Railroad (CER) further increased the tensions in the Northeast that would lead to the Mukden incident. The Soviet Red Army victory over Zhang Xueliang's forces not only reasserted Soviet control over the CER in Manchuria but revealed Chinese military weaknesses that Japanese Kwantung Army officers were quick to note.Michael M. Walker, The 1929 Sino-Soviet War: The War Nobody Knew (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2017), p. 290.
The Soviet Red Army performance also stunned Japanese officials. Manchuria was central to Japan's East Asia policy. Both the 1921 and 1927 Imperial Eastern Region Conferences reconfirmed Japan's commitment to be the dominant power in Manchuria. The 1929 Red Army victory shook that policy to the core and reopened the Manchurian problem. By 1930, the Kwantung Army realized they faced a Red Army that was only growing stronger. The time to act was drawing near and Japanese plans to conquer the Northeast were accelerated.Michael M. Walker, The 1929 Sino-Soviet War: The War Nobody Knew (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2017), pp. 290–291.
In April 1931, a national leadership conference of China was held between Chiang Kai-shek and Zhang Xueliang in Nanjing. They agreed to put aside their differences and assert China's sovereignty in Manchuria strongly. Some officers of the Kwantung Army began to plot to invade Manchuria secretly. There were other officers who wanted to support plotters in Tokyo.
Events
Believing that a conflict in Manchuria would be in the best interests of Japan, Kwantung Army Colonel Seishirō Itagaki and Lieutenant Colonel Kanji Ishiwara independently devised a plan to prompt Japan to invade Manchuria by provoking an incident from Chinese forces stationed nearby. However, after 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 believed 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 Liutiao Lake (; liǔtiáohú). The area had no official name and was not militarily important, but it was only eight hundred meters away from the Chinese garrison of Beidaying (; běidàyíng), where troops under the command of the "Young Marshal" Zhang Xueliang were stationed. The Japanese plan was to attract Chinese troops by an explosion and then blame them for having caused the disturbance, in order to provide a pretext for a formal Japanese invasion. They planned to make the sabotage appear to be a calculated Chinese attack on an essential target, so that the expected Japanese reaction would appear as a legitimate measure to protect a railway of industrial and economic importance. The Japanese press labeled the site "Liǔtiáo Ditch" (; liǔtiáogōu) or "Liǔtiáo Bridge" (; 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 avert the extensive rebuilding that would have been needed had the site actually been a railway bridge.
Incident
Colonel Seishirō Itagaki, Lieutenant Colonel Kanji Ishiwara, Colonel Kenji Doihara, and Major Takayoshi Tanaka had completed plans for the incident by May 31, 1931. The plan was executed when 1st Lieutenant Suemori Kawamoto of the Independent Garrison Unit (獨立守備隊) 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 p.m. (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 in Shenyang at 10:30 p.m. (22:30).Chronology of Major International Events from 1931 through 1943, with Ostensible Reasons Advanced for the Occurrence Thereof 78th Congress, 2d Session. "An explosion undoubtedly occurred on or near the railroad between 10 and 10:30 p.m. on September 18th, but the damage, if any, to the railroad did not in fact prevent the punctual arrival of the south-bound train from Changchun, and was not in itself sufficient to justify military action. The military operations of the Japanese troops during this night, ... cannot be regarded as measures of legitimate self-defense..." [Opinion of Commission of Inquiry], ibid., p. 71
Invasion of Manchuria
On the morning of September 19, two Japanese artillery pieces installed at the Shenyang officers' club opened fire on the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) 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 NRA garrison resisted but was defeated and fled. By the evening, the fighting was over, and the Japanese had occupied Mukden at the cost of five hundred Chinese lives and only two Japanese dead.
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,Chen, World War II Database but he was eventually convinced by Ishiwara to give his approval after the act. 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 personally ordered his men not to put up a fight and to store away any weapons when the Japanese invaded. Therefore, the Japanese soldiers proceeded to occupy and garrison the major cities of Changchun and Dandong and their surrounding areas with minimal difficulty.
After seizing radio broadcasting facilities, on 6 October the Kwantung Army began broadcasting propaganda to Japan, aimed towards increasing Japanese public opinion in favor of its actions.
In November, General Ma Zhanshan, the acting governor of Heilongjiang, began resistance with his provincial army, followed in January by Generals Ding 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.
Aftermath Chinese public opinion strongly criticized Zhang Xueliang for his non-resistance to the Japanese invasion. While the Japanese presented a real threat, the Kuomintang directed most of their efforts towards eradication of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). 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 possession of tanks, around 60 combat aircraft, 4000 machine guns, and four artillery battalions.
Zhang Xueliang's seemingly superior force was undermined by several factors. The first 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 Hebei Province, while the troops north of the wall were scattered throughout Manchuria. Therefore, deploying Zhang's troops north of the Great Wall meant that they lacked the concentration needed to fight the Japanese effectively. Most of Zhang's troops were under-trained, poorly led, poorly fed, and had poor morale and questionable loyalty compared to their Japanese counterparts. Japanese secret agents had permeated Zhang's command because of his and his father Zhang Zuolin's past reliance on Japanese military advisers. 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, CCP insurrections, and 1931 China floods 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" ().