Winning Hearts and Minds

Nation Building and Counterinsurgency in Manchukuo 1931-1941

The state of Manchukuo (満州國), located in the Northeastern Chinese region of Manchuria, was established in 1932, six months after the initial Japanese invasion of the region following the Mukden incident of September 18, 1931. From 1931 until the end of the Second World War in Asia in 1945, the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) and their allies in the satellite state of Manchukuo waged a campaign of pacification against Chinese and Korean guerrilla forces fighting an insurgency against Japanese rule in the region. Due to the nature of Manchukuo being established as a satellite state of the Empire of Japan, the legitimacy of the state was always in question, even within the proposed nation’s borders. In an effort to solidify Manchu identity and carry out the process of nation building, the IJA and Manchu government embarked on a campaign to win over the hearts and minds of the multi-ethnic inhabitants through propaganda on the one hand and an ongoing counterinsurgency operation on the other. Despite limited success these efforts ultimately ended in failure when Manchukuo was invaded and captured by the Soviet Union in the summer of 1945.

The region of Manchuria had, for most of Chinese history, existed on the periphery of China proper, serving as a base from which nomadic invasions originated, and as a protectorate of successive Chinese dynasties. During the 17th century, Manchuria gave rise to the Qing dynasty which conquered and ruled China for the next 250 years. For much of this time, Manchuria served as the homeland of the Manchu ruling minority but during the later half of the Qing dynasty this sparsely populated region was opened to Han Chinese settlement to secure it from encroachment by the expanding Russian Empire. Alongside these Han Chinese also came Korean farmers who settled in the valleys along the North side of the Yalu and Tumen Rivers in the late 19th Century. By the fall of the Qing in the 1911 Xinhai revolution Manchuria’s population was majority Han Chinese (Avila-Tapies 2016).

Japanese interest in Manchuria began in the last decade of the 19th century as Japan looked to expand its presence on the Asian mainland. Following a series of conflicts between 1894 and 1905, Japanese influence on the Asian continent expanded into the Korean peninsula, Southern Manchuria, and the Liaodong Peninsula. The primary form of expressing this influence was through the South Manchuria Railway company (SMR) or Mantetsu. Through the SMR, centred on the city of Mukden, Japan maintained exterritorial rights along the railway lines from Dalian on the Bohai Sea to Changchun in the North, including the right to administer territory and deploy troops. The result of this was the stationing of troops of the Kwantung Army, based in the Kwangtung Lease Territory (KLT) throughout southern Manchuria. Due to a Japanese military policy known as “field initiative” (Dokudan Senko) field commanders held supreme authority within their unit’s area of operations, allowing for Kwantung Army officers to act independently of Imperial General Headquarters (IGHQ) in Tokyo (Peatte 2011). This situation would later lead to the Mukden Incident on September 18, 1931.

From the Chinese perspective, 1931 marks the beginning of the Sino-Japanese war. Following the Mukden Incident Japanese field commanders of the Kwantung Army quickly occupied the region which had, up until 1928, been indirectly under Japanese patronage through the local warlord Zhang Zuolin. The forces of his son and successor, Zhang Xueliang, were overrun in a campaign lasting only five months, despite outnumbering Japanese forces twenty to one (Peatte 2011). Due in part to the speed of this offensive and a reluctance on the part of the Kwantung Army staff to limit their operation, Tokyo’s attempts to de-escalate the conflict were ignored. Furthermore, the Nationalist command in Nanjing was hesitant to reinforce the Manchurian front due in part to fears of escalation, and because large portions of the Nationalist Army were preoccupied containing Communist forces in Jiangxi province. In order to save face, the government in Tokyo was forced to recognize the gains their army had made in Manchuria by February 1932.

When nominal Chinese Nationalist resistance ended in February 1932, the government in Tokyo refused to relinquish their new found territory and sought to legitimize their conquest through the creation of a nominally independent Manchurian state (Peatte 2011). The state formed from this incident was the State of Manchukuo. To head this new state the Japanese sought to enlist the formerly deposed Qing Emperor Puyi, who took up the office of Chief Executive on March 8, 1932. The next year, in February 1933 the Kwantung Army pushed once again into the neighboring province of Rehe, adding it to the domain of Manchukuo. Shortly after this the Tanggu truce was signed, bringing a temporary respite to the conflict and solidifying Manchukuo’s frontier.

With the conquest now complete, Japan set about legitimizing their new client state and pacifying local resistance to the regime in a decade long campaign. To accomplish these two goals, Japan required local collaborators and a security force. The first group of people recruited to the new state were former administrators and warlords of the preceding Fengtian clique, who had ruled Manchuria under nominal Nationalist control until this point. One such figure was Zhang Jinghui, former Warlord of Heilongjiang and later Prime Minister of Manchukuo. Upon the invasion of Manchuria and subsequent withdrawal of Chinese forces Southeast into Rehe, Zhang Jinghui took up the post of Governor of Heilongjiang and later secured the position of Minister of Defense of Manchukuo in April 1932. From this position, in cooperation with the Kwantung Army, Zhang oversaw the formation of a Manchu army.

The Army of Manchukuo was officially established on April 15, 1932. Due to the limited resistance offered by the soldiers of the Fengtian Army many Chinese were captured en-masse and came to form the basis of the succeeding Manchukuo Army (Jowett 2010). Some 60,000 Chinese troops of the Fengtian Army were recruited into the Manchukuo Armed Forces at the time of the Army’s foundation. Though plentiful, these troops were largely unreliable and of poor quality at the outset. Furthermore, many of their officers were ex-Nationalists who had defected to the Japanese out of convenience. To remedy this, Manchukuo opened training schools and officer academies from 1934-1938, aiming to build a cadre of more loyal officers. One of their strategies was to recruit from among the ethnic minorities of the country, including Mongols, and Koreans, each having their own respective units (Jowett 2010).

In the meantime, many officer and staff positions were filled by Japanese advisors at multiple levels of command. At the higher levels Kwantung Army officers would oversee the officer academies and Manchukuo General staff. At lower levels, one strategy was to use former NCOs (Non-commissioned officers) of the IJA and commission them as junior officers in the Manchukuo Army. These Japanese would serve alongside Manchukuo officers and later become platoon and company commanders. Through this model, the Japanese were able to create a multi-national army of Han, Mongols, Manchus, and Koreans, under effective Japanese leadership through the institutions of the Manchurian state and military. These officers formed part of the small but steady flow of Japanese migrants, who had been flowing into Manchuria since the 1920’s (Jowett 2010).

As Marshal Zhang Xueliang withdrew his forces from Manchuria in early 1932 many troops were left behind in the confusion and, though some 60,000 would come to form the basis of the Manchukuo Army, many thousands more would choose to continue the fight against the Japanese. These ‘Anti-Japanese’ resistance armies would prove troublesome for Manchukuo for several years. In 1932 these armies numbered some 200,000 troops across the country, such as those of General Ma Chan-Shan in the north, and Li Hai-Ching in Jilin Province (Jowett 2010). During the summer of 1932 these armies were defeated in joint operations where Manchukuo soldiers performed unsatisfactory. There were even cases of revolt, such as in the Manchouli incident in September of 1932, where Manchukuo soldiers under the command of Su Ping-wei revolted against their would-be Japanese allies. While resistance figures were reduced to roughly 20,000 men by 1935, operations changed from more organized, larger ‘armies’ to smaller guerrilla bands.

By 1933, with Rehe secured and large-scale resistance suppressed, a stalemate set in whereby the Kwantung Army and their Manchukuo client controlled the urban areas of the country, the rail lines linking them, and some territories in the south, while the ‘bandits’, as they were called, roamed the countryside. At first, these bandits and Manchukuo soldiers were often one in the same, as collusion was widespread at this point. Uniforms in the early days of the Manchukuo Army were carried over from the former Fengtian Clique marked with a yellow armband. Because of this, many bandits would carry armbands of both yellow and red, changing them when necessary. Manchukuo soldiers would on occasion receive weapons and ammunition from their commanders and then either desert or hand over the ammunition to their would-be enemies (Jowett 2010). These ‘bandits’ would then destroy infrastructure, raid settlements, rob trains, and, when threatened or notified by friendly Manchukuo troops, retreat into Mongolia, China, or the Soviet Union. Between May of 1932 and 1935 the Manchukuo Army suffered some 2,700 casualties conducting anti-bandit operations. The figure for bandit losses was approximately 28,000 in 1935 alone (Jowett 2010).

One hotbed for ‘bandit’ insurgency activity was the Manchukuo-Korea border area known as Jiandao (間島). By this time Korea had been a colony of Japan for over 20 years, and during this period, especially after 1919, many Koreans had moved into the Jiandao region on the North side of the Tumen River. By the time of Manchukuo’s founding, roughly 400,000 of Manchukuo’s 600,000 Koreans lived in Jiandao (Blaxell 2020). Jiandao hosted a mix of people, including farmers and productive migrants as well as nationalists and communist guerrillas. Jiandao served as the base of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army composed of many Koreans and Chinese opposed to Japanese rule in the region. For many years Japan had operated through its Foreign Ministry’s Consular Police Service (Gaimusho keisatsu) to monitor dissidents in the area but after 1931 more direct action could be taken. From 1931 to 1937 Japanese consular police, numbering 1,390 - 1,900, cooperated with Manchukuo and Kwantung Army units in counter insurgency operations in Jiandao (Esselstorm 2005).

In Jiandao, Japan, operating through the Chosen Government-General (Korea), constructed eight “Protected villages” in 1933, where local sympathetic Korean populations could be kept separate from insurgents (Blaxell 2020). Through this move the locals were kept monitored and in good order, while also cutting off insurgents from their source of supply. This model proved so successful that between 1933 and 1938 over 13,000 more collective and protected villages, housing 5.5 million people, were constructed across the Manchurian countryside (Blaxell 2020). The collective village structure created a string of communities connected by rail, road, and communications lines stemming from the cities at the core of Manchukuo and radiating out into the countryside. These communities formed their own militia in cooperation with the Manchukuo Army and local police, issued identification cards, and built schools, community spaces, and other amenities where possible (Blaxell, 2020).

The main strategy used by Japan in Manchukuo was to secure the population of a given territory, separate them from insurgent forces, and then provide them with security, economic development, transportation, and communications, so that they might be won over to the Japanese cause and provide a legitimizing base for the State of Manchukuo. If this was not sufficient, force was always an option. Though these persuasive methods proved more effective the longer they were used, insurgent and bandit suppression was still necessary into the 1940’s.

By 1936 Manchukuo Army units began operating independently of Japanese Kwantung Army units for the first time. From 1936 to 1939 there was a relative increase in the effectiveness and reliability of the Manchukuo Army as new uniforms and equipment were issued and graduates of military training programs were fed into the ranks. New specialized units were formed usually from ethnic minorities such as Koreans, Japanese settlers, and Mongolian horsemen. Beginning in 1937 extraterritorial rights for Japan in Manchukuo were abolished and the personnel of the Japanese consular police were absorbed into the Manchukuo state security apparatus. These changes came just in time for a major counter-insurgency operation launched from November 1937 to March of 1939 in the area along the Eastern border with the Soviet Union. During this operation some 25,000 Manchukuo soldiers were involved against Chinese and Korean communist insurgents operating in the area (Jowett 2010).

Despite all these changes, when not including specialized units or Japanese assets, the Manchukuo Army was still relatively unreliable and ineffective. During multiple incidents either along the Soviet border or in conflict with Nationalist Chinese forces on the western frontier it was not uncommon for Manchu Army formations of various sizes to defect, stand immobile, or simply fail to perform their duties. Public opinion was pacified but not supportive of the regime. Despite the Army growing to some 220,000 men during the 1940’s these troops proved largely ineffective as guerrilla activities shifted from the old Northeastern bandit armies to more organized Chinese Communist and United-Armies as a result of full-scale war with China (Jowett 2010). When the Manchukuo project finally came to an end in August of 1945 it was abrupt and decisive. It had taken Japan over 10 years to pacify Manchuria but less than 10 days for the state to collapse. When Soviet forces invaded on May 9, 1945, soldiers of the Manchukuo Army opted to surrender or desert. Most simply were not willing to risk their life for a state with which they never really identified.

Bibliography

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