Kwantung Army

Kwantung Army, Japanese formation which policed what had been the Russian South Manchurian Railway zone in the Chinese province of Manchuria following Japan's victory in the Russo-Japanese war of 1905. During the 1930s, one of its more dubious enterprises was to develop biological warfare which it employed during the China incident and possibly during the first Japanese–Soviet campaign of August 1939. Given independent status in 1919, the army became a highly political organization during the 1920s and attracted the best and most ambitious Japanese officers. It was always an influence in the development of Manchuria, and from 1928 it played an increasingly assertive role there. In September 1931 a number of officer conspirators within the army organized the Mukden, or Manchurian Incident, the alleged sabotage of the Mukden–Port Arthur railway line. As a result of it the Kwantung Army (against the wishes of the Japanese government and its commander, Lt-General Honjō Shigeru) overran Manchuria by defeating the numerically stronger armies of the local Chinese warlords. It then created the puppet state of Manchukuo with the emperor, Pu-Yi, at its head and added Jehol, a part of Inner Mongolia, to its conquests. General Minami Jiro, now the Kwantung Army's commander, became the Japanese ambassador to Manchukuo which he effectively governed with little reference to Tokyo.

The ambitions of the Kwantung Army's officers did not end there. A truce was signed with China in 1933, which created a buffer zone in North China, but Kwantung Army agents began fostering independent movements and Japanese influence there, which helped kindle the China Incident in July 1937. However, Japan still regarded the USSR as its primary opponent and the Kwantung Army was involved in several border incidents with the Red Army. These culminated in the first Japanese–Soviet campaign of August 1939 in which the Kwantung Army was severely rebuffed and had one division almost entirely destroyed. By August 1945, when it again faced the Red Army, it had grown to 24 divisions and 12 brigades (267,000 men with another 243,000 in reserve), but it was inadequately equipped, trained, and supported—for example, there were just 50 front line aircraft—and was of low morale. It therefore proved nowhere near strong enough to stem what one historian has described as ‘an awful invasion, one of terrible massacre, incredible speed, confusion and panic’ (P. Calvocoressi et al., Total War, London, 1989, p. 1193). Japanese casualties amounted to 80,000 dead, and 594,000 officers and men, including 148 generals and about 20,000 wounded, were taken prisoner (see GUlag).