The , also known as the
Guandong Army ( ; ), was
an
army group of the
Imperial Japanese Army in the early
twentieth century. It became the largest and most prestigious
command in the IJA.
Many of its personnel, such as Chiefs of Staff Seishirō Itagaki and Hideki Tōjō, were promoted to high
positions in both the military and civil government in the Empire of Japan
and it was largely responsible for the creation of
the Japanese-dominated Empire of Manchukuo.
History
Beginnings
Kwantung Army on maneuvers
Following the
Russo-Japanese War,
Japan obtained the
Kwantung
Leased Territory and the areas adjacent to the
South Manchurian Railway.
"Kwantung"
means "east of Shanhaiguan
," a guarded pass, east of which lies Manchuria. The
Kwantung
Garrison was established in 1906 to defend this territory,
and originally was composed of an
infantry division and a heavy siege
artillery battalion, supplemented with six independent
garrison battalions as railway guards
deployed along the
South
Manchurian Railway Zone, giving a total troop strength of
10,000 men.
It was headquartered in Port Arthur
, known as "Ryōjun" in Japanese. After a
reorganization in 1919, the Kwantung Garrison was renamed the
Kwantung Army.
In the highly politicized Imperial Japanese Army of the 1920s and
1930s, the Kwangtung Army was a stronghold of the radical
Kodoha, and many of
its senior leaders overtly advocated political change in Japan
through the violent overthrow of the civilian government to bring
about a
Shōwa Restoration,
with a reorganization of society and the economy along
totalitarian state socialist lines.
They also advocated a more aggressive, expansionistic foreign
policy with regards to the Asian mainland. Members, or former
members, of the Kwantung Army were active in numerous
coup d'état attempts against the civilian
government, cumulating with the
February 26 Incident of 1936.
Independent actions
Although the Kwangtung Army was nominally subordinate to the
Imperial General
Headquarters and the senior staff at the
Army General Staff, its
leadership demonstrated significant capacity for autonomous action.
Conspirators within the
junior
officer corps of the Kwantung Army plotted and carried out the
assassination of Manchurian
warlord Chang Tsolin in
the
Huanggutun Incident of 1928.
Afterwards, the Kwantung Army leadership engineered the
Mukden Incident and the subsequent
invasion of Manchuria in 1931
in a massive act of
gekokujo
insubordination against the express orders of the political and
military leadership based in Tokyo.
Presented with the
fait accompli, Imperial General
Headquarters had little choice but to follow up on the actions of
the Kwantung Army with reinforcements in the subsequent
Pacification of Manchukuo. The
success of the campaign meant that the insubordination of the
Kwantung Army was rewarded rather than punished.
With the foundation of
Manchukuo in 1932,
the Kwantung Army played a controlling role in the political
administration of the new state as well as in its defense. The
commander in chief of the
Kwantung Army simultaneously held the post of Japanese ambassador
to Manchukuo. With the Kwantung Army administering all aspects of
the politics and economic development of the new state, this made
the Kwantung Army commander equivalent to a
resident general, with the authority
to approve or countermand any command from the nominal emperor of
Manchukuo,
Puyi.
The
Kwantung Army was heavily augmented over the next few years, up to
a strength of 700,000 troops by 1941, and its headquarters was
transferred to the new Manchukuo capital of Hsinking
. The
Kwantung Army also oversaw the creation, training and equipping of
an auxiliary force, the
Manchukuo Imperial Army. During this
time, Prince
Tsuneyoshi Takeda worked
as liaison officer between the
Imperial
house and the Kwantung Army.
Second World War
After the
campaign to secure Manchukuo, the Kwangtung Army continued to fight
in numerous border skirmishes with China
as part of
its efforts to create a Japanese-dominated buffer zone in northern China. The Kwantung Army also
fought in the opening phase of the
Second Sino-Japanese War in
Operation Nekka, and various
actions in
Inner Mongolia to extend Japanese domination over portions of
northern China and
Inner Mongolia.
When War
broke out in the Marco Polo Bridge Incident
in July 1937 its forces participated in Battle of Beiping-Tianjin and
Operation Chahar. Later
forces were taken from Kwangtung Army to support the war in China
from time to time.
However,
the much vaunted reputation of the Kwantung Army was severely
challenged in battle against the Soviet Union
's Red Army at the Battle of Lake
Khasan
in 1938 and subsequent Battle of
Nomonhan
in 1939, during which time it sustained heavy
casualties. After the Nomonhan incident, the Kwantung
Army was purged of its more insubordinate elements, as well as
proponents of the Hokushin-ron doctrine who urged that
Japan concentrate its expansionist efforts on Siberia
rather
southward towards China and Southeast
Asia.
Although a source of constant unrest during the 1930s, the Kwantung
Army remained remarkably obedient during the 1940s. As combat
spread south into
central China and
southern China in the
Second Sino-Japanese War, and with
the outbreak of the
Pacific War,
Manchukuo was largely a backwater to the conflict.
However, as the war situation began to deteriorate for the Imperial
Japanese Army on all fronts, the huge, well-trained and
well-equipped Kwangtung Army could no longer be held in
strategic reserve.
Many of its front line
units were systematically stripped of their best units and
equipment, which were sent south against the forces of the United States
in the Pacific Islands or
the Philippines
. Other units were sent south into China for
Operation Ichi-Go.
At the time of the
Manchurian Strategic
Offensive Operation, when the Soviet Red Army invaded
Manchukuo, Inner Mongolia, Korea and Japanese-held islands in
August 1945, the Kwantung Army's strength was still at around
600,000 men, with one
armored
division, 25 infantry divisions, six independent brigades, and
up to 25 security battalions. However, the men remaining were
largely semi-trained conscripts or raw recruits, equipped primarily
as a
counterinsurgency and border
security force and unable to withstand the massive Soviet armored
and
mechanized infantry
invasion.
Surrender of the Kwantung Army
The final commander in chief of the Kwantung Army, General
Otozo Yamada, ordered a surrender on August 16,
1945, one day after Emperor Hirohito announced the
defeat of the Japanese empire in a radio
announcement. Some Japanese divisions refused to surrender, and
combat continued for the next few days.
Marshal Hata received "Ultimatum to surrender"
from Soviet General Georgii
Shelakhov in Harbin
on August
18, 1945. He was one of the senior generals who agreed with
the
decision to surrender, and on
August 19, 1945, Hata had talks with Marshal
Aleksandr Vasilevsky, but asked that he
be stripped of his title of Field Marshal in atonement for the
Army’s failures in the war.
The remnants of the Kwantung Army either lay dead on the
battlefield or were on their way to Soviet
Prisoner-of-war camps.
Over five hundred
thousand of Japanese
prisoners of war were forced to work as slave labor in Soviet labor camps in Siberia, Russian Far East
and Mongolia
. They were largely repatriated, in stages,
over the coming five years, though some continued to be held well
into the 1950s.
War crimes & trials
After the surrender of Japan, the Soviet Red Army discovered secret
installations for experimenting with and producing
chemical weapons and
biological weapons of mass destruction
centered around secret Army
Unit 731 and
its subsidiaries. At these locations, the Kwantung Army was also
responsible for some of the most infamous
Japanese war crimes, including the
operation of several
human
experimentation programs using live Chinese, American and
Russian civilians and POW, directed by
Shiro
Ishii.
Arrested by the
American occupation
authorities, Ishii and the 20,000
Unit
731 members received
immunity in 1948 from
war-crime prosecution before the
Tokyo tribunal in exchange for germ warfare
data based on
human
experimentation. On May 6, 1947, General
Douglas MacArthur wrote to Washington that
"additional data, possibly some statements from Ishii probably can
be obtained by informing Japanese involved that information will be
retained in intelligence channels and will not be employed as 'War
Crimes' evidence." The deal was concluded in 1948.
However, twelve members of Unit 731 and some members of the World
War II leadership of the Kwantung Army were sentenced as
war criminals by the
Khabarovsk War Crime Trials,
where other were taken into custody by the United States, and
sentenced at the 1948
International
Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo. Among those
sentenced to death were former generals
Seishiro Itagaki,
Iwane Matsui,
Kenji
Doihara,
Hideki Tojo and
Akira Muto.
List of Commanders
Kwantung Army
Commanding officer
Chief of Staff
See also
Notes
References
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