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Kwantung Army

Kwantung HQ in Hsinking, Manchukuo
Active April 1906- August 1945
Country Empire of Japan
Branch Imperial Japanese Army
Type Infantry
Role Army group
Garrison/HQ Hsinking, Manchukuo
Nickname Toku (徳兵団 Special?)
Engagements
*Second Sino-Japanese War
**Huanggutun Incident
**invasion of Manchuria
**Pacification of Manchukuo
**Operation Nekka
**Operation Chahar
*Soviet-Japanese Border Wars
**Battle of Lake Khasan
**Battle of Khalkhin Gol
*World War II
*Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation

The Kwantung Army (関東軍 Kantōgun?), also known as the Guandong Army (simplified Chinese: 关东军; traditional Chinese: 關東軍; pinyin: Guāndōngjūn; Wade-Giles: Kwan-tung chün; Korean: 관동군), 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 Chief of Staff Hideki Tojo, 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. "Kwantung" means "east of Shanhaiguan," a guarded pass, east of which lies Manchuria.

Contents

History

Beginnings

Kwantung Army on maneuvers
Kwantung Army on maneuvers


Following the Russo-Japanese War, Japan obtained the Kwantung Leased Territory and the areas adjacent to the South Manchurian Railway. 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 Ryojun. 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 Showa Restoration, with a reorganization of society and the economy along totaliarian 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'etat attempts against the civilian government, cumulating with the February 26 Incident of 1936.[1]

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 capability of autonomous action. Conspirators within the junior officer corp of the Kwantung Army plotted and executed the assassination of Manchurian warlord Zhang Zuolin 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 scale 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, 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.[2]

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.[3]

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.[4]

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[5][6] in Harbin on August 18, 1945.[7] He was one of the senior generals who agreed with the decision to surrender, and on August 19th, 1945, Hata had talks with Marshal Aleksandr Vasilevsky,[8] but asked that he be stripped of his title of Field Marshal in atonement for the Army’s failures in the war.[9]

The remnants of the Kwantgung 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. The survivors were not freed until after the normalization of diplomatic relations between Japan and the Soviet Union in the mid-1950s.

War crimes

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.[10] 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, Korean, Mongolian, American and Russian[11] civilians and POW,[12] directed by Shiro Ishii.

Trials

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

Name From To
1 General Ichiro Tachibara 12 April 1919 6 January 1921
2 General Misao Kawai 6 January 1921 10 May 1922
3 General Shinobu Ono 10 May 1922 10 October 1923
4 General Yoshinori Shirakawa 10 October 1923 28 July 1926
5 Field Marshal Baron Nobuyoshi Muto 28 July 1926 26 August 1927
6 General Chotaro Muraoka 26 August 1927 1 July 1929
7 General Eitaro Hata 1 July 1929 31 May 1930
8 General Takashi Hishikari 3 June 1930 1 August 1931
9 General Shigeru Honjo 1 August 1931 8 August 1932
10 Field Marshal Baron Nobuyoshi Muto 8 August 1932 27 July 1933
11 General Takashi Hishikari 29 July 1933 10 December 1934
12 General Jiro Minami 10 December 1934 6 March 1936
13 General Kenkichi Ueda 6 March 1936 7 September 1939
14 General Yoshijiro Umezu 7 September 1939 18 July 1944
14 General Otozo Yamada 18 July 1944 11 August 1945

Chief of Staff

Name From To
1 Major General Matasuke Hamamo 12 April 1919 11 March 1921
2 Major General Kaya Fukuhara 11 March 1921 6 August 1923
3 Major General Kawada Akiji 6 August 1923 2 December 1925
4 Major General Tsune Saito 2 December 1925 10 August 1928
5 Lieutenant General Koji Miyake 10 August 1928 8 August]] 1932
6 General Kuniaki Koiso 8 August 1932 5 March 1934
7 General Juzo Nishio 5 March 1934 23 March 1936
8 General Seishiro Itagaki 23 March 1936 1 March 1937
9 General Hideki Tojo 1 March 1937 30 May 1938
10 Lieutenant General Rensuke Isogai 18 June 1938 7 September 1939
11 Lieutenant General Jo Iimura 7 September 1939 22 October 1940
12 General Heitaro Kimura 22 October 1940 10 April 1941
13 General Teiichi Yoshimoto 10 April 1941 1 August 1942
14 Lieutenant General Yukio Kasahara 1 August 1942 7 April 1945
15 Lieutenant General Hikosaburo Hata 7 April 1945 11 August 1945

Command Structure (1945)

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Harries, Soldiers of the Sun: The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Army
  2. ^ Young, Japan's Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism
  3. ^ Yamamuro, Manchuria Under Japanese Domination
  4. ^ Coox, Nomonhan: Japan Against Russia, 1939
  5. ^ Surrender of the Kwantung Army. Military Memoirs. [1]
  6. ^ Thunder in the East. Vladimir Karpov. 2005. [2]
  7. ^ Surrender of the Kwantung Army. Military Memoirs. [3]
  8. ^ The Soviet Strategic Offensive in Manchuria, 1945: August Storm By David M. Glantz. [4]
  9. ^ Budge, Pacific War Online Encyclopedia
  10. ^ A Russian military publication on Kwantung Army: [5]
  11. ^ Unit 731[6]
  12. ^ Unit 731. Japanese Experimentation Camp (1937-1945)[7]

References

Books

  • Coox, Alvin (1990). Nomonhan: Japan Against Russia, 1939. Stanford University Press. 0804718350. 
  • Coox, Alvin (1977). The Anatomy of a Small War: The Soviet-Japanese Struggle for Changkufeng/Khasan, 1938. Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-8371-9479-2. 
  • Dorn, Frank (1974). The Sino-Japanese War, 1937-41: From Marco Polo Bridge to Pearl Harbor. MacMillan.. ISBN 0025322001. 
  • Glantz, David (2003). The Soviet Strategic Offensive in Manchuria, 1945 (Cass Series on Soviet (Russian) Military Experience, 7). Routledge. ISBN 0-7146-5279-2. 
  • Harries, Meirion (1994). Soldiers of the Sun: The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Army. Random House; Reprint edition. 0-679-75303-6. 
  • Yamamuro, Shinichi (2005). Manchuria Under Japanese Domination. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0812239121. 
  • Young, Louise (1999). Japan's Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism. University of California Press. ISBN 0520219341. 
  • Jowett, Bernard (1999). The Japanese Army 1931-45 (Volume 2, 1942-45). Osprey Publishing. ISBN 1841763543. 
  • Madej, Victor (1981). Japanese Armed Forces Order of Battle, 1937-1945. Game Publishing Company. ASIN: B000L4CYWW. 
  • Marston, Daniel (2005). The Pacific War Companion: From Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima. Osprey Publishing. ISBN 1841768820. 

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