"The Manchurian Incident"

     After the March 1, 1919 (Sahm Wohl Il Il) uprising in Korea, armed contact between the Japanese Kwantung Army and the Korean Freedom Fighters in Manchuria increased dramatically.  The Japanese were itching to do two things.  First and foremost they wanted to take over Manchuria, but they needed a reason, an excuse.  Secondly, they needed to reinforce their Kwantung Army, so that they could take over Manchuria and also get rid of the annoying problem of Korean Freedom Fighters constantly nipping at their heels.  In 1920 alone there were over 32 fire fights between the Japanese and the Korean guerrillas. 
     Every time, it seems, the guerrillas came out ahead.  In one battle, the biggest one to take place in Manchuria between the Japanese and the Korean Freedom Fighters, the Battle of Quinshanli, 1,200 Japanese soldiers were killed while the guerrillas lost only 60!  The big advantage that the guerrillas had was that the population supported them.  Most of the population in southern Manchuria at the time was Korean or of Korean descent and hated the Japanese.  They actively supported the Korean guerrillas. A guerrilla must have the support of the people.  Note how successful the guerrilla activity was in the Philippines during World War Two.  That was because the Filipino population supported the guerrillas who fought the Japanese.  In contrast, the guerrilla movement in Malay in late 1950s was a failure because the guerrillas were Chinese, and the population was not and did not support them. Years later in his famous little "red book," Mao Tse Tung said that a guerrilla was like a fish in the ocean, the ocean being the local population.  Without the support of the local population, the guerrilla cannot survive.  In the 1960s, Ernesto "Che" Guevara repeated the same thing in his book on guerrilla warfare.
     After consultation  and approval from Tokyo, the Kwantung Army contacted the Chinese warlord Chang Tso Lin and paid him a large sum of money to carry out an attack on a Japanese Consular Office in Hunchun.  The attack was to be conducted as if it was done by the Korean Freedom Fighters.  Since those Korean Freedom Fighters that were supported by the Chinese wore the same uniforms as Chang Tso Lin's troops, it was an easy charade that was carried out by simply removing their rank and unit insignias.  The fact that the attackers spoke Chinese did not matter, since most of those Korean Freedom Fighters that were trained and armed by the Chinese spoke Chinese.  During this attack, supposedly thirteen Japanese were killed by the "Koreans,"  however, there was no proof that anyone was killed at all, let alone Japanese!  Everyone, including those Japanese who were against the militarists, were openly skeptical about the supposed attack on Hunchun Japanese Consular Office.  But, this was reason enough for the Japanese to send reinforcements from Chosen Army (Japanese Army stationed in Korea) troops to reinforce the Kwantung Army.
     After the Hunchun incident, which took place in late 1920, the Japanese Army took a much more aggressive stand against the Korean guerrillas and were able to more or less keep a lid on things.  They were still very unhappy with Chang Tso Lin, who was willing to carry out a fake raid for money, but unwilling to participate actively in any kind of operation against the Korean guerrillas.  On the other hand Chang Tso Lin regularly carried out campaigns against rival warlords and even managed to gain control of Peking (Beijing) at one time.  So, the uncooperative warlord had to go, and the Kwantung Army had him assassinated by blowing up a bridge that his train was crossing.
     The officer corps of the Kwantung Army was very dissatisfied with Tokyo government policy of keeping hands off the rest of Manchuria.  The civilian element of the Japanese government was in direct opposition of the military.  The military wanted to simply take over Manchuria and make it into a Japanese colony.  With the worldwide depression taking a terrible toll in Japan, the public was very unhappy with the government, and the military, in its own weird misguided way, decided to "help" the Japanese population by becoming more aggressive on the international scene.
     In early 1931 the officers of the Kwantung Army carried out a gekokujo by planting a weak bomb in Mukden train station, claiming that it was the Chinese warlord Chang Su Liang (son of Chang Tso Lin) and the Korean Freedom Fighters who were responsible for the dastardly attack on the Japanese.  The Kwantung Army requested reinforcement from Chosen Army and 15,000 troops were sent up from the south.  This so called "bombing" was called variously as the "Mukden Incident" and more popularly as "The Manchurian Incident" (Manju Jiken in Japanese), which precipitated the Japanese takeover of Manchuria by sending their troops to all major cities like Harbin, to occupy and take complete control.
     Although many members of the civilian faction of the Japanese government were alarmed by what had taken place, the militarists were immensely pleased and decided that what the officers of the Kwantung Army did was a pretty good thing!  No one was punished for carrying out the fake bombing.  The whole world knew that the so-called "Manchurian Incident" was fake, just an excuse for the Japanese Army to take over, but no one did anything.  By this time, the militarists had gained some control of the Japanese government, although there was still the civilian faction that opposed the military.  The militarists had already made plans to create the phony state of Manchukuo, Japan's puppet government, and thereby have complete control of Manchuria.  It was also going to be just a matter of time, and another gekokujo before the militarists took over control of Japanese government completely and drove it to a disastrous war.