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Japan World War II
Establishment of Manchukuo
The power of the military grew when, in September 1931,
without
the knowledge or approval of the civil government, members
of the
Imperial Army unit stationed in Manchuria--the Guandong,
or
Kwantung, Army--dynamited a short section of the South
Manchurian
Railway near Shenyang (called Mukden by the Japanese).
Blaming the
incident on Chinese saboteurs, the Guandong Army declared
a state
of emergency and quickly occupied all the principal cities
in the
region. In March 1932, this army formed the puppet state
of
Manchukuo
(see The Rise of the Militarists
, ch. 1). At
home, this
quick and inexpensive victory greatly increased the
confidence of
the young nationalist officers who could rightly claim
credit for
it, but other officers were sobered by the precedent for
insubordination. Their apprehension was well founded: in
the early
1930s, a series of assassinations and conspiracies
occurred within
the nation and the armed forces. In 1936 a force from the
Tokyo
garrison rose in open revolt. Although the rebels were
suppressed
on orders from the emperor, the stage was set for more
radical
military leaders to assume gradual control of the
government, a
process that was completed by 1940 and lasted until a few
weeks
before Japan's 1945 surrender in World War II.
Data as of January 1994
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