The Mukden Incident, or Manchurian Incident, known in Chinese as the 9.18 Incident (九・一八), was a false flag event staged by Japanese military personnel as a pretext for the 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria.
The Resistance at Nenjiang Bridge was a small battle fought between forces of the Chinese National Revolutionary Army against the Imperial Japanese Army and collaborationist forces, after the Mukden Incident during the Invasion of Manchuria in 1931, prior to the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War. It marked the start of the Jiangqiao Campaign.
Ma Zhanshan (Ma Chan-shan; simplified Chinese: 马占山; traditional Chinese: 馬占山; pinyin: Mǎ Zhànshān; Wade–Giles: Ma3 Chan4-shan1; November 30, 1885 – November 29, 1950) was a Chinese general who initially opposed the Imperial Japanese Army in the invasion of Manchuria, briefly defected to Manchukuo, and then rebelled and fought against the Japanese in Manchuria and other parts of China.
The Pacification of Manchukuo was a Japanese counterinsurgency campaign to suppress any armed resistance to the newly established puppet state of Manchukuo from various anti-Japanese volunteer armies in occupied Manchuria and later the Communist Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army. The operations were carried out by the Imperial Japanese Kwantung Army and the collaborationist forces of the Manchukuo government from March 1932 until 1942, and resulted in a Japanese victory.
Tang Juwu, Tang Chu-wu, 唐聚五,(20 April 1898 – 18 May 1939), Chinese officer, general of one of the Anti-Japanese Volunteer Armies resisting the pacification of Manchukuo.
After the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, and until 1933, large volunteer armies waged war against Japanese and Manchukuo forces over much of Northeast China.
Feng Zhanhai, or Feng Chan-hai, was one of the leaders of the volunteer armies resisting the Japanese and the puppet state of Manchukuo in northeast China. Feng was born on November 6, 1899. At eighteen he joined the Dongbei Army, and later entered a military school graduating in 1921. After he graduated, he was successively a platoon leader, company commander, and battalion commander. At the time of the Mukden Incident and Japanese invasion of northeast China he was a colonel commanding a regiment of the Kirin Guards Division.
Wang Fengge was born in Tonghua, Jilin, China. In 1914 Wang Fengge graduated from the Donghua Normal School, and had studied traditional martial arts as a young man. In 1922 he was made a company commander in a brigade of the Northeast Army. In 1926 he retired from the army, going into business, and became involved in the Big Swords Society.
The Big Swords Society or Great Knife Society was a traditional peasant group most noted for the killing of two German Catholic missionaries at the Juye Incident in 1897 at Zhang Jia Village where the missionaries were ambushed in their sleep by about 30 armed men. The Big Swords Society was widespread in North China during the Qing Dynasty and noted for its reckless courage. Rather than one large overarching organization, the Big Swords were local groups of small-holders and tenant farmers organized to defend villages against roaming bandits, warlords, tax collectors or later the Communists and Japanese.
The Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army was the main anti-Japanese guerrilla army in Northeast China (Manchuria) after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931. Its predecessors were various anti-Japanese volunteer armies organized by locals and the Manchuria branches of the Communist Party of China (CPC). In February 1936, the CPC, in accordance with the instructions of the Communist International, issued The Declaration of the Unified Organization of Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army and marked the official formation of the organization.
After the Empire of Japan invaded and occupied the Northeast in 1931, the Chinese Communist Party organized small anti-Japanese guerrilla units, and formed their own Northeastern People's Revolutionary Army, dedicated to social revolution, but these were dwarfed by the Anti-Japanese Volunteer Armies which had been raised by their anti-Japanese, patriotic appeal.
The Red Spear Society began as a rural self-defense movement in Henan, Hebei and Shandong in northern China during the Warlord Era in the 1920s. These were local groups of small-holders and tenant farmers organized to defend villages against roaming bandits, warlords, tax collectors or later Chinese communists or Japanese. For most of the Republic of China period in China the Red Spear Society posed a challenge to government control in North China. They were similar in nature to the Big Swords Society.
The Jilin Self-Defence Army was an anti-Japanese volunteer army formed to defend local Chinese residents against the Japanese invasion of northeast China. General Ting Chao, Li Du, Feng Zhanhai, Xing Zhanqing, and Zhao Yi organised the Jilin Self-Defence Army in order to prevent the fall and occupation of Harbin city, Jilin province. This brought all their forces under a unified command. Calling for civilians to form volunteer units and join in the defense of the city, the army reached a strength of 30,000 men in six brigades of Zhang Xueliangs Northeastern army.
The Northeast People's Anti-Japanese Volunteer Army was led by Tang Juwu, formerly the commander of a Northeastern infantry regiment, interned by the Japanese at the beginning of the invasion of Manchuria. It was created by the Northeast National Salvation Society that had appointed Tang as commander following his escape from the Japanese, and helped him link with the local forces which others were organising. Tang also made use of his personal contacts with police chiefs, officials, local gentry militias and the leaders of the Big Swords Society. Tang was able to organize a force which threatened the region to the east of Mukden and communications with Korea.
Zhang Haipeng (1867–1949), was a Chinese Northeastern Army general, who went over to the Japanese during the Invasion of Manchuria and became a general in the Manchukuo Imperial Army of the State of Manchuria.
The Inner Mongolian campaign in the period from 1933 to 1936 were part of the ongoing invasion of northern China by the Empire of Japan prior to the official start of hostilities in the Second Sino-Japanese War. In 1931, the invasion of Manchuria secured the creation of the puppet state of Manchukuo and in 1933, Operation Nekka detached the province of Jehol from the Republic of China. Blocked from further advance south by the Tanggu Truce, the Imperial Japanese Army turned its attention west, towards the Inner Mongolian provinces of Chahar and Suiyuan, with the goal of establishing a northern China buffer state. In order to avoid overt violation of the Truce, the Japanese government used proxy armies in these campaigns while Chinese resistance was at first only provided by Anti-Japanese resistance movement forces in Chahar. The former included in the Inner Mongolian Army, the Manchukuo Imperial Army, and the Grand Han Righteous Army. Chinese government forces were overtly hostile to the anti-Japanese resistance and resisted Japanese aggression only in Suiyuan in 1936.
Li Yanlu, 李延禄, (1895–1985), soldier, communist, and leader of anti-Japanese forces in Manchuria. Li was born in Yenchi, Kirin Province in April 1895. He became involved in the opposition to Yuan Shikai's attempt to restore the monarchy. He joined the Northeastern Army of the Fengtien clique in 1917, as a private soldier and rose to platoon leader then captain over the next sixteen years. Politically, he moved to the left and in July 1931, he joined the Communist Party of China. Three months later, the Japanese began the Mukden Incident and invasion of Manchuria. Avoiding capture and internment by the Japanese, he joined the volunteer army of Wang Delin. There Communists were welcomed and Li and Zhou Baozhong were made high-ranking officers. Li became the chief of staff of Wang's Chinese People's National Salvation Army one of the most successful of the volunteer armies resisting the Japanese and its puppet state of Manchukuo. He was also said to have been secretly organizing communists within the army. Yet Party policy at the time opposed the volunteer armies and the participation of members in them and had their own Northeastern People's Revolutionary Army. At first the Party severely criticised their conduct yet the stance of the Party prevented the growth of their own forces and did not help the anti-Japanese cause.
Following the defeat of the forces of Ting Chao at Harbin in February 1932, Feng Zhanhai withdrew his forces to Shan-Ho-Tun, a village in the Wuchang District. He then called for volunteers, and the Public Safety Bureaus in the local districts turned over to them their police and militia, and established Feng as the General in command of a force, the Northeastern Loyal and Brave Army, of 15,000 men in the hills with the capital of Kirin City to his south and the metropolis of Harbin to his north. There he was able to wreak havoc on the Japanese rail communications on the Chinese Eastern Railway running through his area of control.
The Grand Han Righteous Army (大漢義軍) was a collaborationist Chinese army cooperating with the Empire of Japan in campaigns in northern China and Inner Mongolia immediately prior to the official start of hostilities of the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Feng Yong was a Chinese educator, military leader and politician. The eldest son of the warlord Chen Robert, Feng Yong was a member of the Standing Committee of the Northeast Administrative Committee. Feng and Zhang Xueliang were born in the same year and grew up together. Theirs fathers were both strong warlords. Zhang Xueliang would become the “Young Marshal”, while Feng chose to set up a Western-style university in China.
