"Imperial Japan's Kwantung Army" Topic

China, Manchuria, & Mongolia, 1931-1937.

"The culture of the Japanese Army and its rigid command structure is critical in analyzing the strategies used by them in China from 1931-1939. The Kwantung Army was an anomaly in the greater study of the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) from 1900-1945, in that it often took extra-judicial measures in its occupied territories and theatres of operations. Formed in 1919 from the original Kwantung Garrison, which since 1906 had guarded the southern Manchurian railway from bandits or enemy nations, the Kwantung garrisoned the Liaodong Peninsula. Occupation of this territory had begun during the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895.

Soon dominated by young officers who privatized and isolated command, the Kwantung often operated under regional command structures. This so called "loyal insubordination" became the key to the Kwantung's military doctrine whilst serving in Manchuria and Northern China beginning in the early 1920's. Economically the region which the Kwantung occupied as border police and railway guards was a boom area where farming, steelworks, and other raw material awaited use and consumption by the growing Japanese Empire. Their military units were often aggressive and entirely disdainful of both Japanese and Chinese civilian authority.

In one incident a major group officers assassinated a pesky Manchurian warlord in 1928 by arranging for a bomb to be placed on his personal railcar. Evidence suggests that the Kwantung's unofficial policies may have indirectly led to their involvement in many major confrontations with Soviet border armies beginning in the mid 1920's. Their belligerence was most evident in Northern China…"

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