September 18th 1931 Mukden incident - Japan invades Manchuria... the root of the Pacific war The northeastern region of China, also known as Manchuria, had been under the control of warlord Zhang Zuolin until his assassination in Jun 1928 by Japanese. Upon the successful assassination, the Japanese supported Zhang Zuolins son Zhang Xueliang, who was perceived to be a weak individual because of his opium addiction, as the successor. To the surprise of the Japanese, the younger Zhang was firmly nationalistic and publicly denounced Japanese influence in northeastern China. Northeastern China, with its rich natural resources and its strategic location against any Soviet expansion, was of critical importance to Japan. Kwantung Army Colonel Seishiro Itagaki and Lieutenant Colonel Kanji Ishiwara, who had been looking for the excuse to occupy northeastern China for Japan, devised an invasion plan. Ishiwara presented the plan at the Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo, and it was approved to be launched but only following a major incident started by the Chinese. On September 18, 1931, an explosion destroyed a section of railway track near the city of Mukden (now Shenyang). The Japanese, who owned the railway, blamed Chinese nationalists for the incident and used the opportunity to retaliate and invade Manchuria. However, others speculated that the bomb may have been planted by mid-level officers in the Japanese army to provide a pretext for the subsequent military action. Within a few short months, the Japanese army had overrun the region, having encountered next to no resistance from an untrained Chinese army, and it went about consolidating its control on the resource-rich area. The Japanese declared the area to be the new autonomous state of Manchukuo, though the new nation was in fact under the control of the local Japanese army. The United States and other western powers were at a loss on how to respond to the rapidly developing crisis. Even as the Japanese moved far from the original site of the “attack” at Mukden to bomb the city of Jinzhou (Chinchow), there was little sense that U.S. interests in the area were anywhere near profound enough to make military intervention necessary or desirable. Given the 1930s worldwide depression, there was little support for economic sanctions to punish the Japanese. The Manchurian Crisis of 1931–33 demonstrated the futility of the 1920s-era agreements on peace, nonaggression and disarmament in the face of a power determined to march forward. youtube/watch?v=6MkPMecMOZM Another interesting video in French youtube/watch?v=DKugCGnvyFY
Posted on: Thu, 18 Sep 2014 17:20:53 +0000
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