MARCO POLO BRIDGE INCIDENT (JULY 7, 1937)

Japanese forces bombarding Wanping, 1937.

Marco Polo Bridge 1937.

Japanese called this the “China Incident” (“Shina jihen”). Shots were fired out of the dark at Japanese troops of the North China Garrison Army near the Lugouqiao-or Lugou, or Marco Polo-bridge over a tributary of the Hai River. It is not known who fi red at the Japanese. Speculation includes Chinese Communist provocateurs, Chinese Nationalist troops, or perhaps no one at all: it is possible local Japanese troops made up the incident from whole cloth. Japanese troops in the area were part of an international garrison based in the city by right of servitude under certain “unequal treaties” imposed on China many years earlier. They were allowed to maneuver under terms of the Boxer Protocol (1901), under which Japan kept troops in northern China. One Japanese private went missing for two hours, but otherwise no one was hurt. Imperial General Headquarters nonetheless determined to take advantage: an apology was demanded and the Chinese were instructed to withdraw from other key bridges, opening the road to potential conquest of Beijing and Hebei (Hopei) province. The Chinese garrison refused to move.

Japanese and Chinese troops clashed the next morning as a local squabble escalated into a Sino-Japanese crisis. The Japanese Army decided to follow the aggressive lead of its local commander and fight for full control of northern China. The initial Japanese attack was repulsed. China formally apologized in an effort to defuse the crisis. In private, Jiang Jieshi confided to his diary on July 8 that China would no longer accept humiliation at the hands of Japan, and moved to fully mobilize his forces. The mood among the Guandong Army regiments commanded by General Renya Mutaguchi was also bellicose, an attitude echoed throughout Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo. Japanese leaders were aware of the Yezhovshchina blood purge of the Red Army then underway and thought that Moscow’s terrible distraction was Tokyo’s great opportunity. Guandong officers and others in the North China Garrison Army had long hoped for a pretext for war, and this incident provided it. Tokyo sent reinforcements to the Guandong Army from Korea and three fresh divisions arrived from Japan on July 25. Two days later the Japanese attacked in force. They quickly overran the ancient Marco Polo (Lugouqiao) bridge and surrounding territory. Thus began the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945).

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In one of a series of border incidents that marked the mid-1930s, Japanese and Chinese troops clashed at Marco Polo Bridge (Lugouqiao), about ten miles west of Beijing, during the night of 7 July 1937. There was nothing particularly unusual about the circumstances, not even that they led to a series of clashes around Beijing. Neither Nanjing nor Tokyo wanted a large-scale war, in spite of the creation of the Second United Front a few months earlier. But the Chinese were determined not to give up this important railway junction. While Japanese naval officers and diplomats feared that the Kanto- Army’s actions might threaten war with Russia, even the army did not foresee that they would snowball into a full-scale Japanese invasion and the beginning of World War II in Asia (known as the Anti- Japanese Resistance War in China).

How had this happened? At the beginning of July, Chinese troops around the Marco Polo Bridge decided to strengthen their defenses. On 7 July the Japanese conducted night maneuvers around the bridge, firing blank cartridges. The Chinese returned fire briefly, and no one was hurt. A missing Japanese soldier at roll call the next morning, however, prompted the Japanese to begin an attack (though the man returned after twenty minutes). The Chinese successfully repulsed the Japanese. Over the next few days feints and counter feints on the ground produced inflammatory statements from Tokyo and Nanjing: demands for apologies, complaints about insults, and references to sacred territories. On 17 July, Chiang Kai-shek declared:

China is a weak country, and if, unfortunately, we should reach the limit of our endurance, then there remains only one thing to do, namely, to throw the last ounce of our national energy into a struggle for the independent existence of our nation… If we allow one more inch of our territory to be lost, then we would be committing an unpardonable offense against our race. 

By the end of the month, calculated feints had been replaced by continuous, fierce fighting, and the Beijing-Tianjin corridor had fallen to the Japanese. Japan’s massive invasion of China in the second half of 1937 was not thoroughly planned, but it was the logical result of an unstable situation. What Japan persisted in calling the “China incident” years into the Sino-Japanese War quickly turned into a quagmire. At first, events seemed to be falling Japan’s way. Japan’s best hope was that quick victories might pressure the Nanjing regime into accommodation with Japan. World opinion was sympathetic to China, but China was isolated. Yet the Nationalists would not surrender.

Kwantung Army

Type 2595 “Ha-Go” tanks of armoured unit of Kwantung Army sees during manoeuvres in September 1944.

Japan’s military presence in and domination of Manchuria in northwestern China received a major victory with the end of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. Under the Treaty of Portsmouth, Japan was required to withdraw its troops from Manchuria proper but gained a leased territory of the Liaotung (Liaodong) Peninsula in southern Manchuria, renamed the Kwantung Leased Territory, which included the fortress and port of Port Arthur. The army unit assigned to garrison the area and the Japanese-owned South Manchurian Railway (SMR), as far as Changchun, was named the Kwantung Army. From this date this army became the spearhead of Japanese imperialism in China.

With the railway administration working as a colonial power, running ports, harbors, tax collection, mines, and utility companies, the SMR turned the railway zone into a semiautonomous state, and the Kwantung Army was its security and police arm.

After World War I, Japan gained control of former German holdings at Tsingtao in China’s Shandong (Shantung) Province and deployed 70,000 troops from the Kwantung Army to Siberia to support the Whites in the Russian Civil War. The Japanese sought to expand their empire in Siberia, failed to do so, and withdrew in 1922.

In 1927, when Chiang Kai-shek’s troops were marching on Shandong to break the power of local warlords in the Northern Expedition, Japanese troops were sent to Shandong (Shantung). Soon Chinese and Japanese troops were clashing. Chiang withdrew his forces from the city of Tsinan, but the Kwantung Army attacked it the next day, killing 13,000 civilians.

Chiang turned his troops away from conflict with Japan. Tokyo, however, supported the Kwantung Army, issuing warnings to Chiang and Manchurian warlord Zang Zolin (Chang Tso-lin) not to attack Japanese forces or civilians. However, the new commander of the Kwantung Army, General Chotaro Muraoka, had other ideas, moving his headquarters in May 1928 from Port Arthur to Mukden, Manchuria’s main city, and preparing his troops to take control of the region.

Ready to move, Muraoka and his troops waited, firing telegrams to Tokyo asking permission to move. When Prime Minister Giichi Tanaka refused, the Kwantung Army’s officers were stunned. Muraoka decided to kill Zang Zolin, blasting a bridge as the warlord’s train crossed it on June 4, 1928. The Kwantung Army reported to Tokyo that Zang had been killed by Manchurian guerrillas. The truth came out anyway, and Tokyo could do seemingly little to control the insubordinate army and its officers, who had a lot of support in Japan.

But Tanaka was determined to punish the officers responsible for the assassination plot and recommended so to Emperor Hirohito, who agreed. But when the army as a whole objected, Tanaka temporized. He fi red Muraoka and told the public that there was no evidence the Kwantung Army had been involved in the plot. Then Tanaka resigned. The Kwantung Army’s officers had defied Tokyo and gotten away with it.

As the Great Depression wore on, the Japanese economy continued to crumble. Many Japanese army officers, angered by the economic situation, joined secret societies like the Cherry Blossom League, and a group of officers plotted to use the Kwantung Army to seize Manchuria for its rich resources. One of the key men was Colonel Doihara Kenji, who prepared a “Plan for Acquiring Manchuria and Mongolia.”

Chiang Kai-shek, meanwhile, had succeeded in unifying China under the Kuomintang, and Zhang Xueliang (Chang Hsueh-liang), Manchuria’s new warlord, supported the Nationalist, or Kuomintang, government. In 1931 clashes broke out between Korean farmers who were Japanese subjects and Chinese farmers over water rights.

Doihara went to Manchuria and determined that a Japanese attempt to seize Manchuria would result in international condemnation. An “incident” had to be manufactured to make a Japanese occupation of Manchuria seem China’s fault. In 1929 the Kwantung Army began to plot an incident under their new boss, Lieutenant General Shigeru Honjo, with Doihara as mastermind.

Japan’s civilian leaders did nothing to control the insubordinate Kwantung Army. The emperor, however, ordered Major General Yoshitsugu Tatekawa to bring a message from him on September 15, 1931, ordering the Kwantung Army not to take any unauthorized action. Unfortunately for Hirohito, Tatekawa’s assistant, Colonel Kingoro Hashimoto, was among the plotters, and he sent a message to officers of the Kwantung Army to let them know that Tatekawa was coming with imperial orders. When Tatekawa arrived in Mukden on September 17, Kwantung Army officers took the general to a party, where he became drunk.

That night Kwantung Army officers blew up a section of track on the South Manchurian Railway 1,200 yards from a Chinese army that failed to derail the night express. Kwantung Army troops then attacked and shelled the Chinese barracks, killing many soldiers. By 10:00 a. m. on September 18, 1931, Mukden was under Japanese control, Chang’s headquarters were ransacked, and his banks and government offices were occupied, as were a dozen other cities in southern Manchuria in a coordinated attack by Japanese units. Some 12 hours after their blast, Kwantung Army officers displayed to Western reporters the “proof” that the Chinese had tried to destroy the railroad, which was bodies of Chinese soldiers shot in the back lying facedown, supposedly cut down while fleeing the scene. The world was outraged by the political adventurism, and Tokyo was stunned. The emperor reminded Prime Minister Reijiro Wakatsuki that he had forbidden such action, and the foreign and finance ministers also objected. But Wakatsuki did not overrule his generals and colonels. The attack and subsequent conquest of Manchuria were accepted as a fait accompli.

From October to December 1931, the Kwantung Army, now empowered by Tokyo and advised by units of the Japanese army in Korea, expanded conquest of Manchuria, even plotting a coup in October to overthrow the civilian government in Tokyo. This attempted coup was ended when the leading plotters were secretly arrested. In December Wakatsuki resigned. Ki Inukai became the new prime minister, but General Araki, leader of the Kodo Ha faction, became war minister, effectively providing the military’s endorsement to the Kwantung Army’s actions. The Kwantung Army now became an occupation force in Manchuria, and its officers became heroes for all of Japan.

The Kwantung Army continued to seize Chinese territory, taking Rehe (Jehol) province in 1933 and Chahar province in 1934. Officers of the Kodo Ha movement were assigned to the Kwantung Army, strengthening its radicalism; among them was Hideki Tojo, who would become Japan’s prime minister during World War II.

In February 1936, the Kwantung Army showed its powerful influence when a group of Kodo Ha officers attempted a coup d’état in Tokyo. It failed, the ringleaders were shot, and the civilian leaders regained some control over the Kwantung Army.

Leaving Chinese unity under Chiang Kai-shek’s leadership, the Kwantung Army set to create an “incident” between Chinese and Japanese forces on July 7, 1937, at a railway junction near Beijing (Peking) in northern China, called the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. This led to the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, in which Japan committed unspeakable atrocities, such as the Rape of Nanjing. It became World War II in Asia. The Kwantung Army promised Tokyo victory in three months.

As World War II began and dragged on, the Kwantung Army remained in occupation of Manchuria, “Asia’s Ruhr,” against Soviet invasion. Over time, the army was stripped of most of its equipment and men, which were needed on other battlefronts.

When the Soviet Union declared war on Japan on August 8, 1945, and invaded Manchuria, the Kwantung Army had 1 million men under arms equipped with 1,155 tanks, 5,360 guns, and 1,800 aircraft. On paper, this was a match for the Soviets’ 1.5 million men, but the Soviets also fielded 26,000 guns, 5,500 tanks, and 3,900 planes. In addition, the Kwantung Army was short of gasoline, ammunition, and transport.

Yet some of the Kwantung Army’s hotheaded leaders refused to surrender when Japan surrendered to the Allies on August 14, 1945. Commanding general Otozo Yamada refused to obey the Imperial Rescript to surrender, summoned his officers to his headquarters at Changchun, debated the news from Tokyo, and by a majority vote chose to go on fighting.

In the end, the Kwantung Army did obey an imperial command and surrendered to the Soviet Army. Several of its leaders, including Doihara and Tojo, were tried, convicted, and executed at the Tokyo International Court.

Further reading: Harris, Meirion, and Susie Harris. Soldiers of the Sun. New York: Random House, 1991; Hoyt, Edwin P. Japan’s War. New York: Da Capo, 1986; Toland, John. The Rising Sun. New York: Random House, 1970; Tuchman, Barbara W. Sand against the Wind: Stilwell and the American Experience in China. New York: MacMillan, 1970.

Jitra to Singapore

In a rapid advance, the Imperial Japanese Army overran British positions in northern Malaya, easily breaking through at Jitra, a strongly fortified line of wire entanglements and deep trenches astride the road to Alor Star. It was expected to be held for three months. An impromptu night attack by barely 500 Japanese soldiers drove off the defenders in a matter of hours. Along with 3,000 prisoners came large stores of ammunition, petrol and food. For the rest of the campaign, these frequent bags of supplies were laughingly called “Churchill’s allowance”. To turn British positions, baffling tactics were employed, such as night attacks, encirclement, sudden charges and small boat operations. To maintain the momentum of the advance, Yamashita Tomoyuki ’ s men rode bicycles. Tsuji Masanobu recalls how 

the greatest difficulty . . . was the excessive heat, owing to which the tyres punctured easily. A bicycle repair squad of at least two men was attached to each company, and each squad repaired an average of twenty machines a day. But such repairs were only makeshift. When the enemy was being hotly pursued, and time was pressing, punctured tyres were taken off and bicycles ridden on the rims. Surprisingly enough they ran smoothly on the paved roads, which were in perfect condition. Numbers of bicycles some with tyres and some without, when passing along a road, made a noise resembling a tank. At night when such bicycle units advanced the enemy frequently retreated hurriedly, saying, “Here come the tanks! ” . . . Thanks to Britain’s dear money spent on excellent roads, and to the cheap Japanese bicycles, the assault on Malaya was easy.

And when necessary, the Japanese abandoned pedals and advanced through the jungle, carrying their bicycles on their shoulders. This the British found as disconcerting as attacks from the rear.

It was in fact the jungle that Yamashita Tomoyuki so brilliantly exploited. He realised the potential for outflanking movements when he saw it for the first time near Saigon. His previous posting had been Manzhouguo. Unlike him however, nearly all British senior officers regarded jungle and swampy ground as impenetrable natural obstacles. The shining exception was Ian Stewart, the commanding officer of the 2nd Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. Having investigated the problems of fighting under tropical conditions, he took his men on training exercises designed to accustom them to both the advantages and disadvantages of military action in primary as well as secondary jungle. In the process, the Argylls banished any fears they had about plants or animals. “Cross - country movement through the jungle, ” Stewart wrote, “ and living in it for days at a time, not only by large parties but by small groups of three or four officers or NCOs, was practised until the jungle became a friend and not an enemy. ”  

This familiarity saved the Argylls from destruction on several occasions: it also helped inflict an early reverse on the apparently unbeatable Imperial Japanese Army at Grik Road, inland from Penang. There the Japanese were shocked by a counterattack delivered from the jungle on each side of this thoroughfare. As Steward commented: 

One of the arts of rearguard tactics in the jungle is time and space calculation . . . Quite genuinely it is a fascinating game, embodying as it does appreciations of ground, enemy dispositions, and above all the mind and speed of action of the opposing commander. But it is a nervy business, for a commander works with the jungle as a bandage over his eyes; there is no warning of an approaching crisis, and the situation will turn from blue sky to black storm in a minute or two. There are two rules that must never be broken: to hang on desperately to the initiative and to have plans ready and understood by all in anticipation of every eventuality. 

Because the British had neither tanks nor an adequate antitank defence, Stewart ’ s use of the jungle alongside roads was critical in the battles which were fought to slow down the Japanese advance.

At the engagement for the bridge at the River Slim in early January 1942, a disastrous British defeat that sealed the fate of Kuala Lumpur, the Argylls improvised road blocks and threw Molotov cocktails at Japanese medium tanks. While the bottle - bombs proved less effective than those used by the Imperial Japanese Army at Nomonhan, there was no shortage of volunteers for the Molotov cocktail party. Through this encounter the Japanese came to respect the courage of Stewart’s men, who alone on the surrender of Singapore rode to the Changi prisoner - of - war camp. Impressed by their refusal to hand over their transport, Japanese sentries saluted the column as it went into captivity to the sound of bagpipes. Those Argylls who were sent to work in other parts of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere often found their distinctive bonnets attracted the attention of Japanese officers. In Thailand a sergeant - major was informed that “Argyll Scotsmen number one fighters ”.

Not that the Argylls ’ well - deserved reputation for jungle warfare did much to save Malaya or Singapore. Their capture was a foregone conclusion when British military doctrine firmly held that the jungle was impassable for large numbers of troops and that the situation was therefore overwhelmingly in favour of the defenders. It was on this assumption that the so - called fortress at Singapore had been built. Only a threat from the sea was ever seriously considered before the outbreak of the Pacific War. By the time Arthur Percival appreciated what was happening in Malaya, it was too late to adjust to Japanese methods of attack. Percival ordered the adoption of guerrilla tactics. Formations should reduce their transport as far as possible by sending all vehicles that were not immediately wanted well to the rear.

But as Stewart later commented: “New tactics cannot be learnt in the middle of a battle.” Another reason for Yamashita Tomoyuki ’ s victory was far better intelligence: he even knew the names of all the Argyll officers. The sheer speed of the Japanese advance gave the British commander - in - chief no chance of regrouping his forces for a last stand in southern Malaya, so that in February 1942 Percival was called upon to conduct his last campaign, the defence of Singapore.

Imphal Offensive

 

This was the key turning point in the Burma Campaign. Lieutenant General Mutaguchi Renya led his Fifteenth Japanese Army in a high-stakes attack from Burma into India, targeting the Allied supply bases at Imphal in Manipur. His immediate objective in this action was to preempt an offensive by William Slim’s Fourteenth British Army, but his longer-term goal was to gain a purchase for the Japanese-controlled Indian National Army and thereby incite a revolt against the British raj (colonial government) in India. Had the Imphal Offensive succeeded, the British might well have lost control of India, and with India lost, China would have been doomed. Mutaguchi knew that he was outnumbered and lacked air superiority. His only hope, he decided, was to achieve complete tactical surprise and to move with great speed. To even the odds as best he could, Mutaguchi preceded the offensive by ordering Lieutenant General Kawabe Masakazu to attack Arakan in February, thereby drawing off some of Slim’s reserves.

Mutaguchi formulated a plan intended to divide and dilute Slim’s forces. On March 7, his 33rd Division attacked from the south, pushing Slim’s 17th Division from its position at Tiddim and into a fighting retreat. Simultaneously, Mutaguchi’s Yamamoto Force attacked the 20th Division near Tamu but was checked at Shenam Saddle. The following week, Mutaguchi sent his 15th and 31st Divisions across the Chindwin River in an attempt to catch Slim in a pincers action and create a decisive double envelopment of his forces. This might well have worked, had it not been for the defeat of the earlier Japanese Arakan offensive. With this attack neutralized, Slim airlifted his 5th and 7th Divisions to Imphal beginning on March 19.

By this time, the main body of the Japanese advance was a mere 30 miles away. But this was not the only cliff-hanger of the campaign. Although Slim had anticipated that Kohima, just northwest of Imphal, would be attacked, he relied on the rugged terrain here to impede such an action. He calculated that the Japanese would be unable to deploy more than a single regiment in the attack. This proved to be a nearly catastrophic assessment as, astoundingly, Lieutenant General Sato Kotuku was able to field his entire 31st Division, which engaged the vastly outnumbered 50th Indian Parachute Brigade at Sangshak and took Kohima on April 3. On April 12, Mutaguchi’s 15th Division severed the road between Kohima and Imphal and positioned itself above Slim’s 4th Corps.

The achievements of both Sato and Mutaguchi were extraordinary and certainly exploited the element of surprise to the utmost; however, travel and battle over the hostile terrain took a terrible toll on the attackers, victorious though they were, and Mutaguchi’s men were simply too exhausted to press their hard-won advantages. In a counterattack that relied heavily on armor (against which the Japanese, lacking armor themselves, were powerless), Slim pushed back Mutaguchi but could not recover use of the Kohima-Imphal road. Therefore, Slim relied wholly on airlift to maintain supply of his now isolated forces. Desperate as this situation was, Slim knew that Mutaguchi was in an even tougher spot. Starved for supplies, Mutaguchi over-extended his forces in an attack on Dimapur. Slim checked this effort and forced Mutaguchi into a contest of attrition, which favored Slim. As the miserable monsoon encroached in May, Mutaguchi’s men, starving and assailed by tropical diseases, melted away. At last, on July 18, Mutaguchi withdrew back across the Chindwin River. Although Slim’s forces were subject to many of the same miseries, they were not in nearly as dire straits. Slim pursued the withdrawing Japanese and transformed the Japanese retreat into a rout. The result was disaster for the Japanese in Burma. Of 85,000 Japanese troops committed there, 53,000 became casualties. Some 30,000 were killed in combat, and thousands more died of disease and privation. Precious weapons and heavy equipment had to be abandoned. As for the Indian National Army, the reversal of the Imphal Offensive permanently removed it as a threat. Mutaguchi had gambled boldly and lost decisively.

Further reading: Astor, Gerald. The Jungle War: Mavericks, Marauders and Madmen in the China-Burma-India Theater of World War II. New York: Wiley, 2004; Dupuy, Trevor N. Asiatic Land Battles: Allied Victories in China and Burma. New York: Franklin Watts, 1963; Hogan, David W. India-Burma (The U.S. Army Campaigns of World War II). Carlisle, Pa.: Army Center of Military History, 1991; Webster, Donovan. The Burma Road: The Epic Story of the China-Burma-India Theater in World War II. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003.