The Counterinsurgency in Manchuria (also referred to as the Pacification of Manchukuo by some sources) 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.
Japan seizes control
The earliest formation of large anti-Japanese partisan groups occurred in Liaoning and Jilin provinces due to the poor performance of the Fengtian Army in the first month of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and to Japan's rapid success in removing and replacing the provincial authority in Fengtian and Jilin.
The provincial government of Liaoning Province had fled west to Jinzhou. Governor Zang Shiyi remained in Mukden, but refused to cooperate with the Japanese in establishing a separatist and collaborationist government and was imprisoned. The Kwantung Army issued a proclamation on 21 September 1931 installing Colonel Kenji Doihara as Mayor of Mukden; he proceeded to rule the city with the aid of an "Emergency Committee" composed mostly of Japanese.
On 23 September 1931, Lieutenant General Xi Qia of the Jilin Army was invited by the Japanese to form a provisional government for Jilin Province. In Jilin, the Japanese succeeded in achieving a bloodless occupation of the capital. General Xi Qia issued a proclamation on 30 September, declaring the province independent of the Republic of China under protection of the Japanese Army.
On 24 September 1931, a provisional government was formed in Fengtian (the new name of the former Liaoning Province) with Yuan Jinhai as Chairman of the "Committee for the Maintenance of Peace and Order".
In Harbin, General Zhang Jinghui also called a conference on 27 September 1931 to discuss the organization of an "Emergency Committee of the Special District", formed to achieve the secession of Harbin from China. However he was not able to act as much of the area surrounding Harbin was still held by anti-Japanese militias under Generals Ding Chao, Li Du, Feng Zhanhai and others.
Meanwhile, in Mukden, the "North Eastern Administrative Committee," or Self-Government Guiding Board, was set up on 10 November under the leadership of Yu Chung-han, a prominent elder statesman of Zhang Xueliang's Government, who favored the autonomy of Manchuria. After the Japanese defeated General Ma Zhanshan and occupied Qiqihar on 19 November 1931, a local Self-Government Association was established in Heilongjiang Province; and General Zhang Jinghui was inaugurated as Governor of the Province on 1 January 1932.
After the fall of Jinzhou, the independence movement made rapid progress in northern Manchuria, where Colonel Doihara was Chief of Special Services in Harbin. General Zhang Jinghui, upon learning of the defeat of Marshal Zhang Xueliang at Jinzhou, agreed to the request of the Self-Government Guiding Board at Mukden and declared the independence of Heilongjiang Province on 7 January 1932. After General Ma Zhanshan had been driven from Qiqihar by the Japanese in the Jiangqiao Campaign he had retreated northeastward with his beaten and depleted forces and had set up his capital at Hailun. There he attempted to continue to govern Heilongjiang province. Colonel Kenji Doihara began negotiations with General Ma from his Special Service Office at Harbin, hoping to get him to join the new state of Manchukuo Japan was organizing. Ma continued negotiating with Doihara, while he continued to support General Ding Chao.
Early resistance: militias, brotherhoods and bandits
The emergence of Chinese resistance to the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in the form of citizen militias, peasant brotherhoods and bandit gangs was facilitated by Japan's success in rapidly destroying Zhang Xueliang's government in the region. Most of the Kwantung Army's strength during November 1931 was concentrated against General Ma Zhanshan in north-central Heilongjiang, and in December and early January against Zhang Xueliang's remaining army in Jinzhou in southwestern Liaoning. Away from the Japanese garrisons in cities and along the railroads, resistance units mustered openly and relatively free from molestation in late 1931–early 1932.
Militias
The frontier status of Manchuria, with endemic banditry and activities by opposing warlords, led leading citizens and village authorities to form private militias for the protection of their property and landholdings even before the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. After the start of the Japanese occupation, these militias became partisan bands, often known as "plain-clothes" men from their lack of uniforms, and styled themselves with various names, such as the "Self-Protection Militia", "Anti-Japanese Militia", or "Chinese Volunteers". One of the first such forces to form, called the Courageous Citizens Militia, had been established by November 1931 near the estuary port of Jinzhou. These militias operated principally in southern Fengtian, which had half of Manchuria's population and the highest proportion of Han Chinese. Fengtian had come almost immediately under Japanese control, as most population centers and its capital of Mukden all lay along the tracks of the South Manchuria Railway in the S.M.R. Zone, which had been garrisoned by Kwantung Army troops since long before the conflict.
Peasant brotherhoods
"Peasant brotherhoods" were a traditional form of mutual protection by Chinese small-holders and tenant farmers. Waves of immigrants fleeing the wars of the Warlord era that ravaged north and central China came to Manchuria since 1926 at the rate of one million a year. These included many peasants belonging to the two predominant brotherhoods, the Red Spear Society and the Big Swords Society, which aided the immigrants in establishing themselves and provided for protection against both bandits and rapacious landlords.
The Red Spear Society was strongest in the hinterlands of Fengtian and countryside around Harbin. The Big Swords Society predominated in southeastern Jilin and adjoining parts of Fengtian. In 1927, the Big Swords had spearheaded an uprising triggered by the collapse of the prevailing Feng-Piao paper currency. During the rebellion the Big Swords were respected by the peasants because they did not harm or plunder the common people, but resisted the officials of the warlord Zhang Zuolin.
After the Japanese invasion, the Big Swords Society disturbed the Jiandao in southeast Fengtian along the Korean border, and rose en masse in response to the declaration of Manchukuo on 9 March 1932. The Big Swords became the principal component of partisan resistance in this region, forming loose ties with the Anti-Japanese Volunteer Armies. The bandit leader Zhang Haitian commanded several bands of Big Swords in western Fengtian. The Big Swords in southeast Jilin were allied with Wang Delin, and General Feng Zhanhai organized and trained a Big Sword Corps of 4,000 men.
The Red Spear Society groups were more widespread. Members formed important centers of resistance as the war spread out through the countryside. Red Spears frequently attacked the S.M.R. Zone from the Xinlitun and Dongfeng districts, close to Mukden and the Fushun coal mines. They were led by a young officer of the Fengtian Army, Tang Juwu. Red Spear Society units displayed extraordinary staying power in this area; almost two years after the Mukden Incident, a group of 1,000 Red Spear members stormed Dongfeng prefecture near Mukden on 3 June 1933, long after the large Volunteer Armies had been defeated.
However, both the Red Spear Society and the Big Sword Society were made up largely of uneducated and poorly trained peasants, and had a traditionalist, quasi-religious character. Members of the brotherhoods placed their faith in rustic magic and belief in the righteous character's Heavenly reward. Big Sword members claimed that their spells made them immune to bullets. Red Spear bands were in many cases led by Buddhist monks as they went into battle, with their clothes and weapons decorated with magic inscriptions similar to that of the earlier Boxer movement.
Bandits
Northeastern China was a poorly governed frontier area at the turn of the 20th century and banditry was endemic. Some were hardened criminals who pillaged for a living; others were part-time bandits who robbed only to survive when crops failed and they could not make a living on the land. As the population of Manchuria increased through the 1920s, some newcomers became squatters, then wanderers, and then outlaws. Even in the settled Fengtian province, bandits known as Honghuzi ("red beards") were common along tune Beijing–Mukden railway and in the wooded southeast of the province along the Mukden-Dandong railway near Korea. Powerful bandit gangs operated within a day's march of such major cities as Mukden and Harbin. The term "shanlin" was often used to describe the bandits because they knew the local terrain very well. Most operated in a fairly small area and maintained the goodwill of local peasants. Government troops had great difficulty in suppressing them as would the Japanese and Manchukuo forces in later years.
There was also a tradition of nationalistic banditry, dating back to the Russian invasion in July 1900 when Tsarist forces were sent to Manchuria, ostensibly to protect the Russian-owned Chinese Eastern Railway after the Boxer Rebellion. Wang Delin, who opposed both the Russians and the Qing dynasty, led a major bandit force against the Russians. His career as an outlaw continued until 1917, when he agreed to join the Jilin provincial forces. For former bandits to join the regular army was quite common in the Warlord Era, as the bandits formed a convenient source of new soldiers. The converse was true as well. As the Fengtian Army retreated from the Japanese onslaught, thousands of soldiers deserted into the countryside to resume their former careers as bandits. During the Russo-Japanese War, many bandit groups actively cooperated with the Japanese Army, providing valuable military intelligence on Russian troop movements and deployment, and assisting in the securing of supplies.
After December 1931, the Japanese Army began operations "for the clearance of bandits" into the Fengtian countryside beyond the South Manchuria Railway Zone in counties west of Mukden, largely due to repeated bandit attacks, robberies and kidnappings on the Dalian-Mukden trains. Fighting supported by aircraft reportedly broke up several of the bandit gangs. In consequence bandits now resented the Japanese invasion, and began retaliatory attacks against isolated Japanese communities along the Mukden-Dandong railway. Honghuzi chieftain Zhang Haitian led several thousand followers to attack the southern portion of the S.M.R. mainline. The Japanese garrison of Niuzhuang (zh) was encircled and attacked by "1500 Chinese bandits under Zhang Haitian," while other troops under his orders attacked in the Haicheng area. Japanese reinforcements quickly dispatched from Mukden forced Zhang's retirement, but Zhang Haitian re-emerged later as a Volunteer Army general, and was acclaimed as commander by both local peasant brotherhoods and anti-Japanese militias.
Many bandits were admitted into the Volunteer Armies as the Japanese conquest advanced and the partisan resistance became an increasingly popular cause.
Resistance in Harbin
When General Xi Qia of the Jilin Army declared the province independent of the Republic of China, military and civil authorities in the province fractured into "New Jilin" adherents of his regime and loyalist "Old Jilin" elements in opposition to it; the former predominated near the capital and the latter predominated in Harbin and the rugged hinterland to the north and east.