10
10
0
On September 18, 1931, to create a pretext for the invasion of Manchuria, China, a railway explosion was faked by the Japanese. From the article:
"Believing that a conflict in Manchuria would be in the best interests of Japan, and acting in the spirit of the Japanese concept of gekokujō, Kwantung Army Colonel Seishirō Itagaki and Lieutenant Colonel Kanji Ishiwara independently devised a plan to prompt Japan to invade Manchuria by provoking an incident from Chinese forces stationed nearby. However, after the Japanese Minister of War Jirō Minami dispatched Major General Yoshitsugu Tatekawa to Manchuria for the specific purpose of curbing the insubordination and militarist behavior of the Kwantung Army, Itagaki and Ishiwara knew that they no longer had the luxury of waiting for the Chinese to respond to provocations, but had to stage their own.[13]
Itagaki and Ishiwara chose to sabotage the rail section in an area near Liutiao Lake (柳條湖; liǔtiáohú). The area had no official name and was not militarily important, but it was only eight hundred metres away from the Chinese garrison of Beidaying (北大營; běidàyíng), where troops under the command of the "Young Marshal" Zhang Xueliang were stationed. The Japanese plan was to attract Chinese troops by an explosion and then blame them for having caused the disturbance in order to provide a pretext for a formal Japanese invasion. In addition, they intended to make the sabotage appear more convincing as a calculated Chinese attack on an essential target, thereby making the expected Japanese reaction appear as a legitimate measure to protect a vital railway of industrial and economic importance. The Japanese press labeled the site "Liǔtiáo Ditch" (柳條溝; liǔtiáogōu) or "Liǔtiáo Bridge" (柳條橋; liǔtiáoqiáo), when in reality, the site was a small railway section laid on an area of flat land. The choice to place the explosives at this site was to preclude the extensive rebuilding that would have been necessitated had the site actually been a railway bridge"
"Believing that a conflict in Manchuria would be in the best interests of Japan, and acting in the spirit of the Japanese concept of gekokujō, Kwantung Army Colonel Seishirō Itagaki and Lieutenant Colonel Kanji Ishiwara independently devised a plan to prompt Japan to invade Manchuria by provoking an incident from Chinese forces stationed nearby. However, after the Japanese Minister of War Jirō Minami dispatched Major General Yoshitsugu Tatekawa to Manchuria for the specific purpose of curbing the insubordination and militarist behavior of the Kwantung Army, Itagaki and Ishiwara knew that they no longer had the luxury of waiting for the Chinese to respond to provocations, but had to stage their own.[13]
Itagaki and Ishiwara chose to sabotage the rail section in an area near Liutiao Lake (柳條湖; liǔtiáohú). The area had no official name and was not militarily important, but it was only eight hundred metres away from the Chinese garrison of Beidaying (北大營; běidàyíng), where troops under the command of the "Young Marshal" Zhang Xueliang were stationed. The Japanese plan was to attract Chinese troops by an explosion and then blame them for having caused the disturbance in order to provide a pretext for a formal Japanese invasion. In addition, they intended to make the sabotage appear more convincing as a calculated Chinese attack on an essential target, thereby making the expected Japanese reaction appear as a legitimate measure to protect a vital railway of industrial and economic importance. The Japanese press labeled the site "Liǔtiáo Ditch" (柳條溝; liǔtiáogōu) or "Liǔtiáo Bridge" (柳條橋; liǔtiáoqiáo), when in reality, the site was a small railway section laid on an area of flat land. The choice to place the explosives at this site was to preclude the extensive rebuilding that would have been necessitated had the site actually been a railway bridge"
Mukden Incident - Wikipedia
Posted from en.m.wikipedia.org
World History
Military History
Strategy
Tactics
Combat
Posted 6 y ago
Responses: 6
1
1
0
1
1
0
1
1
0
Yeah, I'd read about that...the whole world thinks WW2 started with the German thing in Poland in 1939, it obviously began with this whole thing, though, of course, nobody cares, evidently, I gather, about Japan in the whole thing, esp given Pearl Harbor, even though that was a decade later...it:s kind like those other treads that the first US combat involvement by the US in WW2 was some USCG think in Iceland, I think, some northern location...there'd been a couple of threads on here about that also....
(1)
(0)
Read This Next
Continue with Facebook 
Continue with Google