The Yomiuri Shimbun
This is just the first of a long series or articles dealing with exactly what happened and who was responsible. As issues of visits to the Yasukuni Shrine have been controversial and will likely continue to be so for some time, this struck me as being timely and mature. At the time of writing the articles have so far totalled 22... a very long series.
Dave
Why did Japan engineer the Manchurian Incident and then launch the Sino-Japanese War? Why did the nation attack the United States and recklessly continue to fight when prospects for victory were fading fast? Wasn't it possible to avoid the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States?
In an attempt to find answers to these questions, The Yomiuri Shimbun's War Responsibility Verification Committee over the past year has verified a series of battles in the "Showa War."
Which political and military leaders should take the blame at each critical phase of these wars? We now present our conclusions.
The starting point of the Showa War was the Manchurian Incident that took place in September 1931. Who should be blamed for having caused the incident? The main instigators of the incident were Kanji Ishihara and Seishiro Itagaki, staff officers of the Kwantung Army, a unit of the Imperial Japanese Army.
Determined to conspire together to grab power and lead the country, they became the masterminds of the act of aggression into Manchuria (currently part of northeastern China) and literally dragged the nation into a series of wars.
At the core of Lt. Col. Ishihara's militarist thinking was the pursuit of the "Final World War Theory" to determine the No. 1 country of the world in a war between Japan and the United States, which he considered the greatest nations of the Eastern and Western civilizations, respectively.
In January 1928, at a meeting of the Mokuyo-kai (Thursday Society) group of elite officers who graduated from the Imperial Japanese Army's War College, Ishihara said, "The nation could stand being in a state of war for even 20 years or 30 years if we have footholds all over China and fully use them."
In June of that year, Daisaku Komoto, the predecessor of Itagaki, assassinated Zhang Zuolin, a Chinese warlord who had a strong influence in Manchuria, by blowing up the train in which he was traveling. This incident would become a model for the Manchurian Incident.
The Manchurian Incident took place as members of the Kwantung Army blew up a section of South Manchuria Railway lines in Liutiaogou (Lake Liutiao), outside Mukden (currently Shenyang). The army then took control of Mukden in a single day. The temporary mayor's post of Mukden was taken up by Kenji Dohihara, then chief of the Mukden Special Service Agency.
The Kwantung Army began advancing into Jilin Province beyond its original garrison areas. Shigeru Honjo, then commander of the Kwantung Army, initially opposed sending troops to Jilin. But he eventually yielded to Itagaki's persistence and decided to give the go-ahead to the deployment.
Senjuro Hayashi, commander of the Japanese Army in Korea, also decided to dispatch his troops to Manchuria without an order. He followed advice from staff officers of the Japanese Army in Korea, who had ties with Ishihara and Itagaki.
Kingoro Hashimoto, chief of the Russia group of the Army General Staff's 2nd Bureau, had close contacts with them.
Hashimoto formed the Sakura-kai (Cherry Society) group that comprised young reformist officers, and used the group as a foothold to lead two failed coup attempts called the "March Incident" and the "October Incident." The March Incident was aimed at installing War Minister Kazushige Ugaki as prime minister. Others involved in the incident included Kuniaki Koiso, chief of the ministry's Military Affairs Bureau.
The October Incident was linked to the Manchurian Incident, although it was poorly planned. However, it would be the forerunner for a series of coups and terrorist acts, such as the May 15 Incident of 1932 and Feb. 26 Incident of 1936.
Before the Manchurian Incident, War Minister Jiro Minami strongly advocated to take hard line stance on Manchuria and Inner Mongolia. Without complaint, Prime Minister Reijiro Wakatsuki readily approved the dispatch of troops from the Japanese Army in Korea to Manchuria at its own discretion after being told about it by Minami.
The helplessness of politicians from being able to prevent military officers stationed outside the country from spinning out of control surfaced for the first time at this point.
On March 1, 1932, less than six months after the Manchurian Incident, the establishment of Manchukuo as a country was declared. Dohihara had Aixinjueluo Puyi, the last emperor of the Qing dynasty, serve as the sovereign head of Manchukuo under the title of regent and later emperor.
Meanwhile, the battlefield temporarily spread to Shanghai. This development, called the First Shanghai Incident, was plotted by Ryukichi Tanaka, an assistant army attache at the Japanese Legation in Shanghai. Tanaka had been instructed by Itagaki to carry out such a plot in Shanghai in an attempt to divert the world powers' attention from the establishment of Japan's puppet state in Manchuria.
Shortly after this, Prime Minister Tsuyoshi Inukai was assassinated in the May 15 Incident. The cabinet of Makoto Saito, Inukai's successor, approved the establishment of Manchukuo. Prior to this, the House of Representatives unanimously passed a resolution to approve Manchukuo as a nation. At a plenary session of the lower house, Foreign Minister Yasuo Uchida said the nation would not hand over its rights and interests in Manchuria even if Japan's territory was turned into "scorched earth." Uchida responded to an interpellation by Tsutomu Mori, a member of the Rikkenseiyukai party, also known as Seiyukai. Mori symbolized the politicians who were vocal in calling for the maintenance of rights and interests in Manchuria and Inner Mongolia.
A report by the Lytton Commission, an investigation team led by Victor Alexander George Robert (V.A.G.R.) Bulwer-Lytton appointed by the League of Nations on Japan's advance in Manchuria, was submitted to Japan in October 1932. War Minister Sadao Araki harshly criticized the report and called for the nation to withdraw from the League of Nations. Araki, who served as war minister in the cabinets of Inukai and Saito, thus openly endorsed the actions of the Kwantung Army.
The Lytton Report did not condemn Japan in a one-sided manner. Indeed, the report included a proposal to establish a provincewide, autonomous government in Manchuria. But when a recommendation statement based on the Lytton Report was adopted at the General Assembly of the League of Nations, only Japan opposed it. Yosuke Matsuoka, head of the Japanese delegation, then walked out of the meeting, signifying Japan's withdrawal from the league.
Those mainly responsible
-- Kanji Ishihara, staff officer of the Kwantung Army
-- Seishiro Itagaki, staff officer of the Kwantung Army
-- Kenji Dohihara, chief of the Mukden Special Service Agency
-- Kingoro Hashimoto, chief of the Russia group of the Army General Staff's 2nd Bureau
>>Major events relating to Showa War<<
June 4, 1928: Assassination of Zhang Zuolin
Sept. 18, 1931: Outbreak of Manchurian Incident
March 1, 1932: Declaration of establishment of Manchukuo
May 15, 1932: May 15 Incident
March 27, 1933: Japan withdraws from League of Nations
Feb. 26, 1936: Feb. 26 Incident
Dec. 25, 1936: Conclusion of anticommunism treaty with Germany
July 7, 1937: Outbreak of Sino-Japanese War
Sept. 1, 1939: Outbreak of World War II
Sept. 27, 1940: Conclusion of Tripartite Treaty with Germany and Italy
April 13, 1941: Signing of Japanese-Soviet Neutrality Treaty
July 28, 1941: Advancement into southern French Indochina
Oct. 18, 1941: Establishment of cabinet of Hideki Tojo
Dec. 1, 1941: Decision to wage war against United States, Britain and Netherlands made at Imperial Council meeting
Dec. 8, 1941: Outbreak of war against the United States (Dec. 7 U.S. time)
June 7, 1942: Defeat at Battle of Midway
June 19, 1944: Defeat at Battle of Marianas
July 7, 1944: Mass suicidal attack at Saipan
July 18, 1944: Resignation en masse of Tojo Cabinet
March 10, 1945: Major Tokyo air raids
April 1, 1945: U.S. forces land on Okinawa
May 7, 1945: Germany unconditionally surrenders
July 27, 1945: Allied Powers issue Potsdam Declaration
Aug. 6, 1945: Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima
Aug. 8, 1945: Soviet Union declares war against Japan
Aug. 9, 1945: Atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki
Aug. 14, 1945: Imperial Council accepts Potsdam Declaration
Aug. 15, 1945: Emperor's surrender rescript broadcast
Sept. 2, 1945: Instruments of Surrender signed aboard USS Missouri on Tokyo Bay
(Aug. 13, 2006)
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