The Japanese Kwantung Army refers to the Japanese Army units stationed in the northeast region of the mainland before the end of World War II. In 1904, the Russo-Japanese War between Japan and Russia for the northeast region of China and the Korean Peninsula broke out, and the battlefield was mainly concentrated in northeast China and nearby waters, and the war that caused the death of 20,000 Chinese civilians ended with Japanese victory. On September 5, 1905, Japan and Russia signed the Treaty of Portsmouth, officially recognizing Korea as Japan's sphere of influence, and Japan took over the lease rights of the "Kanto Prefecture" (a large area of China's Liaoning Brigade) and the South Manchuria Railway. In the same year, Japan established the Kwantung Governor's Office in Liaoyang (later renamed the Kwantung Governor's Mansion and moved to Lushun), and stationed a division and six garrison brigades on the grounds that it needed to protect the South Manchuria Railway, which was the predecessor of the Japanese Kwantung Army.
In April 1919, Japan implemented the separation of military and government in Manchuria, changed the Kwantung Governor's Office to the Kwantung Office, and the former Kwantung Governor's War Department was upgraded to the Kwantung Army Headquarters, and Lieutenant General Tachibana Koichiro was the first commander of the Kwantung Army, and the Kwantung Army was formally formed.
After the establishment of the Kwantung Army, it was active in the front line of the invasion of China, and in 1928, the Kwantung Army created the Huanggutun Incident and killed Zhang Zuolin, the leader of the Fengzhi warlords. In 1930, the main force of China's Northeast Army entered the Customs to participate in the Central Plains War, and taking advantage of this opportunity, the Kwantung Army actively planned a plan to invade Northeast China. On September 18, 1931, the senior staff officer of the Kwantung Army, Itagaki Seishiro, the combat staff officer Ishihara Guan'er, and the chief of the Fengtian Secret Service, Kenji Toihara, planned and launched the September 18 Incident with the acquiescence of the commander of the Kwantung Army, Honjo Shigeru, and more than 100,000 Northeast Troops retreated without a fight, and the Japanese army quickly occupied all of northeast China.
After 9/18, the strength of the Japanese Kwantung Army swelled sharply, and the number of regular troops, which had previously been only one division, reached 6 in the following year. By 1937, before Japan invaded China in an all-round way, the Kwantung Army had reached 7 Grade A divisions (1st, 2nd, 4th, 7th, 8th, 11th, and 20th Divisions), but because each division needed some troops to stay in japan, it was not organized, with about 10,000 people each. If you add independent brigades and garrisons, the total is about 100,000 people.
At the same time, the status of the Kwantung Army was constantly improving, and in 1932, Muto Nobuyoshi took over as the commander of the Kwantung Army, and also served as the ambassador to Manchukuo and the chief of the Kwantung Agency, and held the military and political power in the tohoku region. In 1934, Japan abolished the Kwantung Agency and handed over power to the Kwantung Army Command, which became Japan's highest authority in northeast China.
After occupying Tohoku, Japan regarded it as their core area, actively colonized it, and frantically plundered food and mineral resources. At the same time, in order to guard against the Soviet Union to the north, the Kwantung Army has been stationed in Guannei and has not entered the Guanxi to participate in the war.
From 1938 to 1939, due to the dispute between Japan and the Soviet Union in Outer Mongolia, Japan launched an attack on the Soviet Union in the ZhangGufeng Incident and the Nomonkan Incident, both of which were defeated. Japan then had to abandon the "Northward Policy" to sign an armistice with the Soviet Union and expand the Kwantung Army to 10 divisions and 9 garrisons, with a strength of more than 300,000 troops.
In 1941, after the outbreak of the Soviet-German War, Japan was again eager to move, in a vain attempt to attack the Soviet Union with Nazi Germany. In July, the Japanese military issued a mobilization order to transfer a large number of troops from the Japanese mainland and Korea under the pretext of holding exercises. At this time, the Kwantung Army had 15 divisions, 1 armored army, 22 garrisons, plus cavalry, artillery, air force, etc., with nearly 700,000 people. However, due to the stalemate in the Soviet-German battlefield, and the Japanese base camp decided to change the strategy to "go south" and raid Pearl Harbor, it gave up the use of force against the Soviet Union.
In 1942, Japan continued to increase its strength to the Kwantung Army, with a strength of nearly 1 million troops, and at the same time upgraded the Kwantung Army Headquarters to the Kwantung Army General Headquarters, and its jurisdiction was extended to the Japanese army stationed in Korea, at this time the Kwantung Army had 31 divisions and 13 brigades, and its strength reached its peak.
However, beginning in 1943, the Japanese army was losing in the Pacific Theater, and in order to save the situation, the Japanese had to draw elite troops from the Kwantung Army to support. Although Japan recruited new troops to supplement the Kwantung Army to maintain a million people, the quality of the soldiers was not the same as before. Moreover, the weapons and equipment were seriously insufficient, a quarter of the divisions and regiments had no artillery, and even many officers and men did not even have guns, and the combat effectiveness of the Kwantung Army was sharply weakened. The elite Kwantung Army that participated in the Pacific War was not much better, and under the indiscriminate bombardment of the powerful naval and air force artillery fire of the US army, instead of saving the situation, it was reduced to cannon fodder in vain.
In May 1945, Germany surrendered, and the remaining Axis japan was still stubbornly resisting, and in order to defend the mainland, it transferred 7 elite divisions from the Kwantung Army back to China. At this time, although the number of the Kwantung Army was still 700,000, it was basically a paper tiger and had no combat effectiveness.
On the evening of August 8, 1945, the Soviet government declared war on Japan. At 00:00 the next day, under the leadership of Marshal Vasilevsky of the Soviet Union, the Soviet Far Eastern First and Second Fronts and the Post-Baikal Front gathered more than 1.57 million men, armed with 26,000 guns and 4,000 tanks, and launched a three-way attack on the Japanese Kwantung Army with the cooperation of the Pacific Fleet and the Amur River Fleet. In just one week, the Kwantung Army was completely defeated. On August 15, the Japanese Emperor broadcast the Surrender Edict, and on August 18, the commander-in-chief of the Kwantung Army, Ezo Yamada, ordered the surrender to the Soviets, and the Soviet war against Japan ended quickly. In this battle, the Japanese Kwantung Army was killed 83,300 people, about 600,000 became prisoners of war, while the Soviet army suffered only 32,000 casualties.
The 600,000 Kwantung Army prisoners were then taken to Siberia to work as coolies, and by the time they were sent back in 1956, they were less than 400,000.