Army of the Manchurian Empire

The army of the Manchurian Empire ( Chinese  満 州 帝国 軍 , Pinyin Mǎnzhōu Dìguó Jūn ) was the official land force of the Japanese- dominated Empire of Manchukuo .

history

Manchurian troops on a maneuver

Generals of the Manchurian Army

Military band of the Manchurian Army

In the course of the Japanese occupation of Manchuria following the Mukden incident , around 60,000 of the 160,000 soldiers in Zhang Xueliang's Northeast Army were captured. Among them are Generals Xi Qia , Zhang Haipeng and Zhang Jinghui .

After the creation of the state of Manchukuo in March 1932, the first units of the Manchurian army were formed from volunteers from these prisoners. Many of these soldiers were inexperienced recruits or militias , opium addicts or mercenaries . For these reasons, the morale and loyalty of the early Manchurian army was questionable. It was initially set up in an effort by the Japanese to make Manchukuo appear before the League of Nations as a sovereign, independent state and not as a Japanese puppet state .

In August 1932 the 2,000-strong garrison from Wukimiho deserted and defected to an anti-Japanese partisan unit . According to a statement by a Japanese officer , the main source of anti-Japanese and anti- Manchurian weapons at that time was the Manchurian army itself. In various battles against partisans, units of the army defected to the enemy. Most serious was the desertion of the Manchurian Minister of War and Governor of Heilongjiang , Ma Zhanshan , with several thousand men from his provincial army in April 1932.

In its early days, the Manchurian army consisted of seven provincial armies with a nominal total of 111,044 men. An independent cavalry brigade served as garrison for the capital Xinjing . In addition, in February 1933 the Imperial Manchurian Guard from ethnic Manchu was set up as an additional garrison of the capital and bodyguard for Emperor Puyi and the government.

In 1934, five regional armies and several independent units were formed as part of a reorganization. The responsible areas of the regional armies were divided into two or three zones, each with one or two mixed brigades based on the Japanese model. Sometimes additional cavalry brigades were set up. The nominal total strength after this reform was 72,329 soldiers. New guidelines were also introduced that only allowed officers trained in military schools approved by the Manchurian administration to serve in the army. This was an attempt to push back the last influences of the former Northeast Army and to raise the general standard of training. It was also one of the first steps in an effort to break with the tradition of the warlordship , in which the leaders of a provincial army viewed the province assigned to them as their territory to dispose of freely. From 1938 there were Manchurian military academies in Mukden and Xinjing for this purpose.

Except in the border battles between Japan and the Soviet Union , Manchukuo's regular troops fought mainly within Manchuria against insurgents and partisans.

The army's manpower increased in the following years and, according to Soviet intelligence figures, reached over 200,000 soldiers from 1944 onwards. Despite its numerical strength, it was not in a position, together with the Japanese Kwantung Army, to seriously stop Operation August Storm, which began on August 8, 1945, by the Soviet Red Army . The withdrawal of strong Japanese units to defend the Korean Peninsula further weakened the defenders. With the occupation and dissolution of Manchukuo by the Red Army, the Manchurian army was also dissolved.

Uniforms

Initially, the uniforms of the Manchurian troops mostly differed little or no from those of organized anti-Japanese troops and partisans due to their origin from former Chinese troops. It was not until the reform of 1934 that new uniforms similar to those of Japan were introduced. A color system was used on the collar tabs to differentiate between the individual branches of the army. Black stood for the military police , red for the infantry , green for the cavalry , yellow for the artillery , brown for the engineers and blue for the logistics units .

Ranks and Rank Badges

Officers

Rank group	Emperor 皇帝	Generals 将官			Staff officers 校官			Subaltern officers 尉官
Shoulder pieces
Rank	總司令 ( generalissimo )	上将	中将	少将	上校	中校	少校	上尉	中尉	少尉
Rank (Wehrmacht)	Reichsmarschall	General of the branch	Lieutenant General	Major general	Colonel	Lieutenant colonel	major	Captain	First lieutenant	lieutenant

NCOs and men

Rank group	Warrant Officer 准 士官	NCOs 副 士官			Teams 兵
Shoulder pieces
Rank	准尉	上士	中士	下士	下士 勤務 (non-commissioned officer i. V.)	上等兵	一等兵	二等兵
Rank (Wehrmacht)	no equivalent	Sergeant Major	sergeant	Sergeant	no equivalent	Corporal	Private	soldier

Armament

The early Manchurian army was armed with a hodgepodge of different weapons from the earlier stocks of national Chinese troops , which made a functioning supply of supplies and ammunition difficult. In 1932, for example, 26 different types of rifle and more than 20 pistol models were in use. The main focus was therefore on standardizing the armament of the troops. For this purpose, weapons were imported from Japan on a large scale and later also produced under license in the specially established military arsenal of Mukden. Ammunition and small-caliber weapons were also manufactured in other, partly private, factories throughout Manchukuo. As a result, the armament of the Manchurian army at the beginning of the Pacific War was almost identical to that of the Japanese army.

Infantry weapons

The following weapons were used by the Imperial Japanese Army and the Army of the Manchurian Empire:

• Arisaka rifle type 38
• Arisaka rifle type 99
• Type 11 light machine gun
• ZB vz. 26 light machine gun
• Type 96 light machine gun
• Heavy machine gun type 3

artillery

• Type 38 75 mm field gun
• Type 41 75 mm mountain gun
• Chinese 7 cm mortar
• Chinese 75mm field guns
• 50 mm grenade launcher type 10

Armored vehicles

The clearly visible tactical superiority of the Soviet armored troops during the Japanese-Soviet border battles initially led to no significant effort on the Manchurian side for their own armored units. Only a few armored cars of Japanese production were used. Starting in 1943, the Japanese provided some Type 94 Te-Ke light tanks to form an armored brigade . In the course of the Pacific War, a modified version of the light tank of the Type 95 Ha-Go was also used for training purposes.

Remarks

1. ^ Jowett, Rays of the Rising Sun
2. ^ Jowett, Rays of The Rising Sun. Pp. 8-9.
3. ↑ Manchukuo Forces: Orbat ( Memento from August 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
4. ↑ Jowett, Phillip S., Rays of The Rising Sun, pp. 10-12.
5. ^ Jowett, Rays of The Rising Sun, p. 36

literature

• Philip S. Jowett: Rays of the Rising Sun. Armed Forces of Japan's Asian allies, 1931-45. Volume 1: China and Manchukuo . Helion and Company Ltd., Solihull 2005, ISBN 1-874622-21-3 .
• Philip Warner: Japanese Army of World War II. Osprey Publishing, Reading 1973, ISBN 0-85045-118-3 ( Men-at-Arms Series ).

Web links

• Organization of the Manchurian Army on March 1, 1932 ( Memento of August 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
• Operation August Storm: The Soviet Invasion of Manchuria