Japanese blew up Chinese war lord Zhang Zuolin in first Manchurian incident

CONFLICT and chaos prevailed in Manchuria in 1928, as four million refugees arrived from drought-plagued Shandong.

Rescuers search for survivors after Japanese agents exploded a bomb near Huanggutun train station in June 1928 just as Chinese war lord Zhang Zuolin’s personal train passed.

CONFLICT and chaos prevailed in Manchuria in 1928, as four million refugees arrived from drought-plagued Shandong to confront Japanese overlords, then under threat from angry Chinese peasants.

China as a whole was into its 12th year of guerrilla battles between poorly trained and equipped troops fighting for local warlords, who filled the power vacuum created by the death of China’s war lord president Yuan Shikai in 1916.

Civil unrest in Japanese-occupied Manchuria, bordering Korea, escalated in late January 1928, after a Japanese youth was murdered in the far northeastern city of Harbin, where a Japanese flag flying over a racecourse was removed and Chinese protesters occupied land leased to Japanese.

The conflict left 300 casualties as Chinese “’Big Sword” rebels, traditional ponytail wearing peasants, clashed with Japanese troops, while Japanese settlers called for Japanese military reinforcements from Korea.

Hungry residents in southern Manchurian towns then plotted an uprising in February 1928, after food prices doubled in a currency collapse engineered by Japanese-backed Manchurian war lord overseer Zhang Zuolin. Perhaps surprisingly, it was not angry Chinese peasants who ambushed and killed Zhang on June 4, 1928, but Zhang’s supposed allies in the occupying Japanese Kwantung Army.

Chinese war lord Zhang Zuolin, who was assassinated in 1928.

In the year to October 1927, one million immigrants had moved to Manchuria, then home to 15 million. In March 1928, drought in Shandong sent another four million refugees.

In February 1928 Zhang, then known in the west as Chang Tso-lin, had introduced a paper currency unsupported by silver reserves, and adopted “highhanded” measures to force merchants and exchange dealers to accept the new currency.

“Exchange brokers have been executed for refusing,” reports explained. “Hundreds of shops have been closed and hundreds of merchants are bankrupt.”

Zhang had a history with bankers, “striking terror” in 1926 when he executed 14 bankers as business came to a standstill after Zhang arbitrarily set a high exchange against the Japanese yen. “Five were executed before a shooting squad in August and shot through the back of the head in order not to mar the features for public exhibition,” reports said. “The relatives of one vainly offered Marshal Chang Tso-lin £25,000 to spare his life. In the afternoon nine more were led past the exposed bodies to their own execution. Marshal Chang Tso-lin’s fifth wife — his favourite — carried a plea for mercy to her husband on behalf of the wives of the condemned bankers.”

Zhang Zuolin's Packard car with side-mounted machine guns in the 1920s.

By the time of his death, Zhang had fled a challenge by Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Army in Beijing, only to struggle to control Chinese uprisings against expanding Japanese interests in Manchuria, disappointing his Japanese backers.

“Chinese in Manchuria are creating trouble, arranging demonstrations, protest meetings, and have declared a boycott of Japanese goods,” reports noted.

Without consultation with military superiors, a junior officer in Japan’s Kwantung Army, Daisaku Komoto, took the initiative to encourage full Japanese military occupation. He put subordinate Captain Kaneo Tomiya in charge of Zhang’s assassination, and ordered
that a bomb be planted on a South Manchuria Railway bridge, on a 1249km line connecting Beijing with Harbin. The bomb was placed east of Huanggutun station in Shenyang, then known as Mukden or Fengtian.

The bomb exploded as Zhang’s personal train passed at 5.23am on June 4, killing several of his officials, including provincial governor Wu Junsheng. Zhang was wounded and sent to his home in Shenyang, where he died hours later. The attack was kept secret in Japan at the time although news of his death was sent from Manchuria days later.

The exploded wreckage of the train carrying Manchurian war lord Zhang Zuolin on June 4, 1928. Zhang was fatally wounded.

Japan’s Kwantung Army had groomed Yang Yuting, a Japanese general in Zhang’s clique, as Zhang’s successor. But it was not organised to blame Zhang’s Chinese enemies for his death, and then use it as an excuse for Japanese military intervention. Zhang’s son Zhang Xueliang instead took over. He did not accuse Japan of complicity in his father’s murder, but pursued reconciliation to have Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Government recognised as rulers of Manchuria. Xueliang also announced he would use his father’s $10 million fortune to promote education in three eastern Manchurian provinces.

As Zhang’s assassination weakened Japan’s position in Manchuria, in 1931 Japan staged the Manchurian, or Mukden, Incident, when Japanese military personnel attacked Japan’s South Manchuria Railway near Mukden. Soldier Suemori Kawamoto detonated dynamite near the line, but did not destroy the track and a train passed over minutes later. The Imperial Japanese Army accused Chinese dissidents of the explosion, responding with an invasion that led to full occupation of Manchuria and war in July 1937. Lasting until 1945, the brutal conflict claimed up to 20 million Chinese lives and left 90 million refugees.