The founding of the “Manchukuo Army” and the origins and backgrounds of its “Manchurian” officers and Japanese military advisers

During the Mukden Incident, many officers under the command of Zhang Xueliang, finding it difficult to retreat back into China proper south of the Great Wall (Guan'nei 関内), decided for various personal reasons to pledge their allegiance to Japan and participate in the formation of the state of Manchukuo. It is in this sense that the character of the Mukden Incident can once again be confirmed as related more to warlord factionalism than a war of national resistance. <br> Taking charge of the most important posts in Manchukuo, like ministers of state and military commanders, were personnel who had established close connections with the Japanese military from as far back as the Russo-Japanese War, including members of the special operations details formed during that war and those who had studied abroad in Japan as cadets at the Army's Imperial Military Academy. During the time that Zhang Zuolin was forming his military faction at Fengtian, these former special ops detail members and foreign students thrived with appointments to important posts in the faction and built a certain amount of prestige within its army. However, when Zhang Xueliang took over leadership of the faction, they tended to become dissatisfied with their positions. Then the Mukden Incident occurred, and the Japanese army re-inducted them, at the point of a gun, if necessary. <br> Meanwhile, former special ops detail members were installed in the bureaucracy governing the eastern portion of Inner Mongolia, fighting and dying in the national independence movement. During the Qing Dynasty period, the government was wary of allowing its subjects of Mongolian descent to study abroad at the Imperial Military Academy, but under the republic the sons of Bavuujav (Бавуужав), who fought in the Russo-Japanese War as a member of Japan's “Manchurian Volunteers” and who was killed in action in 1916 in a battle with the Zhang faction.<br> At the beginning of the Mukden Incident, the Guangdong Army throught it could rely on such people to rise up in the field as an Inner Mongolian Autonomous Army; however, due to a lack prepartion of staff officers with sufficient allegiance to Japan, this force was able only to conduct a campaign of unconventional warfare as horse-mounted bandits and had little success. That being said, this very existence of such an armed force was identified as participation of the Mongol-Manchu nobility in the independence movement, and enabled the Guangdong Army to plan the coodination of Mongolian and Han Chinese forces, anticipating the outbreak of Mongol-Manchu guerrilla activities to be a crucial issue in its favor. <br> Furthermore, the highwaymen who had commanded the special ops details during the Russo-Japanese War had accepted the Qing Dynasty's invitation to join the Chinese army, which unfolded into the institution of military advisors of the three eastern provinces (Lioaning, Jilin, Heilongjiang; i.e., Manchuria). This institution developed into the military advisors of Manchukuo in the aftermath of the Mukden Incident, and constituted the de facto “founding” of the Army of Manchukuo. However, the advisors of the three eastern provinces were veterans of the Russo-Japanese War who formed the first generation of “China experts” through their soldarity Chinese comrades, while their second and third generation successors, the military advisors of Manchukuo, took a more objective view of Manchuria and pursued their ideals backed by the threat of armed force.