From "Puppets" to "People's Liberators": The Manchukuo Military and Its Participation in the Chinese Civil War, 1945–1948

Abstract

The Manchukuo military, the collaborationist armed forces of the Japanese client state, was formally disbanded with the Soviet invasion of Manchuria in August 1945. The looming Chinese Civil War, however, provided the former collaborators with a second chance to end up on a winning side and avoid the often dire fate awaiting other former collaborators with the Axis powers. This article examines the collapse of the Manchukuo military and its aftermath, the maneuverings of the Guomindang and the Chinese Communist Party to win the support of Manchukuo units, the experience of former Manchukuo troops in the Chinese Civil War, their impact on the war, and the ways in which many of them created postwar narratives of redemption through service to the people's cause.

The pro-Japanese government of Manchukuo was established on February 16, 1932, following the Manchurian incident. Some Chinese military units that had initially resisted fled south, but many others remained in the region. After securing their surrender, the Japanese Kwantung Army faced the problem of how to deal with the soldiers, as well as with military groups of other ethnicities and with bandits. To pacify the local forces and fill the power vacuum, the Kwantung Army ordered the creation of the Manchukuo military on March 1, 1932. It came to include Han Chinese, Mongols, and other ethnic groups, and it played an important role in both the military defense of the puppet state and as a symbol of ethnic harmony.¹

When the Soviet Red Army invaded Manchuria on August 9, 1945, the Manchukuo government quickly collapsed, and most members of the Manchukuo military surrendered en masse to the Soviets and were placed under guard in their barracks. With that, this valuable region, with much fertile land and developed industries, fell into interregnum, with no legitimate government organization, a large, leaderless army under guard, and stockpiles of weapons and equipment ready for the taking. Manchuria became a prized target for the competing Chinese political powers as the wartime détente between the Guomindang (GMD) government and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) unraveled. Throughout the period of the Japanese occupation, the GMD and the CCP had been sending agents into Manchuria to make contact with and try to win support from Manchuria's civil and military leaders.² These efforts went into high gear after the Japanese surrender. As the two sides began to fight in the region in December, both sides worked to incorporate former Manchukuo military troops into their forces.

This article examines the collapse of the Manchukuo military, the ways that the GMD and the CCP tried to win its support, the performance of former Manchukuo military units on both sides of the Chinese Civil War, and the integral role played by some units in the Communists' ultimate victory. This article is the first to examine this history from the perspective of the former collaborators themselves, using postwar testimonies and memoirs. I argue that these Chinese military officers of the Northeast confronted the tremendous changes to the region by assessing the best means of survival. These choices were decisive in facilitating integration with the postwar order.

Chinese collective memory often treats the issue of collaboration with Japan in moralistic terms, emphasizing the distinct contrast between treason and heroic resistance. Scholarly debates on East Asian collaboration are still rare. As Timothy Brook has observed, "The moral landscape of the Japanese occupation has remained unassailable in the Chinese historiography of the war."³ The orthodox definition of collaboration was constructed during a series of treason trials and legal proceedings, including trials held by the Republic of China's Suzhou Supreme Court in April 1946 and the Beiping Supreme Court in September 1946, as well as legal proceedings of the People's Republic of China that led to special amnesties for former collaborators from 1959 to 1975. Margherita Zanasi has pointed out that these proceedings became "rituals for discrediting alternative narratives of war and resistance and reaffirming a unified and linear one,"⁴ which was fundamental in the attempts by the two antagonistic parties to forge political legitimacy. The fate of military collaborators with Japan in China differed from that of military collaborators with the Axis in Europe, where widespread purges were initiated by the postwar regimes.⁵ In South China, the military forces of the Wang Jingwei regime were amalgamated by the GMD government en masse in 1945 and eliminated in the Civil War. In Northeast China, there was no immediate attempt at retaliation against the collaborators by either party. Although official narratives of the GMD and the CCP had both emphasized the illegitimacy of Manchukuo since 1932, neither party immediately tried to prosecute or otherwise punish the members of Manchukuo military (this does not include the few top leaders whom the Soviets had taken into custody and transported to their territory). On the contrary, nearly all remainders of the Manchukuo regime, including its officers and soldiers, were regarded as spoils of war, and the Chinese parties worked to gain control over and utilize these spoils. They often downplayed Manchukuo forces' previous collaboration, rarely applying the common term hanjian (汉奸 traitor)⁶ that implied strong moral judgment, and they utilized the former Manchukuo units in their attempts to administer the region.

Previous studies of the Chinese Civil War in Manchuria have usually adopted an international perspective, emphasizing the growing diplomatic competition between the Soviet Union and the United States while overlooking how the Chinese groups worked to consolidate power at the local level.⁷ While Manchuria was a crucial postwar arena for the emerging Cold War, attention should be paid to the key role that CCP success in winning over the support of former collaborationist forces played in their success in the Civil War. The importance of former collaborators to the eventual Communist victory is an uncomfortable truth that has been consciously neglected in postwar Chinese narratives.

Not surprisingly, very little has been written about the history of the Manchukuo military after August 1945. In Chinese, Fu Dazhong ended his history of the Manchukuo military with an account of their surrender to the Soviet Army in 1945.⁸ Liu Ximing acknowledged that the defections of the Manchukuo military to both political sides were extensive but claimed that their influence on the outcome was limited.⁹ The Japanese scholar Oikawa Takuei, in his discussion of the Manchukuo military after its surrender, focused on the Japanese officers who were detained in Siberia and made no reference to the postwar fate of the Han Chinese and Mongols who made up the bulk of the Manchukuo military.¹⁰ Research in English has made greater contributions. Robert B. Rigg, the US military observer in Manchuria, in 1951 published the first significant English language account of the CCP's massive incorporation of the Manchukuo military.¹¹ Harold Tanner has analyzed the strategic and tactical choices of the Communist troops in Manchuria, touching only briefly on participation of former units of the Manchukuo military.¹² Christopher Atwood has written a significant study of the East Inner Mongolian Autonomous Government, led by leftist former Manchukuo military officers, and its defection to the CCP, which helped to bring one-third of the former Manchukuo territory peacefully under CCP control, but his focus was limited to the Mongols.¹³

Most previous research that mentioned the defection of the Manchukuo military has not recognized them as a disciplined or well-organized force, instead frequently describing them as "bandits." But contemporary accounts show that some of the units played a more significant role in the Civil War than these studies have recognized. The restoration of Chinese sovereignty in Manchuria compelled the local military units to participate in the civil conflict, but their choices were not simply imposed upon them. Nor were they simply opportunistic: their various decisions about making alliances reflected their political inclinations and their rational reading of the situation. In the end, their judgment of the capabilities and ideologies of the parties induced most of them to support the CCP.

The Soviet Invasion and the Collapse of the Manchukuo Military, 1945

On April 5, 1945, the Soviet Union informed Imperial Japan that the 1941 neutrality pact would not be prolonged, indicating that Soviet aggression against occupation of Manchukuo was highly likely. In response, the Japanese Army initiated a revised defense plan at the end of May, under which they ordered the Kwantung Army to prepare a Xinjing–Fengtian (新京–奉天) line of defense that abandoned northern Manchuria while defending southern Manchuria and Korea. However, fighting in other theaters had required Kwantung Army forces to be transferred from the region since 1943, which had deeply undermined its military capability. The Kwantung Army decreed a General Mobilization Order to the Japanese living in Manchukuo on July 10, 1945, but even then the Army Ministry considered the Kwantung Army's active strength at no more than 30% of its original capability.¹⁴ Thus, Japan's final line of defense in Manchuria in August 1945 was a poorly armed and poorly equipped force.

Under such severe circumstances, the Manchukuo military, which had 130,000 trained soldiers, was a necessary part of the Kwantung Army's defense project. In April 1945, the Manchukuo military completed a final reorganization. Except for a field army in the Rehe-Hebei area, most of the artillery troops were reorganized into 21 engineering battalions and 17 transportation units, which were assigned to build military fortifications.¹⁵ In June, the Manchukuo Military Ministry ordered its 11 garrisons and communication channels to be placed under the direct command of units of the Kwantung Army, abolishing the separate chain of command (Table 1).¹⁶

Table 1.

Combat Units of the Manchukuo Military in August 1945

On August 9, 1945, the Soviet Union launched Operation August Storm, under which 1.5 million Red Army soldiers crossed the Manchukuo frontier from three directions. On August 10, the Kwantung Army commander Yamada Otozō (山田乙三 1881–1965) ordered the Manchukuo government to be relocated from the capital of Xinjing to Tonghua (通化) in southeastern Manchuria. However, if the Japanese expected the Manchukuo military to fight by their sides, they had ignored the deterioration of morale since the introduction of the National Conscription Law in 1940 and the start of the Pacific War in 1941. In particular, middle-ranking officers and cadets had become increasingly disillusioned with the Japanese, and anti-Japanese underground groups had become active within the Manchukuo military schools. When the US Army Air Forces 468th Bombardment Group bombed major Manchukuo cities from their Chengdu airbase at the end of 1944, many concluded that the Allies would win the war and that they needed to contemplate the next steps.¹⁷

In accordance with the Kwantung Army's defense plan, the Manchukuo units were redeployed under the command of the Kwantung Army's First and Third Front Armies. The defense plan was straightforward, to slow down the Soviet advance by putting forces on the border and to build fortifications alongside the Xinjing–Fengtian line, in order to preserve Japan's control over the Korean Peninsula. Soon after the invasion began on August 9, Manchukuo's border forces collapsed and units all over the region surrendered or began to retreat, until Japan announced its surrender on August 15. On August 19, Xing Shilian (邢式廉 1885–1954), the Manchukuo military minister, announced the disbandment of the Manchukuo military. Other than some units in Rehe and Inner Mongolia that had defected, the majority of Manchukuo military units had by then been captured and disarmed by the Soviets and were being very loose detained. Little did their members know that they would become important pieces in the coming struggle for control of the region.

Scramble in Manchuria: The Race of the Chinese Parties and the Hesitation of the Manchukuo Military, 1945

Some scholars of the Chinese Civil War, particularly those connected with the GMD and those who based their research on the historical narratives of GMD officers, have claimed that the Soviets had made prior arrangements with the CCP to facilitate their invasion of Manchuria, which allowed the CCP to gain a quick foothold in the region. Steven Levine claimed that a secret CCP delegation led by Liu Shaoqi and Gao Gang (高岗 1905–1954) visited Moscow just when the Republic of China's minister of foreign affairs visited the Soviet Union in June 1945 to negotiate the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, indicating double-dealing by the Soviets.¹⁸ However, Levine was incorrect about the date. Liu and Gao's mission actually took place in September 1949, right before the ceremony marking the foundation of the People's Republic of China. There is no credible evidence of any Soviet military aid or cooperation with the CCP during the Sino-Japanese War. In fact, the Soviet-CCP relationship had reached a nadir in the mid-1940s. After his eradication of the Wang Ming (王明 1904–1974) clique and his rejection of Stalin's order to launch an offensive against Manchukuo in 1941, Mao kept the CCP independent of the Soviets.¹⁹ Soviet diplomatic documents indicate that Moscow actually gave the CCP no prior notification of details of its August invasion, nor any invitation to participate. By signing the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship with the GMD government on August 14, 1945, Stalin publicly endorsed the legitimacy of the Republic of China throughout the country, and Yan'an was told not to take any offensive military action that might breach the pact.²⁰

It is noteworthy that since the GMD/CCP split at the end of the First United Front in 1927, both the CCP and the GMD had had abundant experience in inducing previously unaffiliated forces to defect to their causes. For instance, Mao Zedong in his 1928 report to Party Central pointed out that GMD troops who had defected and local bandits were the primary sources of his newly recruited soldiers. He claimed that, because of CCP political education, "the very soldiers who had no courage in the White Army yesterday are very brave in the Red Army today, the Red Army is like a furnace in which all captured soldiers are transmuted the moment they come over."²¹

The Comintern tended to criticize Mao for his proclivity to incorporate enemy troops and bandits into the CCP military. However, Mao, as a pragmatist, also took advantage of the opportunity the Japanese invasion provided to win over possible allies. His predicament was resolved when Georgi Dimitrov became the political secretariat of the Comintern in 1934 and promoted universal united front tactics against fascism.²² After the Xi'an incident in 1936, the CCP was able to win over many of Zhang Xueliang's former Northeastern Army units. Then, as the CCP forces extended their guerrilla bases into Japanese-occupied areas, winning over officers and soldiers of the Chinese collaborationist armies became their objective. "Chinese don't fight against fellow Chinese" was a propaganda slogan frequently utilized in Japanese-occupied regions. Lü Zhengcao (吕正操 1904–2009), a former Northeastern Army general and the CCP commander in Hebei, recalled that "many of the collaborationist armies still had a conscience, did not follow Japan's orders, but had to defect to the Japanese due to the actual circumstances. So, persuading them to defect [again] was not a hard task."²³ A 1941 CCP document about the Hebei-Shandong base area summarized the policy on military collaborators as follows:

Do not consider all [members of the] puppet military to be full-hearted traitors, because most of the soldiers were press-ganged into service. There are many unstable figures among them, and some anti-Japanese fighters are concealing themselves among them. Real traitors are a minority. If we influence them with the justice of the nation, they will be repentant. Hence, we should win them over by every means.²⁴

Mao, in an intraparty document dated September 4, 1944, the Instruction of the City Works, pointed out the importance of Manchukuo and the possibility of recruiting members of its collaborationist military, a much earlier statement than has been discussed in the scholarly literature. He recommended that the efforts of agents in the urban and rural guerilla base areas should be equalized, following the CCP's united front policy, and that agents and cadres should be dispatched to make contact with each Manchukuo military unit.²⁵ At the Seventh National Congress, from April 23 to June 11, 1945, the potential for Manchuria to become a pivotal spot in the revolution, an "unbeatable foundation of the Chinese revolution's victory," was a frequently discussed topic. In his report, On Coalition Government, to the congress members on April 24, Mao emphasized the possibility and urgency of the reorganization and reeducation of military collaborators:

Communists should pursue the broadest united front policy in all the occupied areas. For the overthrow of the common enemy they must unite with anyone who is opposed to the Japanese aggressors and their servile lackeys. We should warn all the puppet armies, the puppet police and others who are helping the enemy and opposing their countrymen that they must quickly recognize the criminal nature of their actions, repent in time and atone for their crimes by helping their countrymen against the enemy.²⁶

In accordance with Mao's new doctrine, Peng Zhen (彭真 1902–1997), the leader of the CCP's United Front Department, put forward guiding principles for dealing with collaborators on May 3:

Fomenting collusion is our party's fundamental strategy for driving the enemies out of the cities. We have to pay attention to disintegrating collaborationist military and police and to working with them. We have to extensively organize underground troops and prepare to utilize every available cadre.²⁷

The CCP's united front policy provided extremely versatile tactics for dealing with all kinds of enemies. It had its roots in Mao's longstanding battlefield strategy of making as many temporary allies as possible, regardless of ideology, such as former GMD troops. As Manchuria came to be seen as a potential crux of revolutionary victory, Mao portrayed the Manchukuo military as victims of Japanese imperialism, and therefore the CCP did not have to feel constrained by any ideological misgivings over recruiting these forces.

Chinese Communists Storm into Manchuria

On August 11, 1945, two days after the Soviet Army had advanced into Manchuria, the CCP's General Headquarters dispatched four units into Manchuria to "assist the Soviet Red Army and accept the surrender of the puppet armies." To take advantage of their relationships and reputation in Manchuria, three of the commanders chosen were originally from the Northeastern Army, Zhang Xueliang's brother Zhang Xuesi (张学思 1916–1970), Zhang's former adjutant Lü Zhengcao, and former Northeastern Army division commander Wan Yi (万毅 1907–1997). Li Yunchang (李运昌 1908–2008), the CCP guerrilla commander in the Rehe-Hebei-Liaoning base area, was the fourth commander.²⁸

The Rehe-Hebei-Liaoning base area was home to the only Communist unit acting within the territory of Manchukuo during the war. This guerrilla force had fought against the Japanese and Manchukuo armies since 1937, when the CCP established its military base in North China. As a result, this is where the Manchukuo military had deployed its elite units. The Manchukuo military deployed its largest garrison, the Fifth Garrison, which contained 28,000 soldiers, to Rehe, as well as over the border in Hebei. The Fifth Garrison had more experience with Communist forces than other Manchukuo units, and the CCP's Rehe-Hebei-Liaoning base area commander, Li Yunchang, had created secret communication channels with many of the Manchukuo officers. On August 13, Li organized 13,000 cadres and soldiers into three columns and started to advance to the north. The western column's 14th Military Subcommand, led by commander Shu Xing (舒行 1913–2001), had already made contact with the Fifth Garrison's southern defense commander, Huang Fanggang (黃方剛 1902–1975), who was stationed in western Rehe, and offered terms for his defection in April. Huang was a graduate of the Huangpu Military Academy (just like the Communist commander Li Yunchang) and had been a member of the Northeast Anti-Japanese Voluntary Army from 1931 to 1933; he was therefore considered a target for defection to the Communist cause. Soon after Shu's advance into Xinglong (兴隆) County, Shu transmitted a surrender ultimatum to Huang, who agreed to defect with his four regiments of over 10,000 soldiers. With this, the western part of Rehe fell completely under Communist control; Huang's troops were renamed the Fourth Independent Brigade.²⁹

In the eastern part of Rehe, the Shanhai (山海关) Pass, which contained the sole railway link connecting central China to Manchuria, was still controlled by Japanese and Manchukuo forces. On August 29, the Rehe-Hebei-Liaoning base area's 16th Military Subcommand, of the east column, besieged the Shanhai Pass train station. After negotiations, 400 Manchukuo garrison troops surrendered with many weapons and supplies. A Soviet scout unit arrived at the train station on August 30, and the CCP troops and Soviet forces joined together to attack and defeat the Japanese forces who controlled the pass. With that, the vital Liaoxi (辽西) corridor and the railway to Fengtian lay open to the Communist troops. Furthermore, Manchukuo forces remaining in central Rehe, including those who controlled other passes through the Great Wall, also defected to the Communists, bringing 7,000 additional soldiers with them and assuring CCP control of the vital Great Wall line.³⁰

The CCP leaders were uncertain about how the Soviets would react to their advances in Manchuria in August. To avoid causing a diplomatic problem for the Soviets, on August 29, the CCP's Central Committee cabled their Rehe-Hebei-Liaoning units, instructing them to enter Manchuria under the name "Northeast Voluntary Army" and to station themselves in rural areas rather than to occupy urban areas. However, the east column had lost radio contact and never received the order from headquarters.³¹ Therefore, on September 3, they instead flamboyantly decorated a train departing the Shanhai Pass for Fengtian with red flags and Communist slogans. They met little resistance and made significant gains: they were able to occupy two cities and thirteen counties, and Manchukuo garrison troops along the way continuously defected to them. Although the east column had left Rehe with only 1,700 soldiers, by the time it arrived at Fengtian on September 5 the numbers had swelled to over 20,000, and by October to over 60,000.³² At first, the Soviet commander in Fengtian (Shenyang) was reluctant to recognize the CCP troops as legitimate actors in the region, but after a parley at Yan'an, the CCP obtained Soviet consent to their continued presence, although their troops had to be put under Soviet supervision and limits were placed on their movement.³³ The Soviet front commander in the Northeast recognized that the recently arrived CCP cadres were useful allies in their occupation efforts, as they had few connections in the Manchurian urban areas, unlike the local strongmen and the GMD officers with whom the Soviets were also working.³⁴ However, the CCP Northeast Committee sent a report to Moscow in September that indicated the Soviet Red Army units had very poor discipline and often used violence against the local population. They requested that the Soviets provide the CCP units with weapons so that they could better assist in the occupation. The Soviet reply included a refusal to provide military support to the CCP, instructions reiterating that the CCP desist from any public activities in Sovietoccupied areas, and a reminder that Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek would decide whether they could remain in Manchuria.³⁵

In August 1945, the CCP's troops were not the sole "Chinese Communists" in Manchuria. In 1940, the Kwantung Army and Manchukuo military had defeated the CCP's Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army, a group of Han Chinese and Korean Communists, causing them to withdraw into Soviet territory. The Soviets reorganized and integrated them into the Red Army and named them the Far East Front Army 88th Brigade. From the time of their retreat until September 1945, they were stationed across from Manchukuo's northern border, effectively cut off from the CCP and under the command of the Soviet Red Army.

In July 1945, the 88th Brigade was ordered to participate in the August Storm invasion, with elements assigned to a wide variety of Soviet units, so that they could be assigned to act as garrison vice commanders as Chinese and Korean cities were occupied. While the CCP's Rehe-Hebei-Liaoning base area eastern column rushed into Manchuria from the south, the 88th Brigade assisted the Soviet Red Army in occupying a string of cities in the north and played a key role in securing the defection of many Manchukuo military forces. For example, the brigade commander, Zhou Baozhong (周保中 1902–1964), arrived at Changchun (Xinjing) on September 8 and was made vice commander of the city's occupying garrison. He recorded his unit's duties as: monitoring surrendered troops, making an inventory of weapons, and establishing a local administration and military force. Because of the language barrier, the Soviets authorized the Chinese vice commanders to handle the 2,000 captives from the Manchukuo garrison and their weapons.³⁶

Soon thereafter, the 88th Brigade command established contact with and allied itself with CCP officers who had arrived in Changchun from the south, and together they worked to bring the former Manchukuo military forces in northern Manchuria under Chinese Communist command. By October, they had organized a military force of 24,000 former Manchukuo soldiers under the name Northeastern People's Self-defense Army.³⁷ Another example occurred in Qiqihar (齐齐哈尔), where Wang Minggui (王明贵 1910–2005), an 88th Brigade officer, found over 3,000 Manchukuo Third Garrison troops, mostly artillerymen, still in their barracks. He noticed with pleasure their value to the CCP army and so incorporated most of them into the Northeastern People's Self-defense Army. Wang recalled in his memoir that many of them played important roles in the establishment of the artillery units of the People's Liberation Army (PLA).³⁸

Back in southern Manchuria, at the end of October, according to Commander Li Yunchang's calculation, his three columns, which had originally consisted of 11 regiments with 13,000 soldiers, had grown to 110,000 soldiers through the incorporation of former Manchukuo forces from Rehe to Fengtian.³⁹ The size of the CCP's force in Manchuria expanded almost 10-fold within two months, even without the inclusion of the troops secured by the 88th Brigade in the north and organized as the Northeastern People's Self-defense Army.

However, despite the Chinese Communist's bold recruitment efforts, many of the former Manchukuo Army forces did not defect wholeheartedly. Rather, their acceptance of Communist leadership was merely a maneuver to preserve the integrity of their forces and wait for the sluggish arrival of the GMD. They used the term "publicly Communist, secretly GMD" among themselves. Many of the Manchukuo military officers remained skeptical about the CCP's strength and anticipated that the GMD would soon return and take control. When the GMD army finally entered Manchuria in December 1945, there was large-scale defection from the Communist army. According to CCP documents, approximately 50,000 former Manchukuo troops in southern Manchuria and 100,000 such troops in northern Manchuria defected to the GMD at that point, resulting in the CCP losing control of two-thirds of the northern counties.⁴⁰ At the beginning of the competition in the Northeast, the inclinations of the Manchukuo military were heavily tipping the military balance.⁴¹

The GMD's Chaotic Policy

At this same time, the GMD was adjusting its vision of the postwar utilization of Manchukuo military forces. In April, General Xiong Shihui (熊式辉 1893–1974) advised the government to utilize the Manchukuo military to maintain public security in Manchuria and to prevent the establishment of a socialist regime.⁴² Through the conclusion of the August 1945 Sino-Soviet Treaty, the GMD government obtained a Soviet promise to acknowledge its sovereignty over Manchuria, and Stalin promised Song Ziwen (宋子文 1894–1971; also known as T. V. Soong), the foreign minister, that GMD military cadres could be attached to each unit of the Soviet Red Army that was occupying Manchuria. Still, GMD leaders were concerned about the way that the CCP had taken the initiative in the region. The first group of GMD cadres was not able to arrive in Manchuria until October 9, and Song recognized that it would be "absurd" to ask Stalin to move further against or to disarm CCP units in the region.⁴³

Chiang Kai-shek liked to utilize members of a variety of factions in his major projects because he thought it made it easier for him to keep control of the party. This tendency, however, also caused divisions over policy and delayed significant action. This was true of the GMD's administration in Manchuria, where a complex combination of powerful individuals and factions jostled for power, including Chiang's son Chiang Ching-kuo, who was the government's supreme representative in the region, Zhengxuehui (政学会) clique members like General Xiong Shihui, former Northeastern Army officers, and even the Mongolian former Manchukuo general, Wu Guting (乌古廷). Chiang Kai-shek, in particular, did not trust the northeasterners and worked to restrain their leadership in the reclamation of Manchuria. General Xiong, therefore, was designated the director of the Forward Command Camp (FCC) of the National Military Council in the Northeast, in charge of dealing with the former Manchukuo troops. To improve their ability to recruit the troops, the GMD top leaders ordered the FCC to act as if "there are no traitors in the Northeast."⁴⁴ However, inefficiency, infighting and corruption seriously slowed the efforts to take over and integrate the Manchukuo troops, such that the GMD fell behind in the race almost immediately.

In August 1945, flush with victory over Japan and with a treaty with the Soviet Union in hand, GMD officials were optimistic about their ability to take control of Manchuria. On August 18, they broadcast a radio message to former Manchukuo troops that ordered, "Remain at your posts, do not defect, and wait for the official incorporation."⁴⁵ The First Garrison commander, Wang Zhiyou (王之佑), informed his infantry regiment in Anshan (鞍山) that "Generalissimo Chiang ordered the Manchukuo military to reorganize into peace preservation associations, maintain control, and maintain public security in the cities."⁴⁶ Deng Guoqing (邓国庆), the commander of the Manchukuo military in Anshan, is an example of an officer who followed those orders; he renamed his unit Peace Preservation Corps and tried to maintain control over the industrial city.⁴⁷

The GMD appears to have held out hope that their negotiations with the Soviets and Mao in Chongqing, held from August to October 1945, would help pave the way for a peaceful occupation, and these hopes delayed their entry. It was not until September 4, 1945, that Chiang Kai-shek finally decided on the complex balance of factional leadership to use within the FCC, and by that time Chinese Communist troops had already arrived in Fengtian by train.⁴⁸ Soviet Ambassador Apollon Alexandrovich Petrov promised Chiang Ching-kuo in September 1945 that Soviet airplanes would help transport him and other GMD officers to Manchuria. Yet it was not until October 12 that Chiang Ching-kuo, Xiong Shihui, and the rest of the FCC accepted the Soviets' offer. After they arrived, they began negotiations with Rodion Yakovlevich Malinovsky, the Soviet commander in Manchuria, to arrange for the GMD occupation of the region. Chiang Ching-kuo reported to his father on October 17 that the Soviets had no objection to the GMD incorporating the Manchukuo troops, saying, "The Soviets believe it is impossible because most of the Manchukuo units have collapsed, but they agreed to allow us to recruit soldiers in Manchuria."⁴⁹ At first, Chiang Ching-kuo believed Soviet assurances that they would not facilitate CCP entry into the region, but by the end of October he began to realize that many Communist units had already arrived.

GMD officers who had been formerly connected to Zhang Xueliang's Northeastern Army were seen by many as the key to recruiting former Manchukuo military personnel, because of their personal connections with them. However, Xiong Shihui, the commander of the FCC and a member of the Zhengxuehui clique, went out of his way to avoid using the former Northeastern Army officers. Xiong, who was close to Chiang Kai-shek, probably was influenced by the Generalissimo's distrust of anyone connected to the Northeastern Army. Qi Shiying (齐世英 1899–1987), a member of the FCC, recalled in his memoirs that he had often suggested to Xiong that they should quickly work to recruit Manchukuo troops, but Xiong only replied perfunctorily and took no action.⁵⁰ Chiang Ching-kuo also expressed to his father the importance of incorporating the Manchukuo units, but, like Xiong, Chiang Kai-shek held back.⁵¹ Generals with Northeastern Army experience like Ma Zhanshan (马占山 1885–1950) and He Zhuguo (何柱国 1897–1985) were part of the FCC, but they were not granted any real power, while Zhang Xueliang himself remained under house arrest far away in Nanjing. Ma Zhanshan was concerned about the situation, and he reported to GMD headquarters in 1946:

Concerning the use of us senior statesmen of the Northeast, because the GMD army arrived in Manchuria slowly and because we were put in marginal positions, the Northeasterners [former Manchukuo military personnel] feel insecure. The Communists have been taking advantage of this situation, so please grant us real power equal to our positions.⁵²

Despite the inadequate attempts by Xiong Shihui to recruit former Manchukuo military personnel, a few officers and their units did join the GMD in 1945, especially those who had been stationed south of the Great Wall. Jiang Pengfei (姜鹏飞), who was the chief of staff of the Manchukuo Ninth Garrison and the commander of the eastern Hebei troops, secretly made contact with a GMD agent and defected in July 1945. Chiang Kai-shek designated him the commander of the New 27th Army and ordered him to march to the north to recruit more Manchukuo troops, but he did not follow through until 1946.⁵³

Another case is Liu Depu (劉德溥), commander of the 26th Regiment of the Manchukuo Tesseki Butai (鐵石部隊 Iron Stone Unit), which in 1945 was stationed in the Hebei area. The Tesseki Butai was an elite, well-equipped division established in December 1944 to assist the Japanese North China Area Army to fight against CCP guerrillas. On August 13, to avoid being dispatched back to Manchukuo and destroyed by the Soviets, Liu and his deputy commander decided, in his words, "to abandon our traitor identity." They planned an uprising, including the arrest of all Japanese officers, which they carried out on August 15, after hearing of Japan's surrender on the radio.⁵⁴

After the insurrection, however, Liu experienced a series of challenges, reflecting the complex dilemma that collaborators like him faced all over the region. On August 15, he dispatched many subordinates to contact both the closest CCP guerrilla commander and GMD officials. The reactions of the two rival parties were quite different: on August 17, Liu's representatives found a GMD intelligence station in Beiping and requested an official designation, money, and transceivers, as they thought that the radio broadcasts had promised. However, they were turned down. Returning in frustration, they came across a CCP unit, which arrested them and offered to recruit Liu's entire unit. The CCP released them and sent a representative to negotiate with Liu. Liu later remembered, "I believed that joining the Communists was an expedient option and a way out, but the CCP was not the orthodox choice. Although we did not have contact with the GMD, it was the sole legitimate government." In September, Liu's unit finally came in contact with the GMD FCC, which recruited them and renamed the unit the Northeastern Second General Corps.⁵⁵

On October 18, Du Yuming (杜聿明 1904–1981), a capable and respected GMD general, was designated the northeastern public security commander, under the command of the FCC. He was the commander of the Chinese Expeditionary Force in India and Burma and had good relationships with the US military. With the help of the US fleet, the GMD's 13th and 52nd armies were transported to the port of Huludao (葫芦岛), from where they prepared to attack the Communist forces holding the Shanhai Pass, which marked the reopening of hostilities between the two parties.⁵⁶ Because land transportation was blocked by the Communist units, the GMD finally accelerated its efforts to recruit former Manchukuo military forces to help them occupy the main cities of Manchuria. In December 1945, while the main GMD forces were still in southern Manchuria and focused on the fight at Shanhai Pass, Liu Depu's former Tesseki Butai, along with a handful of GMD cadres, were transferred by American airplanes to Changchun, where they were able to take control of the city. The GMD in Changchun was able to recruit the former Manchukuo military units in the area, and by January 1946 they were reorganized as the GMD Northeastern Fourth General Corps, with more than 10,000 troops. Du had drawn up a plan to recruit more former Manchukuo military personnel and organize them into 11 divisions. However, Xiong, who belonged to a different faction, did not approve the report, and as a result the GMD did not actively work to recruit more of the former Manchukuo military.⁵⁷

There were three factors that determined the choices of former members of the Manchukuo military in the postwar civil war: the rapid Soviet invasion and Japanese collapse, the postwar geopolitical position of China's two major parties, and the factional divides within the GMD. When the Soviets vanquished the Japanese in just a few days, the power vacuum provided the largely rural-based CCP with an unparalleled opportunity to move in and establish a new base in a developed region, despite their Soviet comrades knowing nothing about their plans. The CCP's proximity to Manchuria in August 1945 gave them an advantage over the GMD in distant Southwest China. Moreover, Chiang Kai-shek's distrust of former associates of Zhang Xueliang, as well as the party's factionalism, hampered the GMD's ability to attract as many of the Manchukuo military units as they otherwise could have.

Emancipation and Revolution: The Nationalist and Leftist Movements of the Manchukuo Military

This section discusses the development and activities various anti-Japanese organizations that formed within the Manchukuo military in the years before the surrender, and how the experiences of these cells impacted the choices former Manchukuo personnel made after the country's collapse and the start of the Civil War.

Young Resisters in the Manchukuo Military

The GMD and the CCP had both tried to penetrate and influence the Manchukuo military since its creation in 1932. The GMD intelligence system within the Manchukuo military had largely been destroyed in 1944 after a GMD agent was arrested and agreed to cooperate with the Japanese.⁵⁸ The Communists were respected by some within Manchukuo for their insistence on resisting the Japanese (in contrast to Chiang Kai-shek's 1931 policy of nonresistance), and, after the establishment of their base in Yan'an in 1935, they began organizing guerrilla units and dispatching intelligence agents to Manchuria. Even after years of Japanese counterespionage work, there were still a few Communist and GMD agents secretly positioned in Manchukuo during the war, including within the Manchukuo military, which was one of the best places to conduct their activities, especially the incubation of cells of resistance in preparation for the fall of Japan.⁵⁹ Due to their activities, a few groups were able to operate clandestinely under the noses of the Japanese, particularly among Manchukuo's well-educated officers and cadets.

After the Japanese capitulation in August 1945, as the CCP and GMD were bursting into the area and scrambling over the remains of Manchukuo, the fall of the client regime created a dangerous opportunity for the members of the Manchukuo military. While they faced potential retribution for collaborating with the Japanese, which could have led to prosecution or loss of social status, the impending civil war also gave them an opportunity to join one side or the other and potentially restore their personal reputations. At this point, cells that lurked within the Manchukuo military sprang into action, working to recruit military men. Based on a mixture of opportunity and personal conviction, many former collaborators took the chance to declare themselves as Nationalists or leftists. The opportunities open to the former Manchukuo collaborators contrast with the fate of many Vichy collaborators in August 1944, who were purged by the Conseil national de la Résistance and often viciously executed by the French Forces of the Interior.⁶⁰ Still, it was a time of confusion and uncertainty, as described by Lü Enhong (吕恩鸿), a Manchukuo military officer in Changchun:

On August 17, when the Soviet troops marched into Changchun, many of we military officers started to discuss our prospects. A big argument broke out between those who were pro-Communist and those who were pro-GMD. One faction suggested that because the Soviets had arrived, we would soon become captives, so it would be better to immediately disband [and avoid capture] and wait for a future opportunity. The other faction said that it would be better to be taken as captives temporarily [that is, to remain together as a unit] and that the CCP would soon take over the military forces.⁶¹

Northeast China had been a central stage in the struggle for national liberation going back to the Manchurian incident in 1931. As Levine has pointed out: "Manchurians, who had lagged behind in the nationalist struggles of the 1920s, now stood in the forefront of those Chinese who insisted upon a decisive victory over Japan."⁶² This fervor continued up through 1945, and although the Civil War had not yet formally begun, preemptively participating in either party gave the collaborators a chance for atonement for their ignominious history. For many of the collaborators, the war gave them a chance to remake themselves from "puppets" to "people's liberators."

Early in 1933, Deng Chang (邓昶), a CCP agent, was dispatched to his Manchuria homeland. He joined the Manchukuo military and was quickly promoted to officer rank. He moved to establish a Communist cell within the Manchukuo military called the Anti-Imperialism Alliance. Although he fell under suspicion and experienced several investigations and detentions, he eventually won enough trust that he was sent to Japan and graduated from the Imperial Japanese Army Academy in 1940. Then he was designated the drill master of the Manchukuo Military Medical Academy in Harbin and the Xinjing Central Army Academy. Utilizing these positions, he expanded the organization to more than a hundred members.⁶³ In August 1945, he refused an offer by GMD agents to join their side and led his pro-Communist cell to seize control of the Manchukuo Military Medical Academy and defect to the CCP. He changed the name of the academy to the Chinese Military Medical Academy, which later became the PLA's first formal medical school. In October, he and his group assisted the CCP to organize the Pacification General Corps of Harbin, recruiting over 1,200 former Manchukuo soldiers by the end of November, including many former officers who were allowed to become officers in the Communist military. As the CCP had few educated technical officers, the training Deng and his subordinates had received in the Manchukuo military was highly valued. They participated in the establishment of the PLA's artillery units, and Bai Tieshan (白铁山) and Liu Qian (刘前), two former members of Deng's cell, became commanders of artillery units during the Civil War and the Korean War. Bai Tieshan was eventually promoted to become the chief political commissar of the PLA's strategic missile base in the 1980s, making him the highest ranking Chinese veteran of the Manchukuo military.⁶⁴

Another case is the Northeast Youth Salvation Alliance, a CCP-led anti-Japanese association formed by the merger of several preexisting Manchukuo student groups in Tokyo, which was active from 1935 to 1940. Its members included many well-educated intellectuals, even the children of high-ranking Manchukuo bureaucrats, who became CCP agents and engaged in clandestine activities after returning to Manchukuo. For example, Zhang Mengshi (张梦实 1921–2014), son of Manchukuo's prime minister, Zhang Jinghui (张景恵 1871–1959), joined the association's Waseda University branch in 1940 and acted as a CCP agent when he went back to Manchukuo in 1943, transmitting a great deal of information about the Manchukuo military to Yan'an. Tong Zhibing (佟志斌), the son of Manchukuo Imperial Guards commander Tong Jixu (佟济煦), and Yu Jingchun (于静纯), the younger brother of Mayor Yu Jingyuan (于静远) of Xinjing, were core members of the alliance.⁶⁵ After they graduated from universities in Japan, they both came to hold positions as drill masters in the Manchukuo military. From those positions, they made contact with CCP agents, began recruiting like-minded cadets to join secret anti-Japanese reading groups, and began preparing resistance plans in September 1944.⁶⁶

Besides these groups that had direct ties with CCP agents, some leftists or Nationalists organized anti-Japanese activities on their own. For example, when the Xinjing Central Army Academy was established in 1939, a group of leftists among the first class of cadets founded their own anti-Japanese group, and by 1941 they had expanded their membership to 36, which was more than one-fifth of the total class of 160 cadets. Mobilized by these leftist officers, more than 14 Manchukuo army and naval units revolted en masse in August 1945 and over 2,000 troops defected to the CCP.⁶⁷ More than 400 pro-GMD officers and cadets were also recruited by the GMD and established the Central Police Academy Northeast Campus and the 207th Division independent battalion in 1946, yet most of them later defected to the CCP side because of their dissatisfaction with corrupt GMD officers.⁶⁸

The Manchukuo Military in the First Changchun Battle and the Yingkou Insurgency

In December 1945, the GMD had reorganized several former Manchukuo units as the Northeastern Second and Fourth General Corps, which they deployed to Changchun. The CCP Northeast Committee dispatched an intelligence group led by Tong Zhibin to infiltrate the Fourth General Corps to collect information.⁶⁹ When they discovered that the officers of the two General Corps were predominantly former Manchukuo personnel with whom they were personally acquainted, the agents were able to obtain appointments to positions of authority, which gave them an opportunity to draw detailed urban defense maps that they delivered to a CCP contact, which helped the CCP forces successfully place Changchun under siege and occupy it on April 19, 1946. The victory was a great coup by the CCP, as it was their first major victory in an urban area, including the capture of many supplies and Nationalist soldiers. Former members of the Manchukuo military played decisive roles on both sides of the battle on the grounds of their former capital city.

General Wang Jiashan (王家善 1903–1979), formerly the Manchukuo Central Army Academy's dean of studies, served as the chief of staff of the Manchukuo Seventh Garrison in 1945. According to his postwar memoir, he secretly led the largest anti-Japanese group within the Manchukuo military after 1940, and in that position he was able to protect most of those officers who were suspected by the Japanese of being resisters. Along with other high-ranking military officers, he was detained by the Soviets after surrender, yet he managed to escape from prison and sneak into Harbin in September 1945. As an ambitious Nationalist, he yearned to organize a pro-GMD force, so he went to Beiping twice to meet with Xiong Shihui and obtain authorization.⁷⁰ In December, he was designated as the commander of the Advanced Army of the 15th Army Group. When the Northeastern Second and Fourth General Corps were routed in Changchun in April 1946, Wang was able to utilize his influence among the former Manchukuo military units to reorganize the Fourth General Corps and became the commander of the corps in May. In 1947, Wang's unit was renamed the 58th Division and deployed to defend Yingkou (营口), a vital port and supply station for the moribund GMD armies in Manchuria. He was disturbed by the way the GMD's local civilian officers showed their distrust of his division because it was composed of former Manchukuo troops, and he decided to meet with two CCP agents who had been his subordinates in the Manchukuo military in 1936. They convinced him to defect to the CCP, along with his troops, on February 25, 1948. This defection caused the GMD to lose its last major harbor in the Northeast, cutting off GMD forces in the area from seaborne supplies and a means of retreat.⁷¹

The incorporation of Wang Jiashan's unit was considered one of the CCP's major strategic successes in the Northeast, and the CCP Northeast Bureau highly praised the agents who had been part of the Manchukuo military for their efforts. The defection was followed by a period of education, reorganization, and redeployment of the former Manchukuo and GMD unit, which is a good example of the success of the CCP's wartime policy toward defectors with problematic histories. In the brutal Liaoshen (辽沈) Campaign of September–November 1948, over 470,000 GMD troops were routed. Former officers and soldiers of the Manchukuo military, who had widely differing postwar experiences, now all faced the same reality: the Communist conquest of Northeast China. Wang Jiashan's division was renamed the PLA 50th Army 150th Division in October 1949, and it marched to western Hubei to participate in the Southwest Campaign against the GMD. From October to December, the 150th Division saw success as a vanguard unit, including leading the occupation of Chengdu. After the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, the 150th Division was redeployed to the Korean border. They crossed the Yalu River as part of the Chinese intervention in October, and they fought in the major battles on the road to recapturing Seoul in January 1951, which resulted in their receiving high praise from Mao. Wang Jiashan was designated deputy director of the Heilongjiang Military Department and promoted to deputy commander of the Rehe Area Command.⁷²

Conclusion

Bai Tieshan, the former Manchukuo military officer who became the chief political commissar of the PLA's strategic missile base, published an autobiography in 2001 in which he openly, though briefly, discussed the economic reasons that convinced him to enter the Manchukuo Military Academy in 1943, his recruitment into a secret anti-Japanese group by the CCP agent Deng Chang, and his conversion to Communism. He devoted more of the memoir to describing his work to facilitate the defection of Manchukuo military units in 1945 and his service in the Civil War and Korean War. His autobiography is representative of the many memoirs and recordings of former collaborators who (with the help of state-supported historians) have portrayed themselves as having become devoted to the Communist cause, at least by the time of the Chinese Civil War, and then focusing on their postwar military service.

Rana Mitter, noting that Chinese historians in recent years have frequently compared Chiang Kai-shek with Charles de Gaulle, raised the question of whether the Chinese historians would "go on to look at their Pétains."⁷³ While the study of collaborators is not encouraged in China, the case of the Manchukuo military provides an atypical paradigm among postwar rehabilitations, contrasting with the universal repudiation the Wang Jingwei regime has received. Their situation shares some similarities with the Pétainists in Africa who escaped postwar purges, became active in the defense of French Algeria, and thus "suddenly became patriots in the eyes of people who would once have designated them as traitors."⁷⁴ Nonetheless, the way that former Manchukuo military collaborators looked back on their collaboration did not correspond to the way former Pétainists redefined themselves in postwar French society. While the French collaborationists steadfastly claimed that they served to protect France during the German occupation, postwar resistancialist recollections of Chinese former collaborators were largely focused not on claims of resistance to Japan but rather on their participation in the postwar victory over the GMD (this trend is similar to the way that many Japanese soldiers who joined the PLA later self-identified). They have held that by participating on the Communist side in the Civil War and in the Korean War, they had arduously demonstrated their allegiances to the CCP. In fact, more than 700 former Manchukuo military officers were able to become party members, officers in the PLA, or Chinese government officials in the 1950s. In a memoir collection published by former Manchukuo military officers who later became CCP bureaucrats and military officials, the authors summarized this period as one in which their "identities were transformed from subjects of colonial rule into the people's liberators."⁷⁵ Although they were later dragged down and had their careers ruined during the political turbulence of the Cultural Revolution, most of them were restored to their positions and received accolades in the late 1970s. They benefited from publication in the 1980s–1990s of the wenshi ziliao (文史资料 literature and history) collections about the war era, which included many testimonies to the contributions of former collaborators to the Communist victory in the Northeast.

During the post-Manchukuo upheaval, while Chiang was entangled in his factional balancing act, distributing patronage opportunities in the Northeast, the partnership between Chinese Communists and former Manchukuo military units constituted a mutual approach between two desperate groups of people. To the former Manchukuo military, whether in their hearts they were pro-Communist, pro-Nationalist, or voluntary collaborators with the Japanese, the urgent priority was survival under the new order, and the arrival of the CCP provided an attractive opportunity. Although immediate necessity drove their various defections, there are strong indications that the CCP was the most appealing group to many of the former collaborators. Many later testified that after experiencing brutality during the Manchukuo era and under the GMD administration, they were most impressed by the Communist units and their political proposals and so joined with what they saw as the "best-disciplined Chinese troops with ragtag appearance."⁷⁶ The sense of discipline and mission expressed by the Communists helped convince the former collaborators to ultimately join their side against the GMD. While the resistance myth of the Manchukuo military collaborators certainly contains elements of historical reimagining, their sacrifices in dreadful wars clearly helped to win them pardons from the Communist leadership, and their long-term participation in the new Chinese regime demonstrated that this pardon, while rarely openly articulated, took effect throughout the eras before and after the Cultural Revolution.