1936 Kwantung Army Railroad Map and Broadside, Manchuria / Inner Mongolia (China)

This is a rare and likely unique 1936 broadside of the area around Hulunbuir in Inner Mongolia, issued by the Imperial Japanese Kwantung Army restricting passengers from photographing or even looking outside their windows at key points along the China Eastern Railway. The map was issued in the lead-up to the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937 - 1945) as Japan and the Soviet Union / Mongolian People's Republic were jockeying for position in the area, ancillary to the growing conflict between Japan and China, and antecedent to the wider global conflict of World War II (1939 - 1945).

A Closer Look

The map covers the northwestern portion of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo, what is now the northernmost portion of the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia. This region shares a long border with the Soviet Union (Russia) to the north and Mongolia (Outer Mongolia) to the south. It is also the very far eastern end of the vast Eurasian steppe, just before a group of hills and mountains (the Da Hinggan or Greater Khingan Range) separates the steppe from Manchuria proper.

'Cities,' such as they were, and other settlements are noted throughout, though in reality these lands were used mostly for grazing livestock. Mongol banners (旗), Buddhist temples (marked with swastikas and/ or the character 庙), oil wells (marked with the character 井), and mines (a symbol of crossed axes) are also indicated. Some placenames use Chinese characters (hanzi / kanji) or a mix of kana and kanji, while others have no Chinese name and are kana transliterations of local (Mongol) names. The white line running east-west here is not a road but the northern-western branch China Eastern Railway, the main means of transportation (aside from horses) across the steppe. It passes through the only towns in the steppe land, which were often little more than a rail station, including Manzhouli (滿洲里) and Hulunbuir (here as 海拉爾). Although this region was granted to Inner Mongolia after the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, it remained economically connected with neighboring Heilongjiang Province in Manchuria because of the railway.

The map indicates areas with two types of shading, which the text below explains bars rail passengers from taking photographs or even looking out of windows while transiting through areas marked with a grid. The larger areas marked with horizontal lines were forbidden to unauthorized aircraft. The text consists of notices from the head of the Manchurian National Railways (鐵路總局) and the Commander of the Kwantung Army (廣東軍司令官) in Japanese, Chinese, Russian, and English. The odd, stilted language and high number of typos in the English text suggests that this may have been hastily prepared, or that English speakers (of which there would have been virtually none in this area) were not a significant concern. In fact, the inclusion of English at all seems strange, but many of the public pronouncements and propaganda of the Manchukuo government were issued in English in an attempt to attract investment and boost the international image of the new state (which was correctly seen as a puppet state and only recognized by Japan itself).

It is worth noting that the text in non-English languages is more specific, and reveals that this broadsheet was referring only to the grid area at right-center around Hulunbuir, a cordon around that 'city' bookended by Hake Station (哈克 / Хакэ) in the west and Wugunuo'er (鳥固諾爾 / Угунор) Station in the east. The other grid areas on the map (such as that around Manzhouli and Jalainur 札來諾爾) are not mentioned in the text. Presumably, this sheet would have been posted in stations or handed to travelers on the train before reaching that section of the line.

The Kwantung Army, Manchukuo, and Railways

The Treaty of Portsmouth that ended the Russo-Japanese War (1904 - 1905) granted Japan, among other rights, the Kwantung Leased Territory and the southern section of the China Eastern Railway, from Changchun to Port Arthur (Lüshun), which became known as the South Manchuria Railway (the northern section between Harbin and Changchun and the western branch connecting Harbin to Chita in Russia were jointly managed by Russia and China and later came to be known as the North Manchuria Railway). The company created to manage the southern section, the South Manchuria Railway Company (Mantetsu), soon developed into a mega-conglomerate that oversaw hotels, mines, mills, power plants, publishing, and much more, expanding Japanese influence in Manchuria to the point that it became a virtual colony. By the 1930s, Mantetsu was the largest company in Japan and by itself formed a significant portion of the Japanese economy.

By the 1920s, although Japan already exercised an informal empire in much of Manchuria, the territory was still under the political control of the Fengtian Clique of warlords led by Zhang Zuolin. Meanwhile, a sizable Japanese garrison occupied the Kwantung Leased Territory, known as the Kwantung Army (or 関東軍Kantō-gun in Japanese). The Kwantung Army was a hotbed of ultranationalism, militarism, and anti-democratic secret societies, and produced several of Japan's future wartime leaders, including Tōjō Hideki. Although the Kwantung Army had initially supported Zhang Zuolin as a bulwark against Chiang Kai-Shek, who was seen as pro-Communist, after Chiang partially reunified China in 1928, Zhang was assassinated when a bomb exploded under his private train traveling on the South Manchuria Railway. The plot had been hatched by junior officers in the Kwantung Army.

At the same time, the Russian Civil War and developments in Chinese politics complicated the joint management of the Harbin-Manzhouli (North Manchuria) Railway. Zhang Zuolin's son, Zhang Xueliang, took over control of his armies but was still unproven and seen as a frivolous playboy rather than a tough military commander. However, the younger Zhang quickly inserted himself into national and geopolitical struggles, attempting in 1929 to seize full control of the North Manchuria Railway, prompting a quick and effective Soviet response which forced Zhang to return to joint ownership of the line.

Back in southern Manchuria, on September 18, 1931, a group of Kwantung Army officers staged a false flag incident (another bombing along the South Manchuria Railway) to provide a pretext for invading and occupying Manchuria. Although Japan's political leaders and possibly even the military leadership were unaware of the invasion plot, they did not force the Kwantung Army to retreat despite international condemnation because the invasion was extremely popular domestically and provided a convenient solution to Japan's long-term problems with resource constraints and overpopulation. Rather than make Manchuria a formal colony, as with Taiwan, or annex it outright, as with Korea, a puppet regime was established, led by the last emperor of the Qing Dynasty, Aisin Gioro Puyi, who had been living in the Japanese Concession in Tianjin. Puyi had expressed his desire to be re-enthroned and had support from the now-minority population of Manchus, who felt discriminated against in China since the Qing Dynasty's collapse in 1912. Puyi was smuggled out of Tianjin in the trunk of a car and conveyed to Manchuria, where he became the Kangde Emperor (康德), the nominal head of the new state.

A vast, sparsely populated region that was tremendously rich in resources, Manchuria became a wild, violent, multiethnic imperial frontier. Forced labor was employed on a mass scale under brutal conditions, part of a wider Soviet-influenced plan of crash course industrialization (overseen by future Class A War Criminal and Japanese Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke). All manner of warlord troops, bandits, and rebels were present in Manchuria following Japan's invasion, and extremely harsh methods were used to suppress resistance. A special military unit (Unit 731) even engaged in horrific experiments on living subjects (often captured rebels and enemy troops, though also randomly selected civilians), such as biological weapons, chemical warfare, and vivisection.

Japan's shift from informal to formal imperialism in Manchuria upset the already tenuous power balance in the region, particularly vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, which already eyed Imperial Japan warily for its intense anti-Communism and its humbling of the Russian Empire in 1905. For a few years, the joint management of the North Manchuria Railway continued, now with Manchukuo instead of Zhang Xueliang, but in 1935 the Soviets sold their share of the line to the Manchurian National Railway, which, despite its name and nominal government control, was for all intents and purposes a subsidiary of Mantetsu, with considerable influence from the Kwantung Army. In an incredible historical sidenote, the Japanese converted the railway from the wide Russian gauge to standard gauge in only four hours on August 31, 1935. However, as this broadside suggests, many of the people who used the line continued to be Russian-speakers, especially those with ties to Russian-heavy Harbin.

Mongols Caught in the Middle

Although this region was a battleground between the Russian, Japanese, and Chinese empires, most of its inhabitants were Mongol nomads. Being in close proximity to the Manchu heartland, the Mongols of this region were some of the first to swear allegiance to the Manchu ruler (khan), even before the Manchus established the Qing Dynasty with the goal of conquering China. Mongols also formed some of the best crack troops (bannermen) of the Qing armies, and were rewarded with titles, wealth, and the right to maintain autonomy over their grasslands. But by the late Qing period, overpopulation in China was pushing Han Chinese migrants out into the grasslands, provoking interethnic tensions. When the Qing Dynasty collapsed, most Mongols were reluctant about joining the new Han-dominated Chinese Republic, a situation the Russian Empire (and later White Russians), Soviet Union, and Imperial Japan sought to exploit.

Those Mongol groups who were distant enough from China to express their independence became the basis for Outer Mongolia, that is, the Mongolian People's Republic, a Soviet satellite. The leading noblemen of Inner Mongolia tried to maintain their autonomy within China, and many sided up with Imperial Japan in the 1930s, hoping that it would be a better guarantor of their way of life, resulting in the creation of the Manchukuo-style puppet state of Mengjiang in 1939. The area seen on this map was to the north and within the territory of Manchukuo, but followed similar dynamics. In a bid to win over the Mongols, this region was ruled by a local Mongol prince under the 'guidance' of a Japanese supervisor, rather than directly by the Manchukuo government.

Border Dispute with Great Ramifications

The area at bottom here near Buir Lake (貝爾諾爾) and the corresponding area on the Mongolian side of the border was the site of the Battles of Khalkhin Gol, known to the Japanese as the Nomonhon Incident, a little-known but consequential series of border engagements in the summer of 1939 between Soviet / Mongolian troops and the Kwantung Army, in which the latter was dealt a stinging defeat. The mini-war arguably had massive ramifications. The Kwantung Army's poor showing against Soviet troops weakened the argument for a Japanese 'Northern Expansion' into the Russian Far East and gave greater impetus to the 'Southern Expansion' strategy advocated by the Imperial Japanese Navy, a strategy that would lead Japan to occupy French Indochina and eventually attack Pearl Harbor. Likewise, Tokyo sought to avoid further conflict with the Soviet Union, and eventually signed a Neutrality Pact with it which held until the closing weeks of the Second World War.

Although they won the Battles of Khalkhin Gol, the Soviets also were unhappy about the conflict as their significant advantages in manpower and technology should have led to an easier victory. The experience led the Red Army's Siberian and Far Eastern sections to incorporate valuable lessons and allowed effective commanders to emerge. Three in particular proved themselves adept; Grigori Shtern and Yakov Smushkevich would be executed by Stalin's purges in 1941, but the third, Georgy Zhukov (1896 - 1974), would go on to become the greatest Soviet general of World War II, rescuing Moscow in 1941, in part thanks to troops brought from Siberia and the Far East who had fought at Khalkhin Gol and who could be spared with the partial assurance of Japan's stated neutrality.

Publication History and Census

This sheet was prepared and printed by the Kwantung Army in conjunction with the Manchurian National Railways in March 1936. We have been unable to locate any other examples. Unique.