The force was primarily used for fighting against Communist and Nationalist guerrillas in Manchukuo but also took part in battle against the Soviet Red Army on several occasions.

It initially consisted of former National Revolutionary Army troops of the "Young Marshal" Zhang Xueliang who were recruited after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria en masse, but eventually expanded to include new volunteers and conscripts.

The Imperial Army increased in size from about 111,000 troops in 1933 to an estimated strength of between 170,000 and 220,000 soldiers at its peak in 1945, being composed of Han Chinese, Manchus, Mongols, Koreans, Japanese, and White Russians.

Throughout its existence the majority of its troops were considered to be mostly unreliable by their Japanese officers and advisers, due to poor training and low morale.

After the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in September 1931 and the creation of the puppet state of Manchukuo on 18 February 1932, they began raising an army to help them police the local population.

Former Qing dynasty emperor Puyi, who was later known by the era name Kangde upon his ascension to the throne of Manchukuo in 1934, had supreme command of the land, naval, and air forces.

Large numbers of Chinese soldiers had surrendered to the Imperial Japanese Army and were recruited en masse into the new Manchukuoan forces.

[1] Many of the Nationalist troops that formerly served under the Young Marshal Zhang Xueliang had received poor training and had little loyalty to anyone, with a high proportion of them being opium addicts.

As a result, the new force was regarded as mostly unreliable by the Japanese, who decided to employ Zhang Xueliang's former troops because they provided a numerically large and already-trained (albeit poorly) army.

[3] The draft of soldiers did not begin until April 1940 and was not officially signed into law until 1941, which allowed every able-bodied male between the ages of eighteen and forty to be called up, of all ethnic groups.

Many of those guerrilla fighters were civilians, but a great many were former soldiers of Zhang Xueliang's army that decided to continue to resist on their own rather than surrender or leave Manchuria.

One of the more notable resistance leaders was Ma Zhanshan, whose army fought rearguard actions as Zhang Xueliang's main force retreated south.

Ma initially accepted the offer from Colonel Kenji Doihara and briefly served as the state of Manchukuo's war minister.

The operations saw the usage of Imperial Army troops in support of the IJA and were largely successful, confining the remaining insurgents to the northeast of the country and greatly reducing their numbers.

[7] They were complicated by the fact that many of the Manchukuoan troops had little loyalty to their new regime and frequently switched sides, or warned the bandits of the coming attacks.

These operations often involved a smaller vanguard of Japanese troops doing much of the fighting with a larger Manchukuoan contingent that played a supporting role.

The first campaign conducted by Manchukuoan troops independently of the Japanese did not occur until 1936, when some 16,000 men took part in fighting the 1st Route Army, capturing or killing more than 2,000 insurgents.

Supporting this force were several units of the Manchukuo Imperial Army, which totaled about 42,000 men, under the command of General Zhang Haipeng.

[11] The Manchukuoan Imperial Army saw some action against the Soviet Union during the Soviet–Japanese border conflicts, which played out largely in the Manchuria region.

[13] The Soviet invasion force taking part in the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation entered the state on 8 August 1945, consisting of 76 battle-hardened divisions from the European front, and including 4,500 tanks.

This issue was rectified by 1934, with new uniforms in a style similar to that of the Imperial Japanese Army, and using a color-code system on the collar badges (black for military police, red for infantry, green for cavalry, yellow for artillery, brown for engineer and blue for transport).

[15] The early Manchukuo Imperial Army inherited a hodgepodge of weapons from the former Kuomintang arsenals of the Young Marshal, which created tremendous problems with maintenance and supply.

[16] Over the next two or three years, Japanese rifles and machine guns were gradually issued to infantry to replace the previous mix of Chinese models.

Due to the shortage of field artillery in the Nationalist Army the majority of the weapons confiscated from Zhang Xueliang's forces were light infantry and mountain guns.

The total strength of the Manchukuo Imperial Army at its foundation was 111,044 men, as many of the former Nationalist troops that had surrendered were deemed to be too unreliable by the Japanese were demobilized.

[19] Its organization on the eve of the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation was as follows:[20] When Puyi first became the head of state of Manchukuo in 1932 with the title of "Chief Executive", several units were formed to defend him and the capital of Xijing.

It later consisted of nine cavalry regiments and waged its own war against bandits independently of the Manchukuoans with some success, also taking part in the 1933 invasion of Rehe.

[24] The White Russian emigres who joined the unit were required to learn Japanese and instructed in that language, while living by Bushido principles.

When conscription began in 1940 the unit's numbers were increased, the presence of Russian officers trained by the Japanese allowed them to be integrated more quickly.

Buryats between ages 20-30 were mobilized alongside other Mongols into the Hingan North Garrison Army, with two cavalry corps and a special railroad defense squadron under Urjin's command.