Japan 1941 1942 Second Sino-Japanese War Taishō period Shōwa period Asia-Pacific Mediterranean and Middle East Other campaigns Coups The Pacification of Manchukuo was a Japanese counterinsurgency campaign to suppress any armed resistance to the newly established puppet state of Manchukuo from various anti-Japanese volunteer armies in occupied Manchuria and later the Communist Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army.

The Kwantung Army issued a proclamation on 21 September 1931 installing Colonel Kenji Doihara as Mayor of Mukden; he proceeded to rule the city with the aid of an "Emergency Committee" composed mostly of Japanese.

Meanwhile, in Mukden, the "North Eastern Administrative Committee," or Self-Government Guiding Board, was set up on 10 November under the leadership of Yu Chung-han, a prominent elder statesman of Zhang Xueliang's Government, who favored the autonomy of Manchuria.

After the fall of Jinzhou, the independence movement made rapid progress in northern Manchuria, where Colonel Doihara was Chief of Special Services in Harbin.

After General Ma Zhanshan had been driven from Qiqihar by the Japanese in the Jiangqiao Campaign he had retreated northeastward with his beaten and depleted forces and had set up his capital at Hailun.

Colonel Kenji Doihara began negotiations with General Ma from his Special Service Office at Harbin, hoping to get him to join the new state of Manchukuo Japan was organizing.

The emergence of Chinese resistance to the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in the form of citizen militias, peasant brotherhoods and bandit gangs was facilitated by Japan's success in rapidly destroying Zhang Xueliang's government in the region.

After the Japanese invasion, the Big Swords Society disturbed the Jiandao in southeast Fengtian along the Korean border, and rose en masse in response to the declaration of Manchukuo on 9 March 1932.

Red Spear bands were in many cases led by Buddhist monks as they went into battle, with their clothes and weapons decorated with magic inscriptions similar to that of the earlier Boxer movement.

There was also a tradition of nationalistic banditry, dating back to the Russian invasion in July 1900 when Tsarist forces were sent to Manchuria, ostensibly to protect the Russian-owned Chinese Eastern Railway after the Boxer Rebellion.

During the Russo-Japanese War, many bandit groups actively cooperated with the Japanese Army, providing valuable military intelligence on Russian troop movements and deployment, and assisting in the securing of supplies.

Meanwhile, in southeast Jilin Wang Delin, a battalion commander and former bandit chieftain in the region established the Chinese People's National Salvation Army (NSA), on 8 February 1932.

With General Ding Chao defeated, Ma Zhanshan agreed to defect to the new Manchukuo Imperial Army on 14 February 1932 and retained his post as Governor of Heilongjiang Province in exchange for cooperating with the Japanese.

Within days Henry Puyi, the Manchurian former emperor of China deposed in 1911, was made provisional president of the independent state of Manchukuo by the resolution of an All-Manchuria convention at Mukden, whose members included General Ma Zhanshan flown in from the north.

On 29 March 1932, Li Hai-ching's forces defeated regular troops of the Manchukuo Governor Xi Qia outside the town of Nong'an, only 35 miles (56 km) from the capital of Shinkyo.

On the previous day, a party of 100 policemen was surrounded by volunteer troops in the afternoon as they were proceeding to Nong'an in a truck convoy carrying 200,000 rounds of rifle ammunition and 50,000 trench mortar shells from the Jilin City Arsenal.

Japanese forces from the east at Dehui, tried to fight their way through to Nong'an with the support of bombers, but the defenders radio ceased broadcasting, Li's Anti-Japanese Army having captured the town.

Ma was also appointed nominal commander-in-chief, over all other Anti-Japanese Volunteer Armies that were forming in various locations, and commanded a total fighting force of about 300,000 men at peak strength according to Japanese estimates.

After sending some troops to aid General Ding Chao in the lower Sungari River area, Ma struck out toward Harbin with six infantry and cavalry regiments, 20 field artillery pieces and a small squadron of seven planes.

General Ma reported on 8 June that he had decided to adopt guerrilla warfare tactics, retaining only one detachment of 1,000 soldiers as his personal command as a regular force.

A mixed force of Japanese and Manchukuo troops attacked Li Hai-ching's guerrillas in southern Heilongjiang province from three directions, rapidly dispersing them and securing control of the region.

General Su Bingwen the "Barga District" at the extreme west of Heilongjiang on the Soviet frontier, had kept his isolated command beyond the Greater Khingan mountains, free any of the fighting or any Japanese troops, doing nothing in support of either Manchukuo or Ma Zhanshan.

The mutineers, calling themselves the Heilongjiang National Salvation Army moved eastwards aboard trains to join General Ma Zhanshan in recapturing the provincial capital of Qiqihar.

And the following day, after heavy fighting, Ma Zhanshan and Su Bingwen with the remnants of their forces fled Hailar for the Soviet border and entered Russian territory on 5 December.

The bandit experiences of some of the commanders stood them in good stead for they were adept at surviving in the Manchurian winters and adapted to guerrilla warfare and they continued to harass the Japanese and Manchukuo forces for many years.

After the invasion of Manchuria in 1931, the Chinese Communist Party organized a number of small anti-Japanese guerrilla units dedicated both to resistance against the Japanese and also to social revolution.

The actions of Party members who joined or aided the various Anti-Japanese Volunteer Armies eventually persuaded the international Communist movement to move towards a popular front policy in 1935.

In 1935, when the Party officially changed policy, and began creating a united front, the army welcomed and absorbed most of the remaining anti-Japanese forces in Manchuria and some Korean resistance fighters including Kim Il Sung.

This operation gradually produced a critical lack of supplies, and from January to mid-February 1940 Yang Jingyu led the struggle until he died on 23 February 1940, trying to break out of the encirclement when an officer betrayed his detachment.

With its strongest armies dispersed or destroyed and its base areas pacified, the remnant resistance fighters, including Kim Il Sung, were gradually forced to retreat into Siberia between 1940 and 1942.