WWII Pacific Atrocities | Quin Cho and the Kwantung Army

**Laszlo Montgomery** (0:00)
Hey everyone, Laszlo Montgomery here. Thanks for tuning in to the China History Podcast. This is an interview from July 2025 that my Patreon listeners have been enjoying. I have on the CHP today Mr. Quin Cho, a research fellow at the Pacific Atrocities Education, a non-profit organization focused on researching World War II in Asia. You can find them at pacificatrocities.org to find out more. Quin is part of the next generation of Asian History Specialists, is a USC grad, studied history and international studies, Phi Beta Kappa. Quin has written three books, Competing Empires in Burma, The Battle of Wuhan, and The Rise of the Kwantung Army, something we're going to look at today. Quin, welcome to the China History Podcast.

**Quin Cho** (0:49)
Greetings. Nice to meet you.

**Laszlo Montgomery** (0:52)
Before we begin discussing some of the history beginning in the 1930s, tell me more about your background and your academic specialties. And then if you don't mind, introduce the Pacific Atrocities Education Organization. Jenny Chan reached out to me a while back, and that's how everything led to this moment.

**Quin Cho** (1:12)
Yeah, so I grew up in Chicago, Illinois, and got an interest very early on in the Second World War, which is my main academic specialty. All my books are pertaining to the Second World War, particularly the Asia Pacific Theater of the Second World War. I went to USC and double majored in history and international relations, as you informed the audience, and I got my start at Pacific Atrocities Education in 2020 as an intern.
The aim of Pacific Atrocities Education is to increase the awareness and understanding of World War II in the Asia Pacific, especially the atrocities that were committed by the Imperial Japanese Army in the course of the war, which are often not as well covered in English language, texts, or education, the American education system.

**Laszlo Montgomery** (2:18)
In past CHP episodes, a lot of the history surrounding the Kwantung Army and their oversized role in committing so many of these historic atrocities has been discussed before, but not in great detail. Can you begin by explaining how they came into existence and the role this institution played in Japan's takeover of Manchuria in the 1930s?

**Quin Cho** (2:44)
So the Kwantung Army has its roots in the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese War. According to the Treaty of Portsmouth, which ended the Russo-Japanese War, Japan inherited a lease on the Liaodong Peninsula, of which the Kwantung or Guandong Peninsula is a part. And the lease was originally, if I'm not mistaken, for 25 years. And in this peninsula, there were a variety of strategic assets, notably the port of Dalyan and Port Arthur, but also, even more importantly, the South Manchuria Railway, which ran from Port Arthur to Changchun.
The Kwantung Garrison was founded in 1906 to protect these Japanese assets, which was especially salient because of fears among the Japanese Army General Staff that the Russians would want to fight a war of revenge over Manchuria. Their role was to protect the South Manchuria Railway and the Liaodong Peninsula and basically secure these assets in the event of war with the Russians anyway, the deployment of Japanese forces to Changchun and later up towards Harbin and the Chinese Eastern Railway, which the Russians still controlled even after the Russo-Japanese War. Basically, the Kwantung Army consisted initially of one division and six independent railway guards battalions. These railway guards battalions were, their sole task was to guard the South Manchuria Railway. There were, according to the Treaty of Portsmouth, about a maximum of 15 men per mile that could garrison the railway, although in practice the railway guards battalions numbered far less than that. But in 1919, the Kwantung garrison command structure was adjusted and became the Kwantung Army. The position of Governor General that kind of was in the lead role of commanding both the Kwantung garrison and administering the Liaodong Peninsula was abolished, and the administrative and military tasks were split up into two different entities, the Kwantung Army and also the Kwantung Province Government, or the Kwantung Least Territory Government, I should say. The Kwantung Army itself had a variety of instances where it tried to meddle in the internal politics and affairs of Manchuria. These began in, actually, in the 1910s with the attempts to support this civilian adventure named Kawashima Naniwa and his efforts to essentially create a new Manchu government, a separatist Manchu government in the aftermath of the Chinese Revolution of 1911 Then, in the 1920s, the Kwantung Army supported the so-called Old Marshal, Zhang Zuo Lin, starting in 1920 and then, most notably, in 1924 and 1925, during the Second Fengtian-Zhuli War, when it bankrolled Feng Yuxiang, who was in the army of an opponent of Zhang Zuo Lin in the Zhuli clique, and they bankrolled him to basically join in Zhang Zuo Lin in his effort to destroy or to defeat the Zhuli clique and then also in the Guo Songning Affair of 1925, where the Kwantung Army defended this patch. It made a security zone along the South Manchuria Railway and allowed, enforced rather Guo Songning was this rebel against Zhang Zuo Lin to divert his forces into a, shall we say, inhospitable area that made it harder for them to conduct operations against Zhang and ultimately led to his defeat. Unfortunately, for the relationship between Zhang and the Kwantung Army, they kind of had some falling out, which we'll get into. And later, the Kwantung Army conducted the act that it became best known for, namely the assassination of Zhang Zuo Lin in 1928 and eventually, most notably, blowing up the South Manchuria Railway in 1931 and conducting a full-scale invasion of Manchuria in succeeding months. This invasion of Manchuria eventually led to the puppet state of Manchukuo and further incursions into northern China later in the 1930s, all of which eventually led to the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II in the Asia-Pacific region.