Mukden incident

Mukden incident
	Part of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria
	; Japanese troops entering Shenyang during the Mukden incident
Date	September 18, 1931
Location	Manchuria, China41°50′05″N 123°27′58″E / 41.834610°N 123.465984°E
Result	Japanese victory Japanese invasion of Manchuria;
Belligerents
China	Japan
Commanders and leaders
Zhang Xueliang; Ma Zhanshan; Feng Zhanhai;	Shigeru Honjō; Jirō Minami; Kanji Ishiwara; Seishirō Itagaki;
Strength
160,000	30,000–66,000
Casualties and losses
Western Claim : 340+ killed; ; Chinese Claim:; 5 officers and 144 soldiers killed; 14 officers and 172 soldiers wounded; 483 soldiers missing; ; Japanese Claim: 320 killed	Western Claim : 25 killed; ; Japanese Claim: 2 killed, 22 wounded

The Mukden incident was a false flag event staged by Japanese military personnel as a pretext for the 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria.^[3]^[4]^[5]

On September 18, 1931, Lieutenant Suemori Kawamoto of the Independent Garrison Unit [ja] of the 29th Japanese Infantry Regiment [ja] detonated a small quantity of dynamite^[6] close to a railway line owned by Japan's South Manchuria Railway near Mukden (now Shenyang).^[7] The explosion was so weak that it failed to destroy the track, and a train passed over it minutes later. The Imperial Japanese Army accused Chinese dissidents of the act and responded with a full invasion that led to the occupation of Manchuria, in which Japan established its puppet state of Manchukuo 5 months later. The deception was exposed by the Lytton Report of 1932, leading Japan to diplomatic isolation and its March 1933 withdrawal from the League of Nations.^[8]

^ Zhiwen, Kang; Chunhe, Xie (2005). 日本侵华的铁证: 日本记者镜头下的九一八事变. 吉林文史出版社. p. 15.
^ ^a ^b Senman hattatsu shi. Sen-Man Jigyō Kyōkai. 1934. p. 535.
^ The Cambridge History of Japan: The Twentieth Century, p. 294, Peter Duus, John Whitney Hall, Cambridge University Press: 1989 ISBN 978-0-521-22357-7
^ An instinct for War: Scenes from the battlefields of history, p. 315, Roger J. Spiller, ISBN 978-0-674-01941-6; Harvard University Press
^ Concise dictionary of modern Japanese history, p. 120, Janet Hunter, University of California Press: 1984, ISBN 978-0-520-04557-6
^ The Cambridge History of Japan: The Twentieth Century, p. 294, Peter Duus, John Whitney Hall, Cambridge University Press: 1989. ISBN 978-0-521-22357-7
^ Fenby, Jonathan. Chiang Kai-shek: China's Generalissimo and the Nation He Lost. Carroll & Graf: 2003, p. 202
^ Encyclopedia of war crimes and genocide, p. 128, Leslie Alan Horvitz & Christopher Catherwood, Facts on File (2011); ISBN 978-0-8160-8083-0