Manchurian Banditry Under Japanese Occupation : 1931-1935

In the immediate aftermath of the Manchuria Incident in 1931, "banditry," which had long been common throughout Manchuria, increased to numbers that had never been seen before. This paper deals with the identities of these so-called bandits in an attempt to clarify whether they were in fact brigands who set out to exploit the turmoil in Manchuria caused by the Japanese occupation for personal gain, or if they were in fact genuine insurgents fighting to regain Manchuria's independence. To bring clarity to this issue, this paper will present a set of characteristics common to insurgencies around the globe by drawing on the works of both insurgents and counterinsurgents. It will then apply these characteristics to "bandits" in Manchuria by using diaries and memoirs of individuals captured for ransom by these groups, US State Department communiques, and documents from the South Manchuria Railway. This paper concludes that these groups were mostly bandits in fact as well as in name and that they had little interest in actively resisting the Japanese presence in Manchuria; however, through their actions, these bandits had the same deleterious effect on Japan's rule in Manchuria as a genuine insurgency would have had