WHERE IS THE KWANTUNG ARMY?
DEVERALL, RICHARD
Where Is The Kwantung Army? By Richard Deverall THE DISCONCERTING GAINS of the Japanese Communist Party, registered in the January 194") elections, highlighted the continued advance of...
...Soldiers repatriated to Japan tell of the "cultural circles" to be found where the Japanese live and work...
...Kwantung Army stair officers knew much more about Marx than about Miller or Mussolini...
...The transition was not Joo difficult...
...But in spite of its unity of administration, Japan seems to be moving toward China, toward Communism, and toward the Soviet Union...
...They classified Japan simply .is "fascist...
...By Richard Deverall THE DISCONCERTING GAINS of the Japanese Communist Party, registered in the January 194") elections, highlighted the continued advance of Stalinism inside what is considered a bastion of American mfluence...
...For when Manchuria fell into Russian hands during the closing days of the 1 Richard Deverall was editor and publisher for seven years of the liboral lay Catholic monthly...
...Two hundred thousand Soviet-held Japanese soldiers and civilians are in Southern Sakhalin, now a Soviet possession...
...Another one hundred thousand Japanese prisoners-of-war work in the Khabarovsk and Cosmolinsk areas, while another one hundred thousand are reported working on railroads and other projects in the Vladivostok region...
...THE KWANTUNG ARMY is more important as a political and ideological force than as a military one...
...It remains under unified Allied control...
...It has not been berlinized...
...Many prewar reports to America on the Far East came from naive men or fellowtravelers...
...Su went north of the border into the...
...More are scattered in small camps throughout the Soviet Far East...
...Imperialism for those of Soviet Imperialism, So long as the core of the Kwantung Army remains within the Soviet Union, the Allied Occupation functions under a veritable <Damoclean swdrd...
...of the "political discussion groups" encouraged through Japanese pro-Communists...
...Little is known about the present disposition of the vital elements of 1 lie Kwantung Army...
...And, ns a recent writer in The New Binder stressed, it was part of Hits group which, at the time of the surrender, passed from Tojo's camp directly into the postwar Japanese Communist party...
...and of the classes to inculcate "receptive" Japanese with the ideas and hones of that great Oriental leader, Josef Stalin, * *. * IN KHABAROVSK the Nippon Shtmbun (Japan Newspaper) tells the Japanese of the horrors of life in Japan under the Anglo-Americans...
...if' 0 4 POLITICALLY IDENTIFIED with Kuropean fascism in its assault on democracy Ihe Japanese added Marxism to their mystical blend of feudalism, militarism, and Emperor-wor: hip...
...THESE SOLDIER REPATRIATES reported, as early as March 1948, that over 700,000 Japanese remained witbin the Soviet orbit, a large number of them Kwantung Army men...
...Hut the young officers, the staff, the research and planning sections of the Kwantung Army all disappeared behind the Oriental Iron Curtain...
...JAPAN REPRESENTS a rich geopolitical prize not only in terms of being the "Great Britain" of the Far East but for its potential ability to raise an army of five million men on short order...
...With a diversified industrial plant, shipyards, and other utilities and services needed for the maintenance of a strong armed force in the Orient, Japan is the only Far Eastern country capable of formidable military development...
...It can be assumed that the Soviet is retaining intact the cream of the officer corps, the non-coms, and the intellectual elements of the Kwantung Army- -it should not be forgotten that captured foreign armies have been used before by the Soviet Union...
...Some of the top lenders of the Kwantung Army were hanged or imprisoned for long terms...
...Two years later, hundreds ¦ if miles to the west, when a revolt was in progress in Sinkiang, General Su and his army reappeared, enter.'d Sinkiang...
...Christian Social Action...
...The published statements of the Kwantung Army during the )U30's bristled wij.li violent attacks on capitalism, plutocrats, bureaucrats, and llio profit system...
...At Sakhalin a Soviet-sponsored Japanese weekly served not only the Soviet internees but also Japan in spreading violent attacks on the Marshall Plan, President Truman, and other "running dogs of Anglo-American imperialism...
...He was also co-founder of the Detroit weekly Wage Earner, and Education Director of the United Automobile Workers...
...For example, Iwelve years ago the "japanized" Marxist leadership ol* llv Kwantung Army formed the Manchurlan Industrial Development Corporalion—a hugh operating combine to exploit Manchuria which was run by and for the Kwantung Army...
...Most significant is the report that the Kwantung army has been carefully screened, with a total of fifteen thousand hand-picked officers located in the Kazan area of the Soviet Union...
...A rearming of Japan, already being discussed by Hanson W. Baldwin of the New York Times, could serve either to further Soviet imperialism in the Far East or to contain it...
...Perhaps it is the first possibility which explains why the Soviet Union continues to keep within its borders a sizeable part of the Japanese Army...
...The simplicity of the labels hid the fact that Ihe young officers, and many of the commanding officers of" Ihe Kwantung Army, were not unfriendly to collectivism or to totalitarian political forms...
...Manchuria also bears many of the richest natural resources of China...
...But some of its soldiers have filtered back to Japan, and their stories reveal a few details...
...Of three valuable prizes in the Far East Soviet imperialism has already conquered two: Manchuria and North Korea, which together contain the second-largest industrial plant in <he Far East...
...Many of them were attending Soviet political schools...
...The series of assassinations which book Japan from 1930-1938 were the work of these totalitarian military collectivism...
...General llidcki Tojo, General Doihara, and Colonels Hashimoto, Itagaki, and Koiso were the spiritual loaders of the officers who had rejected capitalism, and were developing their own peculiar brand of .totalitarian military collectivism...
...it now threatens to engulf Sinkiang in northwestern China, a province rich in oil, gold, and coal...
...Hut they "japani/.cd" Marxism and developed a unique type of Japanese collectivism which had little in common Willi orthodox Marxism...
...The Kwantung Army conducted experiments in collective farming and planned economics with Japanese big business and finance frozen out of the Manchuriun imperialist adventure...
...Three years after the Pacific war, hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers and civilians worked in Soviet prisonerof-war or labor camps...
...II may he expected that when it nils Soviet policy to return to Japan the moat powerful elements of the Kwantung Army, this will be clone...
...A well-trained, disciplined, bard-hitting lighting force, at the time of its disappearance, the Kwantung Army represented fourteen years of diversified military experience in China...
...In spite of the long incarceration and the propaganda, some of the Japanese who return to then native land are bitterly-anti-Soviet...
...The greatest clanger lies not in the military power this group muy c.tvrci.se, i;hi in its possible reappearance as (i highly-trained cadre of totalitarian military coUeclivista who have shed ilie ideas of Japanese...
...It was Ihe Kwantung Army which murched Japan into the Pacific war...
...Infrequent mention is made by Pravda and Tans of the activities of these Kwantung" troops plithin the Soviet...
...Pacific war, Japan's well-equipped Kwantung Army surrendered and promptly disappeared...
...He served two and a half years as Chief of Labor Education on the staff of General MacArihur in Japan...
...They speak of the "low culture" of the Soviet Union, and tell of Soviet mistreaUnent of Japanese prisoners-of-war...
...Japanese tell of young Kwantung officers who returned to Japan on leave during the early 19110's, and boasted to parents and friends that after they 'settled" the Chinese problem they would return to Japan to kill oft the finance capitalists and collectivize*'Japan...
...One Asiatic example is found in the Army nf the Chinese General Su Ping-wen who, in 1931, lied from Manchuria before the Japanese invasion...
...Soviet Far East...
...The Kwantung Army was fascist" and "imperialistic...
...Japan constitutes the third valuable prize...
...Thirty thousand Kwantung soldiers are said to be working at Tushkeknt, and ten thousand officers and men are reported to be either working in factories in the Ukraine or attending schools in the Moscow area...
...Since the end of the Pacific war, the Soviet Union has completed control of Outer Mongolia...
Vol. 32 • June 1949 • No. 23
