While engaging into a quick foray into information about the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, I learned a decent amount about the circumstances which surrounded it.
To begin with, it is hypothesized that the initial invasion of Manchuria was not sanctioned by the government or emperor, and was an independent action by the Japanese Army.
The invasion of Manchuria was either done concurrently with or resulted in Japan leaving the League of Nations, which didn't really affect any involved parties except for solidifying Japanese isolation from international affairs.
Regarding the invasion itself, the Japanese were met with very little resistance because China was in the process of reunification, and the military head of the reunification movement did not intend to spare troops to defend Manchuria.
What fascinated me the most was that the invasion was started and justified by an explosion on a Japanese railway, which Japan blamed on China. The League of Nations attempted to blame both China and Japan in this situation, albeit moreso Japan, thereby giving credence to the false accusation; however, the railway was damaged minimally, and the trains operated on said rails normally, cementing that Japan had orchestrated this event in order to justify their imminent attack.
This interested me because the American war in Vietnam was justified in a similar manner: by fabricating and lying about Vietnamese attacks on a US destroyer. In declassified documents, it was revealed that the destroyer was ordered to attack Vietnamese ships that entered some radius of it, and that the report of a second attack was completely false.
Where the Japanese fabrication was to force the Japanese government to support a military movement that was highly popular with the military and populace, the US fabrication was to garner support from the American populace for a military movement backed by the US government and military.
It is fascinating how often we have seen fabrications or false accusations used as a basis for war throughout history. The U.S. media blaming Spain for the explosion of the USS Maine as an excuse for escalating the Spanish-American War was another example that occurred to me as I read your blog post. There's a Mark Twain quote that my history teacher in high school often used, and I find it to be quite true: "History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes."
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