'Russian Samurai' in World War II

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'Russian Samurai' in World War II Mar 29, 2022 18:37:39 GMT

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Post by Admin on Mar 29, 2022 18:37:39 GMT

Following the Russian Civil War many White Russians ended up in Manchuria, and the Japanese decided to use this motivated anti-Soviet force. Conscription into the Manchukuo Army started in early 1940 and applied to all ethnicities, including Russians.

They were initially used to guard railways and other important areas and the early success of the unit caused it to be expanded. However, the Japanese kept the White Russian troops under their direct command. They worked with the Russian Fascist Party of Konstantin Rodzaevsky to form this unit, and although there was one White Russian revolt in 1933, the Japanese considered them useful enough to keep employing them.

In 1936 they were all unified into one detachment, the Asano Detachment or Asano Brigade, named after Colonel Asano Takashi, the Japanese adviser who organized it. The brigade was officially part of the Manchukuo army but it was led by Japanese officers. It grew from an initial strength of 200 men to 700 men divided into five companies. The brigade fought during the Battle of Khalkhin Gol in 1938 and was almost totally destroyed.

The Manchukuo Army also included ethnic Buryat troops among its ranks. Like the White Russians, many Buryats had fled their homeland in the aftermath of the Russian Civil War as well as during the political purges in the Soviet Union and Outer Mongolia during the 1930s, in which many Buryats were targeted. A leading figure in the Manchukuo Buryat community was Urzhin Garmaev. Buryats between ages 20-30 were mobilized alongside other Mongols into the Hingan North Garrison Army, with two cavalry corps and a special railroad defense squadron under Urjin's command. Their duties included border patrol near Soviet and Outer Mongolian territory, and suppression of communist anti-Japanese guerillas. Buryat soldiers also participated on the Manchukuo side during the Battle of Khalkhin Gol, after which the survivors were withdrawn to Hailar.

Another one was raised to replace it and it numbered some 4,000 men, including Cossacks, by 1945. During the Soviet invasion of Manchuria it took part in fighting against the Red Army and the fate of those who fell into Soviet captivity is unknown.

Russians were perhaps the only Europeans who volunteered to fight for the creation of Greater East Asia led by Japan. However, in that, they were pursuing their own goals, too.

The Bolsheviks’ victory in the Russian Civil War forced hundreds of thousands of Russians to flee the country. However, they, as well as their children, did not stop hoping that, one day, they would return to their homeland and overthrow the Soviet regime they hated so much.

If, in their struggle against the USSR, many Russian emigres in Europe sided with Hitler, those who had settled in the Far East chose the Japanese Empire as their ally.

Allies
The Japanese had started forging ties with White Army emigres living in Manchuria in northeast China in the 1920s. When in 1931 the Kwantung Army occupied that region, a significant part of its Russian inhabitants supported the Japanese in the fight against the Chinese troops.

A puppet state, Manchukuo, was set up on the territory of Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, headed by the last Chinese emperor, Puyi. However, real power there belonged to the Japanese advisers and the leadership of the Kwantung Army.

The Japanese and Russians there found common ground in their hatred of communism. They needed each other in the upcoming “liberation” war against the Soviet Union.

Last Edit: Mar 30, 2022 17:17:52 GMT by Admin

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'Russian Samurai' in World War II Mar 29, 2022 19:13:03 GMT

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Post by Admin on Mar 29, 2022 19:13:03 GMT

‘Russian samurai’
Under the official ideology of Manchukuo, Russians were one of the five ‘indigenous’ peoples of the state and enjoyed equal rights with the Japanese, Chinese, Mongols and Koreans living here.

As a sign of their favorable attitude towards White Russian emigres, the Japanese actively involved them in cooperation with their intelligence bureau in Manchuria, the Japanese military mission in Harbin. Its head, Michitarō Komatsubara, noted once about the Russians: “They are ready for any material sacrifice and gladly take on any dangerous enterprise in order to destroy communism.”

In addition, numerous Russian military detachments were set up to protect key transport facilities from attacks by local honghuzi bandits. Later, they would also be used to fight against Chinese and Korean partisans.

The ‘Russian samurai’, as General Genzo Yanagita called White Army emigres who collaborated with the Japanese, received both military and ideological training. On the whole, their attitude towards the idea of creating Greater East Asia under Japan was neutral, bordering on positive, although they were far less enthusiastic about the plan to seize all Russian lands up to the Urals, which, however, they had to carefully hide.

“We filtered what the lecturers stuffed us with and discarded the superfluous, Nippon spirit that was at odds with our Russian spirit,” one cadet by the name of Golubenko recalled.

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'Russian Samurai' in World War II Mar 29, 2022 19:44:58 GMT

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Post by Admin on Mar 29, 2022 19:44:58 GMT

Asano detachment
The most prominent among the Russian military units created by the Japanese was the ‘Asano’ detachment, named after its commander Major Asano Makoto. At different times, it numbered from 400 to 3,500 people.

Founded on the birthday of Emperor Hirohito, April 29, 1938, the detachment comprised infantry, cavalry and artillery units. Based in Manchukuo, Asano’s soldiers were nevertheless fully supervised by the Japanese military.

Fighters from that secret unit were preparing to carry out sabotage and reconnaissance operations on the territory of the Soviet Far East in a future war against the USSR. In it, their task would be to capture or destroy bridges and important communications nodes, to infiltrate into Soviet units and poison kitchens and water sources there.

The Japanese Empire tested the military potential of the Red Army twice, in 1938, near Lake Khasan, and in 1939, on the Khalkhin Gol River. Fighters from the Asano detachment took part in both those operations, although their function mainly consisted in questioning Soviet prisoners of war.

That said, there were also reports that they were involved in real clashes with the enemy, too. Thus, during the battles on Khalkhin Gol, a cavalry detachment of the Mongolian People’s Republic came across Asano’s cavalrymen and took them for their own. That mistake cost most of the Mongolian soldiers their lives.

A new role
By the end of 1941, the Japanese leadership had abandoned its plan of a blitzkrieg against the USSR, known as the Kantokuen plan. And by 1943, it was clear that there would be no Japanese invasion of the Soviet Far East in any shape or form.

As a result, the Japanese carried out a reform of their Russian detachments, turning them from special-purpose sabotage and reconnaissance into ordinary combined-arms units. Thus, the Asano detachment, which had lost its secret status, became part of the 162nd Rifle Regiment of the Armed Forces of Manchukuo.

Nevertheless, Tokyo continued to value its Russian soldiers highly. In May 1944, the younger brother of Emperor Hirohito, Prince Mikasa Takahito, paid a visit to where Asano’s fighters were based. In his address to the soldiers, he spoke of strengthening the morale and military training of the Japanese and Russian peoples.

Defeat
The difficult and heroic struggle of the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany resulted in a surge of patriotism and anti-Japanese sentiments among the Russian population of Manchuria. Many officers began to collaborate with Soviet intelligence. As it turned out, even one of the leaders of the Asano detachment, Gurgen Nagolyan, was an NKVD (Soviet secret police) agent.

When on August 9, 1945, the Red Army invaded Manchuria, local Russian military units reacted differently. A small part of them put up armed resistance, but were quickly crushed along with the Manchukuo troops. Soviet Major Pyotr Melnikov recalled that from the Japanese side there often came shouts in Russian aimed to confuse and disorient the Soviet soldiers, trying to figure out who was friend and who was foe.

Most of the Russians, however, decided to change sides. They arrested their Japanese commanders, set up guerilla detachments to fight the Japanese, and, having taken control of settlements, handed them over to the advancing Soviet troops. Occasionally, Red Army soldiers even became friends with White Russian emigres, and the latter were entrusted with carrying out guard duty at some facilities.

However, the idyll ended when, following the Soviet military units, SMERSH counter-intelligence officers arrived. Moscow, which had a wide intelligence network in Manchuria, was well aware of the activities of local White Army emigres over the previous years. They were taken to the USSR en masse, where the more senior figures were executed, while the others were sentenced to up to 15 years in Gulag camps.

Last Edit: Mar 29, 2022 19:47:54 GMT by Admin

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'Russian Samurai' in World War II Mar 30, 2022 19:00:38 GMT

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Post by Admin on Mar 30, 2022 19:00:38 GMT

Caucasians in Japanese-looking uniforms like the group in the photo to the left do not belong to the average type of World War Two imagery. In fact, the men in the picture are Russians. The background story is complicated and reflects the way the tumultuous first decades of the 20th century moved people across continents to lands far removed from their countries of birth.

Following Russia’s 1917 Bolshevik revolution and the ensuing civil war, tens of thousands of followers of the losing side ended up beyond the Russian empire’s eastern borders, mostly in Manchuria in what is now northeast China. Manchuria was a natural choice, since it had been the scene of considerable Sino-Russian economic exchange during the preceding decades.

Anti-Bolshevism and in many cases direct Fascism became important ideologies for these Russian emigres, who often were guided by an ambition to “retake” the Russia that had been lost to communism. Armed bands, frequently equipping themselves with Fascist symbols such as the swastika and the black shirt, emerged among the Russians. This provided the basis of a tenuous alliance with the Japanese empire, which was a growing political factor in Manchuria in the 1920s and early 1930s.

Once the Japanese had set up a puppet regime in Manchuria in 1932, naming it Manchukuo, some Russians ended up directly serving the interests of Japanese imperialism in northeast Asia. Some served in the Manchukuo Army, but the best known example was the Asano Detachment, a unit under the Kwantung Army, the main Japanese military force in northeast China.

Despite its name, alluding to its senior Japanese officer, Asano Takashi, the detachment was made up almost exclusively of Russians, albeit in Japanese uniforms. Its members wanted nothing more than fighting the communists who had usurped their homeland, and they did see action in some of the borders clashes between Japan and the Soviet Union in the late 1930s, but mostly they were unable to do as much as they wanted, and were limited to scattered acts of sabotage across the Soviet border.

The reason was simple: they were at cross-purposes with the Japanese Empire during almost the entire period until 1945. Japan’s military was deeply involved first in China and then in the Pacific, and the last thing it wanted was an additional front opening up against the Soviet Union in the north.

In the end of course, exactly that front opened up, to the detriment of Japan. In August 1945, the Soviet Union launched its massive attack against Japanese forces in north China and Korea, contributing decisively to the eventual defeat of the empire. The Russian units serving in Japanese uniforms made no difference whatsoever. Their leaders were captured by the advancing Soviet forces, and most were executed. It was an abrupt end of a weird chapter in Asian military history.

Last Edit: Mar 30, 2022 19:01:33 GMT by Admin