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Battle of Lake Khasan
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The Battle of Lake Khasan (July 29, 1938 – August 11, 1938) and also known as the Changkufeng Incident (Chinese & Japanese: ?????, Chinese pinyin: Zhanggufeng Shìjiàn, Japanese pronunciation: Chokoho Jiken) in China and Japan, was an attempted military incursion of Manchukuo (Japanese) into the territory claimed by the Soviet Union. This incursion was founded in the beliefs of the Japanese side that the Soviet Union misinterpreted the demarcation of the boundary based on the Treaty of Peking between Imperial Russia and Manchu China (and subsequent supplementary agreements on demarcation), and furthermore, that the demarcation markers were tampered with.
most of the first half of the twentieth century there was considerable tension between Moscow, Tokyo and Peking along their common borders in what is now North East China.
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The Battle of Lake Khasan (July 29, 1938 – August 11, 1938) and also known as the Changkufeng Incident (Chinese & Japanese: ?????, Chinese pinyin: Zhanggufeng Shìjiàn, Japanese pronunciation: Chokoho Jiken) in China and Japan, was an attempted military incursion of Manchukuo (Japanese) into the territory claimed by the Soviet Union. This incursion was founded in the beliefs of the Japanese side that the Soviet Union misinterpreted the demarcation of the boundary based on the Treaty of Peking between Imperial Russia and Manchu China (and subsequent supplementary agreements on demarcation), and furthermore, that the demarcation markers were tampered with.
Background
For most of the first half of the twentieth century there was considerable tension between Moscow, Tokyo and Peking along their common borders in what is now North East China. The Chinese Eastern Railway or (CER) was a railway in northeastern China (Manchuria). It connected China and the Russian Far East. The southern branch of the CER, known in the West as the South Manchuria Railway, became the locus and partial casus belli for the Russo-Japanese War and subsequent incidents leading to the Second Sino-Japanese War, and a series of Soviet-Japanese Border Wars. Larger incidents included the Sino-Soviet conflict of 1929 and the Mukden Incident between Japan and China in 1931. The battle of Lake Khasan was fought between two powers that had a mutual history of suspicion and mistrust with each other.
Events
The conflict started on July 15, 1938, when the Japanese attaché in Moscow demanded the removal of Soviet border troops from the Bezymyannaya (?????? ??????????, Chinese name: Shachaofeng) and Zaozernaya (?????? ?????????, Chinese name: Changkufeng) Hills to the west of Lake Khasan in the south of Primorye, not far from Vladivostok, claiming this territory by the Russia-Korea border. The demand was rejected.
The first Japanese attack on July 29 was repelled, but on July 31 the Soviet troops had to retreat. The Japanese 19th Division along with some Manchukuo units took on the Soviet 39th Rifle Corps under G. Shtern (eventually consisting of the 32nd, 39th, and 40th Rifle Divisions, as well as the 2nd Mechanised Brigade). One of the Japanese Army Commanders on at the battle was Col. Kotoku Sato, the commander of the 75th Infantry Regiment. Kotoku's forces expelled Russian troops from the hill in a night sortie whose execution became a Japanese model for assaults on fortified positions.
It was also reported that during the Changkufeng Incident the Japanese orchestrated frontal assaults with light and medium tanks which were immediately followed by Russian tank and artillery counter-attacks. In 1933, the Japanese designed and built a "Rinji Soko Ressha" (Special Armored Train). The train was deployed at "2nd Armored Train Unit" in Manchuria and participated in the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Changkufeng conflict against the Soviets transporting thousands of Japanese troops to and from the battlefield, displaying to the West the ability of an Asian nation capable of adopting and implementing Western ideas and doctrine concerning rapid infantry deployment and transportation.
Under the command of the chief of the Far East Front, Vasily Blyukher, additional forces were moved to the zone of conflict and after several engagements during August 2-9 the Japanese forces were pushed off the Soviet territory.
On August 10, the Japanese prime minister sent to the United States asked for peace and the hostilities ceased on August 11.
Consequences
The Japanese military, while taking the lesson seriously, was willing to engage with the Soviets once more, in the more extensive Battle of Khalkhin Gol (Nomonhan) in the Soviet-Japanese Border War of 1939.
The Soviet losses were blamed on the incompetence of Vasily Blyukher. He was arrested by the NKVD and executed.
Bibliography
- Coox, Alvin D. The Anatomy of a Small War: The Soviet-Japanese Struggle for Changkufeng/Khasan, 1938. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977 ISBN 0-8371-9479-2
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