Declassified documents show Tokyo planned covert killings of locals and foreigners in Manchuria in the event of war with the USSR
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has released declassified documents revealing a secret Japanese plan for mass executions in occupied Manchuria during World War II.
Despite having a neutrality pact with Moscow, Japan – a wartime ally of Nazi Germany – drafted its own strategy to invade the USSR. In 1941, the General Staff of the Imperial Japanese Army approved the ‘Kantokuen,’ or ‘Special Maneuvers of the Kwantung Army’ plan, which envisioned defeating Soviet forces in the Far East and Siberia.
The operation was tied to the Wehrmacht’s initial success, but when the Nazi blitzkrieg stalled, the Japanese high command ordered the Kwantung Army to maintain readiness for an attack. Its defeat by the Red Army in August 1945 marked the end of WWII and brought a trove of Japanese secret files into Soviet hands.
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The newly released records show that Japanese counterintelligence had prepared a secret system for identifying, arresting and eliminating individuals living in occupied Manchuria – both Chinese locals and foreign residents (Russians, Koreans, Japanese, and Mongolians) – deemed a threat to Tokyo’s interests. The plans categorized “dangerous elements,” including suspected spies, political dissidents, and foreigners, and detailed how they were to be executed if hostilities with the USSR broke out.
According to the files, five classifications were drawn up. The highest-risk group included foreigners who could not be leveraged by Japanese authorities or coerced into cooperation, such as religious leaders, business figures, and political dissidents, who were to be executed without trial.
The orders regulated the timing and methods of the killings. One directive from 1943 instructed that executions take place under cover of night or at dawn, preferably during moonlight. Firing squads were to be avoided, with bayonet stabbings or beheadings by sword listed as the methods of choice.
Other instructions emphasized secrecy, with officials told to leave no trace of the victims by destroying belongings that might serve as evidence. Aid was to be provided to families of executed locals to keep the killings quiet and prevent unrest.
The “crushing defeat” of the Kwantung Army by Soviet forces prevented the “bloody” Japanese plan from being carried out, the FSB concluded.
