Introduction
On July 22, 1938, Nakagawa Nozomu (1875–1964), Vice President of the Japanese Red Cross Society (JRCS), and Sun Qichang (孫其昌), the Minister of the Civil Department of the Manchukuo government, signed documents at JRCS Tokyo Headquarters formally dividing Red Cross medical facilities and administrative operations within Manchuria. As subsequently reported in the Asahi Shimbun, “the mood in the hall was amiable,” and at the conclusion of the ceremony, the assembled dignitaries raised sake cups “to celebrate the prosperity of Japan and Manchukuo.”Footnote 1 From the standpoint of state protocol, however, it was a notably low-key event. The highest-ranking Japanese official present was Kwantung Army Surgeon General Hosomi Ken, while the absences were telling: no Japanese government ministry-level official, high-ranking IJA officer, or any member of the Imperial Family, who had been prominent patrons of the JRCS from its foundation, a half-century earlier.Footnote 2 Press coverage was likewise muted: only the Asahi Shimbun carried a front-page story, and it was cursory, 219 characters, and tucked away in the top right-hand corner. Major Tokyo dailies did not report on it at all.Footnote 3
The companion ceremony conducted in Hsinking, Manchukuo’s self-proclaimed capital city, however, was a lavish affair attended by numerous Kwantung Army (KTA) officers; Manchukuo and Japanese government civil and diplomatic officials; the Hsinking’s mayor and police chief; representatives of state-sponsored civic organizations such as Manchurian Military Benevolent Association and the Manchurian National Defense Women’s Association; Katō Sotomatsu, (1890–1942), Chief Negotiator in talks with Great Britain that would culminate in the short-lived but at the time landmark 1939 Craigie-Arita Agreement;Footnote 5 and Japanese banking and industrial corporate officers. The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) was represented by its Chief Military Intelligence Officer, Murai Sadatoshi (1900–1944), while the JRCS sent Vice President Tokugawa Kuniyuki (1886–1969), who lent an air of aristocratic elegance to the proceedings (Figure 1).Footnote 6 KTA General, Ueda Kenkichi (1875–1962), was the first official to enter the hall, and his departure would signal the conclusion of the ceremony.Footnote 7 Under the watchful eyes of the assembled guests, the flags of both the Japanese Empire and Manchukuo were hoisted side by side, and the national anthems of both states were sung.Footnote 8 The toast offered by MRCS Director, Takada Hidekazu, boasted of “Manchukuo’s unprecedented rise in the world” and predicted that the humanitarian operations of the two Red Cross Societies would strengthen the “inseparable relationship between Japan and Manchukuo and Japan-Manchukuo joint defense.”Footnote 9 Takada’s optimism was echoed in the extensive coverage of the ceremony in Manchuria’s Japanese-language press.Footnote 10
Figure 1: Opening ceremony captured by the Shinkyō Nichinichi Shimbun.Footnote 4 The archival collection of the Osaka Prefectural Central Library.
The drastic difference in the scale and pomp and circumstance between the two opening ceremonies of the Manchukuo Red Cross Society (MRCS) in Tokyo and Hsinking/Shinkyō is a telling indication of not only the contrasting attitudes toward the organization held by actors in each location but also of the uncertain and contested position of Manchukuo within the expanding Japanese empire. Contemptuously disregarded in the metropolitan press as little more than the signing of a medical agreement, the ceremony was for the Kwantung Army (KTA) the culmination of years of efforts to assert Manchukuo’s status as an independent state.
This article examines the national and international politics of the establishment of the MRCS within the context of Japan’s KTA’s nation-building project in Manchuria following the September 1931 Mukden Incident and the proclamation of Manchukuo independence in February of the following year. The launching of the MRCS demonstrated the KTA’s commitment to developing civic semi-governmental organizations to mobilize popular support for its nation-building project, and as a vehicle for the integration of the Chinese population, who constituted the vast majority of the population, and Japanese immigrants and other foreign nationals under the banner of “Harmony of the Five Races.”Footnote 11 Equally important, the MRCS, much like the Manchukuo Olympic Committee, exemplifies the KTA’s quest for international recognition.Footnote 12
One finding of this study is the complex relationship of Japanese semi-governmental organizations such as the JRCS to the KTA’s nation-building project in Manchuria. The article finds that the JRCS, which had established a strong and profitable institutional presence in Manchuria going back to the Russo-Japanese War, initially opposed the creation of a Manchukuo “national” Red Cross Society as an infringement of its own transnational interest in extending its institutional reach beyond Japan’s formal overseas empire.Footnote 13 In the end, the MRCS did not succeed in gaining national membership status in the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), despite qualified endorsement from senior ICRC staff, owing to strong opposition from the Swiss government. Nevertheless, once established, the MRCS furthered the goals of the KTA’s nation-building by enrolling a large, multi-national membership, promoting the idea of “Unity of the Five Races,” and administering modern public programs and medical services for the native population that served the interests of Japanese imperialism.Footnote 14
Scholarship on Manchukuo initially focused on political questions: its status within the Japanese overseas empire, economic development under the South Manchuria Railway Company, and contribution to Japan’s wartime economy. Following the publication of Prasenjit Duara’s Sovereign and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern (2003), historians have shifted attention from the political and economic relationship between Manchukuo and Japan to questions of ideology, political culture, the experience of Manchukuo’s colonial subjects, and state institution-building.Footnote 15 The push by the KTA to establish the Manchukuo national Red Cross Society was one of several institutional initiatives to engage the population in its nation-building project while seeking a foothold in international organizations that would bolster its pursuit of diplomatic recognition. For example, the Manchukuo Amateur Athletic Association, known as the Manchukuo Olympic Committee (MOC) was founded in April 1932 with the hope of participating in the 1932 Los Angeles Summer Olympics.Footnote 16 In the same month, General Nagata Tetsuzan (1884–1935) founded the Boy Scouts of Manchukuo and appointed the newly-declared emperor Puyi as the honorary president.Footnote 17 The Manchukuo Boy Scouts membership expanded rapidly, from an initial 75 members to 23,586 members in 1937.Footnote 18 Similar to the Manchukuo Olympic Committee and Boy Scouts, the MRCS failed to gain membership in their respective international governing bodies but successfully functioned locally as a semi-official government organization whose membership was multi-ethnic and multi-national, thereby lending a degree of credence to its self-representation as the political embodiment of Asian racial harmony.
In addition to the “Manshu Annual Report” compiled by the Manshu Nichinichi Shinbun cited above, the principal source of information on the MRCS is the society’s in-house magazine, Jin’ai, whose title translates as “humanitarianism” or “universal love.” Published between March 1939 and March 1945, the magazine circulated among professional staff and was read by the general membership. Jin’ai was a hefty publication, with issues running from 130 to 170 pages. Many of the articles were scholarly, based on social science research on topics such as demography, the medical effects of chemical weapons, tuberculosis (TB) eradication campaigns, poverty relief, public health, and school nursing services. While its primary readership was MRCS membership and staff, it had some features of the Japanese sōgō zasshi (mass-circulation magazine), enlivened with photographs, colored illustrations, poetry, and literary entries. The articles demonstrate a high level of professionalism; most of the reports and the articles were written in both Japanese and Chinese languages; and articles were solicited from Japanese and Chinese MRCS officers and medical workers in approximately equal numbers. Some articles reported on Japan’s war in China and the Red Cross’s war relief mission. Most importantly, across its issues, the pages of Jin’ai vividly illustrate the MRCS’s attempts to embody the Manchukuo government’s official ideology of multi-ethnic and multi-national cooperation and harmony. By asserting Manchukuo as a sovereign and unique nation-state founded on the principle of the so-called “harmony of five races under one union” (gozoku kyōwa), the MRCS was an active participant in the KTA’s attempts to solidify Manchukuo’s place within the Japanese empire, even as it sought to strengthen its own position as a national institution.
Early establishment of the Japanese Red Cross Society in Manchuria
The founding of the MRCS in 1938 and its split from the JRCS was a late development in Japan’s imperial penetration of Northeast China. After the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), Japan had acquired three important extraterritorial concessions in Manchuria that served as springboards to its subsequent military and economic expansion: the naval base of Port Arthur, the Kwantung (Liaodong) Peninsula leasehold, and the South Manchuria Railway. Within the Kwantung Leased Territory and the South Manchuria Railway Zone, Japanese military and civil authorities possessed total administrative and policing authority. Before the 1931 Mukden Incident, Japanese military forces stationed in Manchuria consisted of a 10,000-strong division of the Kwantung Army (KTA), which took its name from the Kwantung Lease Territory, and six independent military police battalions stationed within the South Manchuria Railway Zone. Many of the 230,000 Japanese living in Manchuria before 1931 were either merchants and entrepreneurs or employees of the South Manchuria Railway Company, Ltd., which functioned as the engine of modern economic development and employed thousands of managers, engineers, scientists, technicians, and office workers. They and their families congregated in Manchuria’s largest cities, Dalian and Harbin.Footnote 19 Outside the Kwantung Leased Territory and Railway Zone, Chinese officials governed until the KTA seized all of Manchuria in 1932 (Figure 2).Footnote 20
Figure 2: Location of the JRCS Chapters, hospitals, clinics, and other facilities. The majority of the Red Cross facilities were situated along the South Manchurian Railway. The archival collection of the Red Cross Information Plaza, the Japanese Red Cross Society, Tashiro Senzō 田代仙蔵, Nihon Sekijūjisha Manshū I’inbu shi 日本赤十字社満州委員部史 [The History of the Manchurian Committee Department of the Japanese Red Cross Society] (Dalian: Nihon Sekijūjisha Kantōshū I’in-honbu 日本赤十字社関東州委員部, 1938), 28.
Utilizing the South Manchuria Railway as an engine of economic development, Manchuria became, in the words of historian Louise Young, the “crown jewel” of Japan’s overseas empire. Japanese emigration to Manchuria began even before the conclusion of the Russo-Japanese War, and by 1929, 108,532 Japanese had settled in Manchuria.Footnote 21 Immigration to Manchuria accelerated after the September 1931 Mukden Incident, the KTA’s occupation of China’s four northeastern provinces, and the formal proclamation of the Manchukuo state in 1932. Between 1931 and 1940, 144,760 Japanese moved to Manchuria for long-term settlement.Footnote 22 Many of the Japanese farmers who migrated at this time did so under the Japanese government’s sponsorship.Footnote 23
The Japanese Red Cross Society followed closely in the footsteps of the flag as the Japanese empire spread into Manchuria. The JRCS’s humanitarian activities in Manchuria originated with medical aid during the Russo-Japanese War, administered to civilians caught up in the fighting and Russian and Japanese war casualties. In April 1905, following the Japanese capture of Port Arthur in January and occupation of the entire Liaodong Peninsula, the JRCS established the JRCS Liaodong Committee Headquarters and located its medical operations in Dalian until the end of the year.Footnote 24
The JRCS’s operations in Manchuria then expanded considerably after the September 5, 1905 signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth, by which Russia ceded to Japan the Kwantung Leased Territory and railway rights in south Manchuria. In December, the JRCS upgraded its organizational structure with the founding of the Kwantung Leased Territory Committee Department (KLTCD) whose jurisdiction extended to Japanese concessions throughout Manchuria.Footnote 25 Subsequently, 1 year later, the KLTCD began establishing local Red Cross chapters, which recruited members in major cities, including Dalian, Yingkou, Liaoyang, and Tieling; in a short time, it enlisted over 8,000 members.Footnote 26 Major JRCS initiatives to modernize medical care and public health in Manchuria included renovating and refurbishing the Russian Red Cross Hospital in Lüshun and opening a new hospital in Mukden in December 1906.Footnote 27 More changes aimed at rationalizing and extending Red Cross operations followed in March 1908, when the JRCS separated and founded the Manchurian General Committee Department (MGCD) to focus operations in the Kwantung Leased Territory. This new department was divided from the KLTCD. Under the MGCD, 12 new municipal committee departments were formed,Footnote 28 and by 1909, it had enrolled over 22,000 members, nearly evenly divided between Japanese who had settled in Manchuria and native residents.Footnote 29
Almost immediately, the MGCD confronted a major public health crisis with the outbreak of the bubonic plague. The pandemic started in South Manchuria in October 1910 and gradually spread to North Manchuria. At the height of the pandemic in February 1911, officials estimated that at least 200 people died every day just in Changchun. The MGCD organized the Special Relief Party No. 1 and responded to the public health emergency by deploying doctors and nurses to local clinics to treat patients and administer vaccinations, giving priority to essential workers. Not surprisingly, given assumptions common among colonial authorities everywhere, the MGCD determined that Chinese coolies and native vagrants were the likely carriers of the plague. Those suspected of being carriers were put in quarantine, where they received daily medical check-ups, a harsh but probably necessary operation to manage the pandemic.Footnote 30
The JRCS’s campaign to counter the spread of the plague featured low-resource but effective public health measures: the promotion of sanitizing protocols in restaurants and public places, handwashing by merchants and customers after handling bills and coins, and temporary closings of theatres and entertainment venues where people congregated. Records show that the JRCS distributed 15,000 leaflets to publicize the campaign. As of February 1911, medical workers had treated 1,426 infected patients in South Manchuria.Footnote 31 In a letter to the Japanese Army Surgeon Inspector General, Baron Ishiguro Tadanori (1845–1941), the Governor-General of the Kwantung Leased Territory, Ōshima Yoshimasa, boasted that in bringing the pandemic under control, the JRCS both fulfilled its humanitarian mission and served the interest of Japanese imperialism by winning the gratitude of the populationFootnote 32 : “Saving people who suffer from the pandemic is the original mission of the JRCS and a great opportunity for the JRCS to gain the trust of the Qing Chinese people.”Footnote 33
The vigorous response of the JRCS to the bubonic plague pandemic was its most visible but not its only contribution to advancing public health in Manchuria. To supplement its network of modern Red Cross hospitals, beginning in 1909, the MGCD established local clinics in towns and rural areas to improve the public health of both Manchurians and Japanese settlers. In 1913, the MGCD was renamed the JRCS Manchurian Committee Headquarters (MCH), which remained the official name until 1945. By 1922, it had established 20 local clinics.Footnote 34 In addition to launching a successful tuberculosis eradication campaign,Footnote 35 the MCH instituted ambulance services, home medical care, nursing training, and maternal care programs. Data show that between 1922 and 1937, a total of 8,087 nurses were dispatched to clinics and outlying villages. Among the MCH’s most ambitious programs were the opening of sanitoriums and summer camps for children suffering from common childhood diseases of tuberculosis, asthma, and anemia. JRCS records reveal that 32,263 children received medical treatment in sanatoriums in Ryujuton, Lüshun, and summer seaside resorts at Xingcheng and Shanhaiguan.Footnote 36
The case studies examined here show that JRCS Manchuria’s humanitarian work was integral to Japan’s imperial assimilation policies in Manchuria. In addition, there is no doubt that, in general, Japan, similar to other “colonizing powers took advantage of technological know-how to extend their geographic and political control and maximize profits through economic development. Medical services were extended first to preserve the health of the colonizers, including colonial officials, troops and developers and to limit illness among workers, included settlers.”Footnote 37 As Ruth Rogaski and Todd Henry have recently shown, Japanese efforts to promote “public health” often reinforced racist tropes about unhygienic colonized peoples and operated in close conjunction with the violence of colonial policing.Footnote 38 Nevertheless, we should not lose sight of the fact that the introduction and institutionalization of modern public health measures and medical technology by JRCS overseas branches dramatically advanced the health and welfare of colonial subjects ( Figure 3).
Figure 3: JRCS Emergency Relief Party organized at Fenghuangchen in Andong, Liaoning, Qing Dynasty. As indicated by hairstyles, a large majority of medical workers were native Manchurians. (1912). The archival collection of the Red Cross Information Plaza, the Japanese Red Cross Society, P-002937A, Senji Kyūgo-Rinji Kyūgo: Shinkoku Hōōjō ni Rinji Kyūgosho, 1912 nen Meiji 45 nen 2 gatsu 戦時救護・臨時救護 清国鳳凰城に臨時救護所 １９１２年（明治４５年２月) 満州委員部 [Wartime relief emergency relief, emergency relief party in Fenghuangchen in Andong, Liaoning, Qing Dynasty, Manchurian Committee Department, February 1912].
The Siberian Intervention (1818–1922) opened a new chapter in the MCH’s operations in Manchuria, whose focus became aid to Russian refugees fleeing the advancing Red Army. After Bolshevik forces took control of Vladivostok in October 1922, many Russians sought refuge in Wonsan, northeast Korea; some attempted to reach Harbin. Chinese police in Mukden and Changchun, however, ordered they be detained in the Mukden Manchuria Railway West Coolie Camp and hotels in Changchun. During their internment, health conditions deteriorated. In response, the MCH deployed relief parties that administered aid to 12,000 refugees between November 1922 and August 1923.Footnote 39
In the period between the conclusion of WWI and the Mukden Incident, the MCH focused on peacetime relief. The department supported the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake relief effort,Footnote 40 organized the JRCS Volunteer Nursing Women’s Association, sponsored the development of the Junior Red Cross movement, and sponsored events such as National Red Cross Day to popularize the movement throughout Manchuria.Footnote 41
In September 1931, the KTA launched a major offensive to seize and occupy all of Manchuria.Footnote 42 On September 18, the day the KTA began its offensive, the JRCS Mukden Hospital put out an emergency call to all medical workers and administrators to prepare stretchers and medical kits and provide protection to hospitalized patients. The timing of the JRCS response shows they were primed to launch wartime relief operations. Elsewhere, the JRCS Manchurian Committee Headquarters organized the JRCS Emergency Relief Party No. 1, consisting of 24 members, of whom 21 were female nurses, who were dispatched to the Liaoyang Garrison Hospital in a mission that lasted a year.Footnote 43 Subsequently, the JRCS Manchurian Committee Headquarters dispatched relief teams to hospitals and emergency medical aid stations throughout Manchuria.Footnote 44 For the duration of the fighting, which lasted until mid-February 1932, the JRCS treated 5,711 wounded soldiers in total, of whom 3,649 were Chinese soldiers.Footnote 45
The KTA officially terminated military operations on February 18, 1932. Subsequently, 1 month later, the occupied territory was renamed Manchukuo and declared a sovereign nation-state, though, in fact, the Manchukuo government was under the complete control of the KTA. Technically, a foreign national Red Cross Society after the declaration of Manchukuo nationhood, the MCH continued to operate as an overseas chapter of the JRCS both in the Kwantung Leased Territory and in the rest of Manchuria. In July 1932, the MCH sprang into action in response to the severe natural disaster known as the 1932 North Manchuria Great Flood Disaster, which damaged or destroyed two-thirds of housing in Harbin, a city of 350,000. In the course of this operation, several hundred thousand residents were evacuated and around 30,000 were listed as missing. Relief operations lasted 4 months, during which it provided aid to 57,424 victims.Footnote 46
From modest beginnings following the Russo-Japanese War, the JRCS steadily expanded its organization, membership, and activities in Manchuria. In 1937, the year prior to the founding of the Manchukuo Red Cross Society (MRCS), the JRCS’s Manchuria Committee Headquarters coordinated humanitarian operations.Footnote 47 Its multi-ethnic and multi-national membership topped 140,000 and its 16 hospitals and clinics functioned as the primary provider of modern medical services to the resident population. The 15 chapters of the JRCS Manchurian Committee Department maintained 27 offices, and sustained steady growth.Footnote 48 Given its strong track record, what led to the reorganization of the Red Cross operations in Manchuria 1938?
The tension between the JRCS and the KTA’s quest for international recognition
The inaugural issue of Jin’ai was published in March 1939, with iconography suggesting the MRCS was eager to advertise its organizational vigor and independence (Figure 4).Footnote 49 The cover featured a large photograph of the MRCS’s Hsinking headquarters, an imposing three-story brick building occupying half of a city block. Occupying the lower half of the visual frame, the image projects both the modernity of its solid brick construction and the MRCS’s institutional separation from the JRCS. Conspicuous, too, is the rendering in English of the magazine’s title and the month and year of publication. None of the articles are in English, but the inclusion of English text on the cover can be read as a nod to internationalism. At the same time, the year of publication, “Kōtoku 6th Year,” was rendered neither according to the Gregorian or Japanese calendar but rather the official Manchukuo “national” calendar. Consistent with the Manchukuo government’s foundational ideology of racial harmony and equality, the lead article authored by the Manchukuo Government Minister and MRCS President Zang Shiyi (藏式毅) was printed in both Japanese and Chinese. Equally consistent with the reality of the political relationship between Hsinking and Tokyo, Zhang’s message to the readership proclaimed unity of purpose, “This autumn, when the international climate is at a trigger point, Japan and Manchukuo should be of one mind and body. In the volatile situation, we faced this autumn, truly, MRCS’ overriding mission is to surmount present exigencies and fulfill its humanitarian mission…”Footnote 50
Figure 4: The archival collection of the Osaka Prefectural Central Library.
Yet, the sturdiness of the MRCS’s headquarters building as proudly projected on the cover of Jin’ai’s inaugural issue belied the instability of the organization’s existence amidst Manchukuo’s uncertain jurisdictional position within the Japanese empire. As early as the autumn of 1934, Nomura Shōtarō, a Director of the JRCS Manchurian Committee Headquarters (MCH), informed JRCS Tokyo Headquarters of the Kwantung Army’s (KTA) interest in establishing a “national” Manchukuo Red Cross Society. On November 25, 1934, following the conclusion of the 15th International Red Cross Conference in Tokyo, Nomura reported to JRCS Vice Presidents, Tokugawa Kuniyuki and Nakagawa Nozomu, that Kaetsu Mikio, a KTA Medical Officer, was lobbying for the establishment of a Red Cross Society under the Manchukuo government and institutionally independent of the JRCS. It is noteworthy that Nomura, speaking on behalf of the MCH, voiced his opposition. In his report, Nomura dismissed the need for a new Red Cross organization in Manchuria, pointedly stating, “In view of the current situation in Manchuria, there is no need to establish the Manchukuo Red Cross Society (MRCS). The JRCS [has] functioned well in Manchukuo.” Nomura went further and disputed the premise of Kaetsu’s proposal, namely the claim that “Manchukuo is clearly an independent state,” and that “it would immediately be accepted as a member society of the ICRC,” because “Red Cross membership is a different matter from the League of Nations.”Footnote 51 If the KTA needed additional medical support units, Nomura countered, Tokyo Headquarters could dispatch more medical teams to the MCH. Nomura concluded his report by reiterating his view that “the JRCS should prevent the foundation of the MRCS.”Footnote 52
To Nomura’s disappointment, Tokyo Headquarters avoided taking a position for or against Kaetsu’s proposal. In its reply, Headquarters merely stated that the JRCS could not provide the Manchukuo Imperial ArmyFootnote 53 with medical teams since its operations were dominated by the IJA.Footnote 54 We can infer from the correspondence between Nomura and Tokyo Headquarters that both believed that Kaetsu’s advocacy was not based on any genuine need but rather that the KTA’s real motive was to use ICRC membership as political leverage in its campaign to gain international recognition of Manchukuo as a sovereign nation-state.
Although the founding of the MRCS was still some years off, the ICRC Headquarters dispatched Sydney H. Brown, an international law expert, to Tokyo in December 1934. Brown reported back to Geneva that Ministry of Foreign Affairs Officer Kuriyama ShigeruFootnote 55 informed him that the Japanese government, as part of its campaign to gain international recognition of Manchukuo, anticipated that “in due time” Manchukuo would establish its own Red Cross Society and apply for ICRC national member status. In his report, Brown questioned the need for a Manchukuo Red Cross Society because “Manchukuo has, up to the present date, so far as I have been able to ascertain no army of any importance it would prime facie seem a trifle unnecessary to establish a voluntary aid Society for a non-existent medical corps.”Footnote 56 He went on to note that the League of Nations sanctions imposed in 1933 prevented the Manchukuo government from signing the 1929 Geneva Conventions. Nevertheless, in deference to the wishes of the Japanese government, Brown advocated leaving the door to ICRC membership open, suggesting that “it might be possible to prevail upon the Swiss national government to adopt a middle course” short of full membership, as had happened in the case of the Soviet Union. Brown concluded his report by voicing his opinion that the League of Nations should not be allowed to dictate to the ICRC the exclusion of states from the 1929 Geneva Conventions.Footnote 57
Max Huber, president of the ICRC, forwarded Brown’s report to the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs, requesting their views on the matter. The reply received from Giuseppe Motta of the Political Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on February 11, 1935, began by noting that “from the viewpoint of humanitarianism,” there was a certain “value” in Manchukuo’s adherence to the 1929 Geneva Conventions. Nevertheless, the report categorically ruled out the possibility of membership, pointedly observing that the case of the Soviet Union did not constitute a valid analogy because “no one disputes the fact that Russia is not a state, while Manchukuo was not recognized as a state by the international community, a plain fact ‘that makes all the difference.’”Footnote 58
The Swiss government’s rejection of Brown’s recommendation that the ICRC at least entertain the possibility of Manchukuo membership did not close the matter. Subsequently, 2 years later, in April 1937, ICRC president Huber solicited the opinion of LORCS Vice-Secretary General Lewis E. de Gielgud, who was scheduled to meet with Manchukuo government officials at a later date. De Gielgud replied that it would be wrong to encourage the establishment of a Manchukuo Red Cross Society as long as the ICRC “would not be prepared to entertain this idea” because of the opposition of the League of Nations. Accordingly, he proposed that when meeting with Manchukuo officials, he “should confine myself in Manchukuo to encourage the people to act and think on Red Cross lines without encouraging them to set up a Red Cross organization claiming recognition as such.”Footnote 59 In a follow-up letter in May 1937, de Gielgud concurred with Brown’s advice to Huber that ICRC Headquarters should not allow the Swiss government to decide the matter, declaring “It would be completely inappropriate to want, for political reasons, to exclude Manchukuo from the benefits and obligations of the Geneva Conventions and the POW Code.”Footnote 60
Whatever Huber’s personal opinion on the matter, the ICRC took the path of least resistance and simply deferred making a decision regarding Manchukuo membership. It is worth noting that the Japanese government did not protest the ICRC decision in an example of what Thomas Burkman’s argument that even after withdrawal from the League of Nations, the Japanese government was eager to cooperate, where possible, with the League of Nations and other international organizations.Footnote 61 In any case, the question of granting ICRC recognition remained hypothetical until 1938, when the Japanese government approved the compromise discussed earlier under which the JRCS Manchuria Headquarters Committee and the MRCS would divide up operations. During the period between the declaration of the state of Manchukuo in 1932 and the inauguration of the MRCS 6 years later, JRCS Manchuria Headquarters occupied a liminal position as a “foreign” Red Cross Society in a land that was not formally part of Japan’s overseas empire. The distinction was not always clear. In February 1933, for instance, the Harbin Association for Korean Residents appealed to JRCS Headquarters for economic assistance and medical services for its community. In this petition, the Korean spokesman, after diplomatically expressing gratitude for Japan’s role in Manchukuo’s economic development and political advancement, asked for the establishment of a Red Cross hospital to serve the large, and mostly impoverished, Korean immigrant community. A hospital was needed, he argued, because having a modern hospital was “the hallmark of civilization.”Footnote 62
As a matter of policy, JRCS overseas branches provided medical services only to the local Japanese immigrant communities in deference to the host country’s national Red Cross Society. However, in Manchukuo, which lacked its own Red Cross movement until 1938, the JRCS functioned as the primary healthcare provider for foreign nationals as well as native Chinese and non-Japanese nationals through its extensive network of hospitals and clinics.Footnote 63 According to the JRCS records, between 1935 and 1937, the JRCS Harbin Hospital alone treated 141,791 foreign patients in addition to 282,949 Japanese patients.Footnote 64 The hospital’s medical staff included Chinese, Koreans, and Russian native speakers who were also fluent in Japanese.Footnote 65
The July 1937, the Marco Polo Bridge Incident marked the beginning of the all-out war between China and Japan, and the JRCS shifted its focus to wartime relief operations. During the 1939 Battles of Khalkhin Gol (1939), JRCS Relief Party No. 179 deployed by the MHCFootnote 66 treated wounded Soviet POWs at the Hailar Military Hospital in Inner Mongolia and performed a number of major surgical operations.Footnote 67
In 1938, the JRCS embarked on a major reorganization in anticipation of the foundation of the MRCS later that year. The JRCS strengthened the Manchuria Committee Headquarters institutionally by subsuming the operations of the Kwantung Leased Territory Committee Department under the MCH, whose Hsinking office henceforth served as the administrative center of JRCS operations in Manchuria.Footnote 68 The MCH continued to enlist new members, and membership rose from 138,826 in 1937 to 216,634 in 1945. Revenue increased as well, which helped to sustain the JRCS’ relief operations through the end of the Pacific War.Footnote 69
The Manchukuo Red Cross Society and the “harmony of five races under one union” (Gozoku Kyōwa)
From its establishment in 1938, the Manchukuo Red Cross Society (MRCS) manifested Kwantung Army (KTA) discourses of Manchukuo as a sovereign state defined by multi-ethnic and multi-national cooperation and harmony. For example, the cover of the October 1939 issue, a special edition marking the first year of the foundation of the MRCS, depicted five nurses gathered around a piano (Figure 5). This can be read as a subtle allusion to the official ideology of Manchukuo as a unique nation-state founded on the principle of the so-called harmony of five races under one union (gozoku kyōwa). As noted previously, a distinctive aspect of the MRCS’s membership and staff was its multi-ethnicity. After assuming control of MCH hospitals, the MRCS made a concerted effort to diversify medical staff to facilitate the provision of medical services to Chinese-language speakers. For example, the February 1941 issue of Jin’ai contained notices printed in both Japanese and Chinese soliciting application languages with the stated purpose of hiring 50 additional Japanese and Chinese staff.Footnote 70 Likewise, the March 1942 issue was a special edition marking the 10th anniversary of the foundation of Manchukuo. It is instructive that the cover illustration depicts two boys, one clad in traditional Japanese and one in traditional Chinese clothing, at play sitting on a Chinese lion (Figure 6).Footnote 71 The issue contained a number of articles that expounded the official Manchukuo ideology of the harmony of the five races.Footnote 72
Figure 5: The archival collection of the Osaka Prefectural Central Library.
Figure 6: The archival collection of the Red Cross Information Plaza, the Japanese Red Cross Society.
Subsequently, 3 months prior to the grand ceremony in Hsinking on October 1938 marking the inauguration of the MRCS described above, the JRCS and the MRCS reached an agreement on a division of resources and responsibilities for the provision of humanitarian operations in Manchuria. During negotiations, the JRCS did not consult with ICRC Headquarters, which would have been normal practice; we can infer this was because the ICRC had rejected even qualified membership of a Manchukuo government-sponsored Red Cross organization. The two documents that constituted the agreement were titled “Proclamation” and “Compact,” and both were issued in Japanese and Chinese texts. On July 22, 1938, Nakagawa Nozomu, Vice President of the JRCS, and Sun Qichang, the Minister of the Civil Department of the Manchukuo government signed the documents at a meeting in JRCS Headquarters in Tokyo. The “Proclamation” announced that the purpose of the reorganization was to strengthen the Red Cross movement in Manchuria and facilitate Japan-Manchukuo joint defense (Nichi-Man kyōdō bōei),Footnote 73 while the “Compact” spelled out the institutional arrangements and allocation of resources. Under the “Compact,” the MRCS took over responsibility for the management of Red Cross-affiliated hospitals and clinics, social welfare services, and wartime humanitarian operations. In addition, the MRCS absorbed the membership and resources of the Onshi-zaidan Shinsei-kai, the largest Japanese social welfare organization in Manchuria, whose 27-member executive committee included 10 Chinese members and employed a large staff.Footnote 74 In staffing its own organization, the MRCS agreed to employ former JRCS medical and administrative personnel who had become Manchukuo residents and wished to continue with Red Cross work. The Manchuria Committee Headquarters retained its financial assets, and the two organizations were financially independent. They agreed to share information bearing on the security of humanitarian operations and the joint use of facilities when military campaigns were underway. The “Compact” allowed the Manchuria Committee Headquarters to continue to solicit funds from donors in Manchukuo. With respect to membership recruitment, the MCH agreed to refrain from launching new membership drives while allowing for individuals to affiliate on their own initiative.Footnote 75 In these and other respects, the MCH and the MRCS related to each other as peer organizations.
On paper, the MRCS, which had two presidents, one Chinese and one Japanese, reflected the Manchukuo state ideology of racial harmony and equality. The reality was quite different. ICRC Officer Max Pestalozzi who conducted an inspection of Red Cross operations in Manchuria in November 1943, commented that while “the Society was run very efficiently,” Chinese officials appeared to be mere figureheads, and actual operations were carried out by the Japanese; further, that MRCS enjoyed “very good ties with the KTA in Hsinking.”Footnote 77 In praising the efficiency of MRCS humanitarian operations, Pestalozzi noted that it functioned as the medical department of the KTA.
Consistent with the terms of the “Compact” and reflected in the organizational chart, the MRCS was responsible for the management of Red Cross hospitals and clinics within Manchukuo (Figure 7). The MRCS ran six major hub hospitals: the Harbin Hospital, the Harbin Branch Hospital, the Jinzhou Hospital, the Fuxin Clinics of the Jinzhou Hospital, and the Jiamusi Clinics.Footnote 78 Three of the hospitals, the Mukden Hospital, the Harbin Hospital and the Jinzhou Hospital, had been established earlier by the JRCS.Footnote 79 The Mukden Hospital, whose director was an IJA Major-General, was the largest and most modern hospital in Northern China. It was also the oldest as it had begun operations in October 1909 to address the needs of Japanese who emigrated to Manchuria following the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905). By the 1930s, in addition to internal medicine and general surgery, it housed departments of cardiology, urology, obstetrics and gynecology, oral surgery, ophthalmology, otolaryngology, and dermatology.Footnote 81 As of July 1939, the hospital registered more than 1,000 outpatients every day.Footnote 82
Figure 7: Organizational chart.Footnote 76
In addition to managing Red Cross hospitals in Manchuria, the MRCS assumed administrative control of MHC branch chapters in Yingkou, Mukden, Liaoyang, Hsinking, Jilin, Andong, Harbin, Qiqihar, and Jinzhou.Footnote 83 The society mounted membership recruitment and fundraising campaigns and expanded steadily. As of September 1942, the MRCS oversaw 21 local chapters and had amassed donations and membership fees exceeding 8.8 million yen. As seen in Table 1, memberships reached 294,624 in September 1942, the final date for which membership data are extant (Table 1).
The Pacific War and the collapse of the MCRS
The July 1939 issue is representative of MRCS’s actions from 1938 to the outbreak of the Pacific War, when the society’s main actions focused on public health and social welfare (Figure 8). For example, it mounted a major operation to contain a bubonic plague outbreak. On September 23, 1940, a Chinese staff member at the Hsinking Tajima Veterinary Hospital suddenly began spitting, developed a high fever, and died, as did seven co-workers. By October, the outbreak had expanded within the district, claiming numerous victims. Responding to a request from Kwangtung Army headquarters, MRCS epidemiologists, having located the source of the plague vector in Nong’an, dispatched medical teams and quarantined the city. Primary schools in Nong’an were converted to isolation wards, victims were administered antibiotics, and surgeries were performed on some patients to remove infected lungs. During the 3-month-long quarantine, medical staff were housed in passenger train cars converted to dormitories and stationed outside the city in a successful effort to contain the pandemic.Footnote 84
Figure 8: The archival collection of the Osaka Prefectural Central Library.
The January 1940 issue included an article celebrating the life of Florence Nightingale as the iconic Red Cross nurse, and the April issue contained short essays by JRCS nurses deployed to frontline field hospitals and medical ships.Footnote 85 The March 1940 issue was something of an exception for the period before the Pacific War in that half of the articles reported on battles in China.Footnote 86
The cover of the January 1942 issue—the first after the Pearl Harbor attack—however, was explicitly political, superimposing the red sphere symbolic of Imperial Japan onto a map of East and Southeast Asia (Figure 9). The March 1942 edition opened with an editorial statement by MRCS Director General of the General Affairs Division, Mori Hideomi, “Imperial Japan attacked one-third of the entire territories of the globe at once, and they were occupied by military operations now—our nation-state has made almost the whole world the enemy of Japan. […] The Red Cross has now undertaken a severe, merciless mission, shouldering the very heavy burden brought about by the Pacific War.”Footnote 87
Figure 9: The archival collection of the Red Cross Information Plaza, the Japanese Red Cross Society.
Still, Mori’s ominous commentary on the implications of Japan’s declaration of war on the Allied Powers is indicative of the despair felt by many Japanese internationalists at the expansion of the war. His appointment in February 1942 as MRCS Director can be interpreted as a move to facilitate future institutional cooperation with the International Red Cross and Red Crescent movement. Mori, in particular, but other MRCS officials as well, boasted impressive international resumes.Footnote 88 From 1924 to 1932, he served as a secretary to John Barton Payne, the chairman of the American Red Cross and president of the League of Red Cross Societies. During this time, he undertook graduate studies at George Washington University, where he received an MA in International Relations and later at the Brookings Institute, America’s first private-funded institute devoted to domestic and foreign policy studies at the national level. Returning to Japan in 1932, Mori served as a personal advisor to the JRCS’s President, Tokugawa Iesato, and held honorary memberships in a number of Red Cross national societies. In February 1942, he was appointed the post of Director of the MRCS General Affairs Division.Footnote 89 His personal contacts included members of the British aristocracy as well as zaibatsu executives in Manchukuo.Footnote 90
Nonetheless, the outbreak of the Pacific War did not immediately impact the MRCS’s operations as both Japan and the Soviet Union observed the terms of the nonaggression pact signed in Moscow in April 1941 until the Soviet declaration of war on August 9, 1945, the last month of the war. Until then, the society was largely occupied with hospital administration, public health initiatives, and disaster relief operations. Because the MRCS was dissolved and its facilities confiscated by occupying Soviet and Chinese forces following Japan’s surrender, extant documentation on MRCS operations during the Pacific War is limited. One source of information is the “Manchukuo Annual Report” published by the Japanese-language newspaper Manshū Nichinichi Shimbun, between 1941 and 1945. The reports show the limited nature of MRCS support of the IJA. For example, the MRCS Harbin Hospital dispatched 10 nurses, and the Mukden Hospital sent a doctor to supplement the MRCS medical teams deployed during the Battles of Khalkhin Gol in 1939.Footnote 91 On other occasions, MRCS medical staff were sent on temporary assignment to field hospitals in Hailar, Jiamusi, the Mudan River, Sunwu, and Hulin. Only after the Soviet Union invasion on August 9, 1945, did the IJA take over the operation of MRCS hospitals.Footnote 92
As long as the Japan–Soviet Neutrality Pact held, the MRCS focused on what would be normal peacetime humanitarian missions. MRCS hospitals served as hubs for social welfare services, mobile clinics, ambulance and home nursing services, public health campaigns, and maternity and child care. It ran a school for the deaf, and MRCS nurses staffed primary schools.Footnote 93
The cover of the July 1942 issue, which featured Red Cross nurses carrying a stretcher whose grim expressions convey the gravity of their work, was the first to directly reference the expanding war (Figure 10).Footnote 94 The evocation of the Red Cross humanitarianism did not disappear, however. The right panel of the cover of the January 1943 issue shows a man praying for universal love (Figure 11). Nevertheless, as the war intensified, Japanese forces were featured in the defensive articles.Footnote 95 Articles on political themes, training for battlefield assignments, and the Greater East Asia Prosperity Sphere predominated. With the rationing of paper, issues were now slimmer though still substantial: 30–70 pages. Most of the articles were authored by Japanese officials, fewer were translated into Chinese, and fewer still were contributed by Chinese officials. Reporting on the international Red Cross movement focused exclusively on the German and Italian Red Cross Societies.
Figure 10: The archival collection of the Red Cross Information Plaza, the Japanese Red Cross Society.
Figure 11: The archival collection of the Red Cross information plaza, the Japanese Red Cross Society.
After the naval defeat in the Battle of the Philippines Seas fought in June 1944, the covers and contents of Jin’ai again changed. As is evident in the above illustration, it was now printed on cheap newsprint (Figure 12). The cover design was rudimentary, and the articles became narrowly focused on matters of military significance. Some articles warned readers of the long history of brutal Anglo-Saxon wars of conquest. For example, the February–March 1945 issue contained an article on British tactics in the Boer War, which the author claimed demonstrated the British utter lack of humanity. The same article cited Americans’ racist treatment of Black people as evidence of their inhumanity, while another article titled, “The Way of the Arrogant American’s Propaganda Campaign” denounced US wartime news reports as full of lies.Footnote 96 Cultural content practically disappeared, with a single article on Japanese calligraphy by Takamura Kōtarō (1883–1956), which itself had political overtones as it called the attention of readers to calligraphy as a rich shared cultural tradition of Japanese and Chinese civilizations.Footnote 97 After the defeat of the Battle of Iwo Jima and the Great Firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945, the publication ceased.
Figure 12: The archival collection of the Red Cross information plaza, the Japanese Red Cross Society.
The massive 1.9 million Soviet offensive “August Storm” launched on August 9 threw Manchuria into total chaos and triggered a flood of mostly Japanese refugees. It is estimated that 600,000 soldiers and civilians were detained.Footnote 98 Because the MRCS facilities were not recognized as official Red Cross property, they were summarily taken over, first by Soviet and then Chinese armed forces without compensation.Footnote 99 After the surrender of the Japanese Empire, approximately 350 nurses, including JRCS nurses, were detained by the Soviet Armed Forces, the Eighth Route Army, later known as the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), and the National Revolutionary Army (NRA). Only about 20% of Japanese Red Cross nurses managed to return to Japan by the end of 1945.Footnote 100 For many, internment lasted for decades. Some of them served as aid workers in the Chinese Civil War (1946–1950) and the Korean War (1950–1953) under the PLA. The final repatriations were carried out in the early 1970s.Footnote 101
Conclusions
The short life of the Manchukuo Red Cross Society (MRCS) is an unexplored chapter in Japanese imperialism in Northeast Asia that yields some significant findings. At the time of the founding of the MRCS, the Japanese Red Cross Society (JRCS) had established a strong institutional presence in Manchuria established in making it fully capable of providing humanitarian services to support Japan’s imperialism in northeast China. While the Ministry of Foreign Affairs supported the Kwantung Army (KTA)’s proposal for a national Red Cross Society, the JRCS demonstrated a degree of institutional independence in opposing the plan, and its resistance delayed the project by 3 years. As was recognized at the time by ICRC officials, the Kwangtung Army’s push to establish the MRCS did not reflect any real need to enhance humanitarian services but rather manifested its intent to acquire the requisite symbols of national sovereignty. In the period between WWI and WWII, membership in prestigious international organizations and participation in international events such as the Olympic Games was one such symbol. We also see that great power politics influenced the decision of the ICRC not to accord the MRCS national membership status. Even though ICRC legal scholar Sydney H. Brown and LORCS President Lewis E. de Gielgud advocated for consideration of qualified membership status, ICRC President Max Huber deferred action after soliciting the opinion of the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which strongly opposed membership on the ground that everyone recognized that Manchukuo was “not a state.” As a state-sponsored organization, the MRCS strove to embody the Manchukuo government’s official ideology of multi-ethnic and multi-national cooperation and harmony. The organization’s recruitment of members, provision of medical services, public health campaigns, and appointment of both Chinese and Japanese officers and medical staff gave tangible expression to the state ideology of “harmony of five races under one union” (gozoku kyōwa). In articles authored by both Japanese and Chinese contributors, Jin’ai magazine illustrates how the MRCS stood at the liminal point of international humanitarianism and the Kwantung Army’s nation-state project.
Ultimately, with some exceptions, through most of its existence, the MRCS focused on the provision of modern medical care, public health, and disaster relief, the signature activities of the peacetime Red Cross humanitarianism. The Kwantung Army only took direct control of MRCS operations at the very end of the war in response to the crisis occasioned by the August 1945 Soviet invasion. Even amidst extreme chaos, individual MRCS staff sought to fulfill the Red Cross’s humanitarian mandate. Overtaken by the rapid advance of the Soviet Army, MRCS aid workers were driven from their homes, lost their lives, or were captured and detained by the Soviet Union and Chinese forces, a fate that in some cases lasted decades. The institution of the MRCS collapsed but the spirit of humanitarianism survived among individual professional aid workers.
Acknowledgements
This research took nearly ten years to complete. The author is truly grateful for the valuable guidance, and comments of Professor Emeritus Stephen Vlastos, of the University of Iowa. He has mentored the completion of this article. His insights and attentive eye to the uses and misuses of sources deepened my understating of history and the humanistic disciplines. The author also grateful for insightful reviews of Professor Hyung-Gu Lynn, of the University of British Columbia, Professor Tristan Grunow, and Professor Laura Hein, the APJJF editorial board, and its anonymous reviewers. The author finally wishes to thank Fabrizio Bensi, ICRC archivist for assistance in gaining access to Manchukuo Red Cross Society (MRCS) files, and the Japanese Red Cross Society Headquarters who assigned me as an archivist to catalogue and digitise a large amount of primary materials for a year. It allowed me access to unknown Manchukuo Red Cross Society (MRCS) records and to receive precious primary records by the bereaved family of the former director of the MRCS, Mori Hideomi, the Mori Hideomi Kanren Shiryō 森秀臣関連史料 [Documents related to Mori Hideomi].
Financial support
This research was supported by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research C, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS); UTEC-UTokyo FSI Research Grant Program, University of Tokyo Edge Capital (UTEC) & University of Tokyo Future Society Initiative (FSI); and Research Grants in the Humanities, the 49th Mitsubishi Foundation.
About the Authors: Michiko Suzuki is a research scholar in the history of modern and contemporary Japan at the University of Tokyo. She has published on Japanese humanitarianism, including, most recently, Humanitarian Internationalism Under Empire: The Global Evolution of the Japanese Red Cross Movement, 1877–1945 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2024).
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