Tongzhou mutiny

Overview

The Tongzhou mutiny, also known as the Tongzhou Massacre or Tungchow incident, occurred on 29 July 1937 in Tongzhou (present-day northern Tongzhou District, Beijing), then the capital of the Japanese-sponsored East Hebei Anti-Communist Autonomous Government. Security forces of that government attacked Japanese civilians and troops in the city, killing an estimated 260 Japanese and Korean residents. The event occurred shortly after the Marco Polo Bridge incident of 7 July 1937, which had already triggered the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, and it further escalated tensions between China and Japan.

Background

Tongzhou became the seat of the East Hebei Autonomous Government after its leader, Yin Ju-keng, a pro-Japanese graduate of Waseda University, declared autonomy from the Kuomintang government in Nanjing in November 1935. The government's security forces, trained by Japan's China Garrison Army, were nominally organized to maintain public order but were largely composed of former "miscellaneous troops," including Han Chinese soldiers and horse bandits who had fled Manchuria, some of whom retained strong anti-Japanese sentiment. At the time of the attack, the main Japanese military force defending Tongzhou had been redeployed to Nanyuan, leaving only a small, poorly combat-capable unit in the city. Japanese commanders had regarded the East Hebei security forces as friendly and did not anticipate the attack.

Several theories have been proposed for the cause of the mutiny, including retaliation for a prior Japanese bombing, Kuomintang propaganda broadcasts suggesting a Chinese victory at Marco Polo Bridge, a purported secret agreement between the Kuomintang and the East Hebei government, and anger over opium trafficking tolerated under the East Hebei administration.

Casualties and Aftermath

Approximately 260 non-Chinese civilians residing in Tongzhou under the terms of the 1901 Boxer Protocol were killed, in addition to Japanese military personnel. An American journalist who visited the site reported 117 Japanese and 106 Korean civilians killed, while Chiang Kai-shek's private diaries, published in the 1970s, recorded 104 Japanese and 108 Korean casualties. About 60 foreign civilians survived and later gave firsthand accounts to journalists and historians. Much of the city was set on fire and destroyed.

The incident intensified anti-Chinese sentiment in Japan, popularized through the slogan "To punish China the outrageous" (暴戻支那膺懲). Japanese military elements in China used the incident to justify further military operations under the stated aim of protecting Japanese lives and property. After World War II, the Japanese defense team at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal cited a 1937 Japanese Foreign Ministry statement presenting the incident as an inevitable cause of Sino-Japanese conflict, but presiding judge Sir William Webb rejected it as evidence.