Kwantung Army in the context of "Japanese invasion of Manchuria"

Hideki Tojo (東條 英機, Tōjō Hideki; pronounced [toːʑoː çideki] ; 30 December 1884 – 23 December 1948) was a Japanese general who served as Prime Minister of Japan from 1941 to 1944 during the Second World War. His leadership was marked by widespread state violence and mass killings perpetrated in the name of Japanese nationalism.

Born in Tokyo to a military family, Tojo was educated at the Imperial Japanese Army Academy and began his career in the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) in 1905. He served as a military attaché in Germany from 1919 to 1922, and rose through the ranks to become a general in 1934. In March 1937, he was promoted to chief of staff of the Kwantung Army whereby he led military operations against the Chinese in Inner Mongolia and the Chahar-Suiyan provinces. Later in 1938, Tojo was recalled to Tokyo to serve as vice-minister of the army. By July 1940, he was appointed minister of the army in the premiership of Fumimaro Konoe.

The Soviet invasion of Manchuria, formally known as the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation or simply the Manchurian Operation (Маньчжурская операция) and sometimes, mainly in the West, as Operation August Storm, began on 9 August 1945 with the Soviet invasion of the Empire of Japan's puppet state of Manchukuo, which was situated in Japanese-occupied Manchuria. It was the largest campaign of the 1945 Soviet–Japanese War, which resumed hostilities between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the Empire of Japan after almost six years of peace.

The invasion began hours before the atomic bombing of Nagasaki and 3 days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The Soviet entry into this theater of the war and the defeat of the Kwantung Army were significant factors in the Japanese government's decision to surrender unconditionally on 15 August, as it became apparent that the Soviet Union had no intention of acting as a third party in negotiating an end of the war on conditional terms. The Kwantung Army officially surrendered on 16 August, although fighting continued until 2 September, when was firmed the Japanese Instrument of Surrender.

The Soviet–Japanese War was a campaign of the Second World War that began with the Soviet invasion of Manchuria following the Soviet declaration of war against Japan on 8 August 1945. The Soviet Union and Mongolian People's Republic toppled the Japanese puppet states of Manchukuo in Manchuria and Mengjiang in Inner Mongolia, as well as northern Korea, Karafuto on the island of Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands. The defeat of Japan's Kwantung Army helped bring about the Japanese surrender and the end of World War II. The Soviet entry into the war was a factor in the Japanese government's decision to surrender unconditionally, as it was made apparent that the Soviet Union was not willing to act as a third party in negotiating an end to hostilities on conditional terms.

The Huanggutun incident (Chinese: 皇姑屯事件; pinyin: Huánggū Tún Shìjiàn), also known as the Zhang Zuolin Explosion Death Incident (Japanese: 張作霖爆殺事件, Hepburn: Chōsakurin bakusatsu jiken), was the assassination of the Fengtian warlord and Generalissimo of the Military Government of China Zhang Zuolin near Shenyang on 4 June 1928.

Zhang was killed when his personal train was destroyed by an explosion at the Huanggutun Railway Station that had been plotted and committed by the Kwantung Army of the Imperial Japanese Army. Zhang's death had undesirable outcomes for the Empire of Japan, which had hoped to advance its interests in Manchuria at the end of the Warlord Era, and the incident was concealed as "A Certain Important Incident in Manchuria" (満州某重大事件, Manshu bou judai jiken) in Japan. The incident delayed the Japanese invasion of Manchuria for several years until the Mukden Incident in 1931.

Changchun is the capital and largest city of Jilin Province, China, on the Songliao Plain. Changchun is administered as a sub-provincial city, comprising seven districts, one county and three county-level cities. At the 2020 census of China, Changchun had a population of 9,066,906. Changchun's metro area, comprising five districts and one development area, had a population of 5,019,477. Shuangyang and Jiutai districts are not urbanized yet. It is one of the biggest cities in Northeast China, along with Shenyang, Dalian and Harbin.

The name of the city means "long spring" in Chinese. Between 1932 and 1945, Changchun was renamed Xinjing (Chinese: 新京; pinyin: Xīnjīng; lit. 'new capital') or Hsinking by the Kwantung Army as the capital of the Imperial Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo, occupying modern Northeast China. After the foundation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Changchun was established as the provincial capital of Jilin in 1954.

The Manchukuo National Railway (Traditional Chinese and Japanese kanji: 滿洲國有鐵道, Japanese romanization: Manshū Kokuyū Tetsudō) was the state-owned national railway company of Manchukuo. Generally called the "國線" ("National Line", Kokusen), it was controlled by the Manchukuo Ministry of Transportation and had its lines primarily in the central and northern parts of the country. In local newspapers it was simply referred to as "國鉄" (Japanese: Kokutetsu, "National Rail"). It was built, operated and managed by the South Manchuria Railway, a state-owned national railway company of the Empire of Japan, of which the Kwantung Army frequently intervened in its affairs.