893.01–Manchuria/1413
The Consul at Mukden (Langdon) to the Ambassador in China (Johnson)33
Sir: As an indication of Chinese resistance to the present regime in Manchuria I have the honor to enclose an abbreviated translation34 made by this office of a public statement issued by Gendarmerie Headquarters of the Kwantung Army concerning the anti-”Manchukuo” and anti-Japanese plot, discovered last August in Antung and Eastern Fengtien Provinces, of the Society for the Protection of the Nation.
The Gendarmerie communiqué states that during the past seven months 314 government officials, educators and members of local gentry have been arrested on charges of being members of a Peiping Society for the Protection of the Nation. The organization is claimed to have been directed by Nanking and General Chang Hsueh-liang.35 The officials of the Society resident in China are named.
Of the 314 prisoners, 54 are declared to have been released, 159 to have been sent for trial to the Military Court of the First Army Area, Mukden, as violators of the Provisional Law for Rebels,* and 92 to have been recommended to the same Court for release following examination of the written record in each case. Among the persons tried in Mukden, nine (claimed to have been opium addicts) are said to have died in the course of the trial. The trial in Mukden apparently ended some time ago, as the then Commander of Gendarmerie General Tojo, now Chief of Staff of the Kwantung Army, said “I caused the conspirators to be tried by the Mukden Military Court and, under the latter’s sentences made in accordance with law, the serious offenders [Page 917] were put to death or otherwise punished according to the nature of their crime”. How many conspirators were executed, who the condemned men were, what the terms of imprisonment or other punishment prescribed for persons not condemned to death were, and similar particulars of the trial are not known for the reason that nothing has been published beyond the enclosed communiqué. On February 26, 1937, I reported† that in Antung there had been mass executions of native school principals and teachers and, from information emanating from a reliable source, I conclude that these executions were connected with this trial.
The enclosed communiqué brings out some interesting facts. First of all, it reveals if not the strong latent patriotism at least the active disloyalty to the present regime of the Chinese intelligentsia in Manchuria. Secondly, it makes no attempt to conceal the fact that the Kwantung Army gendarmerie exercises in the first instance the function of protecting the state, since the Kwantung Army not only bans publication of news of conspiracy cases but actually directs the trial of such cases. Thirdly, and this has an important bearing on any examination of the administration of justice in the country, a political crime committed or suspected of having been committed by civilians, regardless of provisions of law to the contrary, is tried in and disposed of by a military court, with the indictment prepared by Japanese gendarmerie on the basis of evidence gathered by its own agents and spies and with the accused obviously denied counsel for defense. In other words, the present case shows clearly that in cases or suspected cases of political crime there is, so to speak, a law above the law.
Very respectfully yours,
- Copy transmitted to the Department by the Consul at Mukden in his unnumbered despatch of March 31; received April 24.↩
- Not printed.↩
- Former Chinese ruler of Manchuria.↩
- The penalties under this law range from capital punishment to fines and imprisonment. [Footnote in the original.]↩
- My despatch No. 84, “Rehabilitation of Eastern Marches”, February 26, 1937. [Footnote in the original; despatch not printed.]↩