Battle of Mutanchiang

What Happened

The Battle of Mutanchiang (牡丹江の戦い, Botankō no tatakai) was fought from 12 to 16 August 1945 between the Soviet Red Army and the Imperial Japanese Army, as part of the Harbin–Kirin Operation within the wider Soviet invasion of Manchuria. It was one of the few set-piece battles of the entire Manchurian campaign: the collapse of Japanese resistance came so quickly that most engagements were running fights or surrenders, and Mutanchiang was one of the rare occasions when both sides formed deliberate lines and fought for a city.

The Japanese Fifth Army attempted to hold the approaches to Mutanchiang long enough to cover the withdrawal of the bulk of its forces to more defensible positions further south. Soviet Fifth Army and First Red Banner Army units pressed the attack. Casualties were heavy on both sides, but the Red Army broke through the improvised Japanese defences and took the city ten days ahead of the schedule set for it.

The Japanese defenders nonetheless achieved their purpose. The delay bought the main Japanese forces time to disengage and retreat, and the battle is remembered on the Japanese side less as a defeat than as a costly rearguard action that worked.

Background

Mutanchiang — Mudanjiang in Chinese, Botankō in Japanese — lies in eastern Manchuria, in what was then the Japanese-controlled puppet state of Manchukuo (満州国, Manshūkoku). By August 1945 it was a significant garrison town and transport hub on the eastern approaches to the Manchurian interior.

The Soviet Union declared war on Japan on 9 August 1945 and attacked on three fronts simultaneously. The Harbin–Kirin Operation was the eastern prong of that offensive, aimed at the cities of Harbin and Kirin (Jilin) and at the Japanese Fifth Army defending the sector. Japan's Kwantung Army (関東軍, Kantōgun), the force that had garrisoned Manchuria since 1931, was by 1945 a hollowed-out formation: its best units had been drawn off to other theatres, and the defences at Mutanchiang were organised in haste.

The battle fell in the twentieth year of the Shōwa era (昭和20年), four days after the Soviet declaration of war and, as it turned out, in the last week of the war.

Why It Mattered

Mutanchiang mattered for two opposite reasons. For the Soviets, the capture of the city ahead of timetable demonstrated how completely the Kwantung Army had lost the ability to hold fixed positions; the speed of the breakthrough fed directly into the wider collapse of Japanese control in Manchuria. For the Japanese, the battle's value lay in the escape it purchased. The Fifth Army's stand, however improvised, allowed the main body of its troops to pull back rather than be encircled and destroyed.

The timing gives the engagement its particular place in the history of the war. It was fought to a conclusion on 16 August 1945, the day after the Gyokuon-hōsō (玉音放送, the broadcast of the emperor's voice) in which Emperor Shōwa announced Japan's acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration. Fighting continued across Manchuria after that broadcast, and Mutanchiang is one of the engagements in which soldiers on both sides were still dying while the surrender was already being announced in Tokyo.

The Name in Japanese

The Japanese name is 牡丹江の戦い, read in kana as ぼたんこうのたたかい and romanised as Botankō no tatakai.

Broken down character by character:

• 牡 — read ぼ (bo) in this word. The character means "male" (of animals). On its own it is an uncommon kanji, and here it carries no independent meaning; it exists only as part of the place name.
• 丹 — read たん (tan) in this word. It means "red" or "cinnabar", the reddish mineral pigment. Again, in this name it functions purely phonetically and as part of the established spelling of the place.
• 江 — read こう (kō) in this word. It means "river" or "inlet", and is a very common element in Japanese place names. Together, 牡丹江 is the Japanese rendering of the river and city name — the Mudan River, literally the "Peony River" in Chinese.
• の — read の (no). The possessive and linking particle, here joining the place name to the word for battle: "the battle of Botankō".
• 戦 — read たたかい (tatakai) in this word. It means "battle", "fight" or "war". Its on-reading, used in compounds, is せん (sen), as in 戦争 (sensō, war) and 第二次世界大戦 (Dainiji Sekai Taisen, the Second World War).
• い — read い (i). The final kana of the verb-derived noun 戦い; it is written in hiragana after the kanji as an okurigana ending.

Note that the same city appears in English under its Chinese name, Mudanjiang, and in Japanese sources as Botankō. The kanji are identical; only the pronunciation differs.

Key Figures

The battle is recorded at the level of the formations involved rather than through individual commanders. On the Japanese side the formation engaged was the Fifth Army (第5軍, Dai-go-gun), a Kwantung Army command responsible for the eastern Manchurian sector around Mutanchiang. On the Soviet side the attacking forces were the Fifth Army and the First Red Banner Army of the Red Army, advancing under the Harbin–Kirin Operation.

The coincidence of both opposing formations being numbered the Fifth Army is a useful detail for readers working through accounts of the campaign: "Fifth Army" in a sentence about Mutanchiang can mean either side, and the context of the sentence is what distinguishes them.