ABSTRACT
Although never annexed formally, the puppet state of Manchukuo (Manshûkoku) was often spoken of as the “jewel” of Japan’s wartime empire. Established in 1932 under the auspices of Japan’s Kwantung Army stationed in Manchuria, Manchukuo also attracted the attention of Japan’s economic developers and soon became a vital source of the foodstuffs and raw materials needed to sustain the nation’s growing war effort. To better secure Japan’s hold over the territory, between 1932 and 1945 the Japanese government colonized Manchukuo with large numbers of landed emigrants from the Home Islands. Carefully planned as a national project during wartime, and justified largely on strategic grounds, the eventual settlement of some 270,000 Japanese (of an originally projected five million) still stands as the largest emigration project in modern Japanese history. It should be noted here, too, that the Japanese government also promoted Korean emigration to Manchuria during the interwar years (Korea was annexed by Japan in 1910, and remained a Japanese colony until 1945). Some 700,000 Koreans were living in Manchuria at the time of the so-called Manchurian Incident in 1931, but this number grew to over two million by 1945 (Kodansha 1993: 828, 915).
