📅 On This Day in Military History

September 18

1 event across history

⚔️📍 Mukden (Shenyang), Manchuria, China1931

Mukden Incident — Japan Invades Manchuria

Japanese Kwantung Army officers staged a false flag attack on a Japanese-owned railway near Mukden, then used it as justification for occupying all of Manchuria over the next five months. The Japanese government in Tokyo neither ordered nor stopped the operation.

The Mukden Incident inaugurated Japan's decade of military expansion in Asia and represented the first major failure of the League of Nations to stop aggression.

Outcome

Japan occupies all of Manchuria; League of Nations fails