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Hidden History: The Marco Polo Bridge Incident [1]
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Date: 2025-01-14
For Europeans, the Second World War started on September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. For the United States, it began with the December 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. But for Asians, the war began on June 7, 1937, at the Marco Polo Bridge in China.
"Hidden History" is a diary series that explores forgotten and little-known areas of history.
Japanese military reconnaissance photo of the Marco Polo bridge, with Wanping on the far bank photo from WikiCommons
The Second Sino-Japanese War, which would grow to engulf the entire Pacific, had its origins in a single explosive confrontation at a small bridge just outside Peking (now known as Beijing).
After the Meiji Restoration in the late 19th century, Japan had transformed itself into an industrial power. This rapid modernization, however, had created a voracious appetite for resources—coal, iron, oil, and arable land—that Japan’s own islands did not have and had to obtain from outside sources. The invasion of Manchuria and the establishment of the Japanese-run puppet state of Manchukuo in 1932 had provided a temporary solution, but the militarists who controlled the government in Tokyo now looked towards further expansion into China itself and at the complete domination of Asia, declaring this as essential for Japan’s survival. And the incident near Peking gave them the perfect excuse.
Since the time of the 12th-century, the Marco Polo Bridge had crossed the Yongding River and provided a connection between the tiny Chinese town of Wanping and the countryside just outside of Peking, about 12 miles away.
On the night of July 7, 1937, Japanese troops from the Army’s North China Garrison, stationed nearby at Fengtai, were conducting a nighttime military exercise. The training drills involved gunfire with blank ammunition to simulate combat. While such exercises had happened before, they always provoked tension with the local Chinese population, who feared that the Japanese had expansionist designs on their territory, and who believed there was a good possibility that the Japanese would actually invade.
Shortly after the July 7 exercises began, Japanese private Shimura Kikujiro went missing. A Japanese Army officer (fearing, he said, that the soldier had been captured by Chinese guerrillas) sent a request to the nearby Chinese garrison at Wanping, demanding that his men be allowed to enter the town and search for the missing trooper.
The Chinese commander at Wanping, Ji Xingwen, however, was immediately suspicious, and concluded that if he allowed Japanese troops to enter Wanping’s gates, they would never leave. He refused the request. The Japanese made threats and moved an entire company of men to the area around the bridge. The Chinese, now anticipating a Japanese attack, in turn reinforced their own positions around Wanping.
Just before midnight, shots were fired. (Both sides would later blame the other for starting it.) The firefight lasted only a few minutes, but it put both sides on edge.
Later that morning, with the Japanese soldier still unaccounted for, fighting once again broke out. Japanese artillery batteries began shelling the town of Wanping, and Chinese forces replied with machine guns. Then Japanese troops tried to cross the bridge, but were repelled by Chinese fire. In the middle of all this, the missing Kikujiro finally turned up—he had become lost during the training exercise. But now events had already spun out of control. The Japanese commander sent his forces swarming into Chinese territory and marched them towards Peking and Tientsin (modern Tainjin). They were met by a Chinese counteroffensive.
The Marco Polo Bridge Incident marked the official beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War. The Japanese War Ministry had estimated that the war with China would last three months. It dragged on for eight years. The Japanese went on to occupy Peking (Beijing) and destroy the Chinese capital at Nanking (modern Nanjing). In response, the US cut off its supply of steel and oil to Japan, leading to Japanese plans for a military operation to invade and occupy the Dutch East Indies (one of the largest producers of oil in the world). As part of that operation, the Japanese Navy would strike Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
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