The Manchurian Incident, which broke out on September 18th 1931, saw the front line spread deeper and deeper into the interior of Manchuria in China. The bodies of Japanese soldiers who had died in the interior of Manchuria were buried in the interior. In winter, the ground would freeze to a depth of two meters, leaving the area a frozen wilderness. Japanese soldiers, overcome with grief, buried their fallen comrades on stretchers and said their final farewells in the Manchurian wilderness.
On the night of September 18th 1931, the South Manchuria Railway Company's tracks near the Liuqiao Lake in the suburbs of Mukden (now Shenyang) were blown up by officers of the Kwantung Army, a part of the Imperial Japanese Army stationed in Manchuria. The Japanese Army, the owner of the railway, blamed this incident on Chinese nationalists and used it as an excuse to invade Manchuria in retaliation. However, some people suspected that the bomb was planted by Japanese military officers in order to create an excuse for subsequent military action. Within a short period of a few months, the Japanese military had taken control of the Manchurian region. With little resistance from the Chinese military, which had received little training, the Japanese military strengthened its control over the resource-rich Manchurian region. The Japanese military declared that the region would become a new autonomous state called Manchukuo. In reality, the new state was under the control of the local Japanese military.
On January 14th 1932, a League of Nations investigation team visited China, and on October 2nd the Lytton Commission's report was published. It attributed equal blame for the conflict in Manchuria to Chinese nationalism and Japanese militarism. The report stated that the establishment of the Manchukuo state violated China's territorial integrity and that it would not recognize the new state. On March 27, 1933, when the Lytton Report was ratified at the League of Nations, the Japanese delegation left the meeting and did not return to the Council of the League of Nations. Although Japan and China signed a truce agreement, the agreement left Japan in complete control of Manchuria.