Marco Polo Bridge Incident

In July 1937, fighting broke out between Chinese and Japanese soldiers in the area of Marco Polo Bridge in the north of China. The confrontation formally sparked the Second Sino-Japanese War.

History
Since the invasion of the north Chinese province of Manchuria by the Japanese in 1931, tensions rapidly rose between both powers. Worsened by the brief Japanese occupation of Shanghai in 1932, (PROSE: The Shadow of Weng-Chiang) fighting between the two sides escalated, with one engagement occurring in 1936. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the War Games)

In February 1936, the Kodo Ha, a faction of the Imperial Japanese Army, openly revolted in Tokyo, seeking to take control of government policy and expand the influence of the Japanese Empire further into China. Although the revolt was put down, many commanders in Manchukuo, the Japanese puppet state, remained true to their ideals.

In July 1937, those commanders, who had been responsible for numerous acts of political violence between 1933 and 1935, provoked a fight between a handful of Chinese soldiers at Marco Polo Bridge. With their armies now engaged in ongoing action against the Chinese, the Japanese government was forced into a war footing, properly beginning the Second Sino-Japanese War.

The Japanese claimed that they had been attacked first. Woo, formerly Ishiguro Takashi of the Imperial Army, who deserted after the Tokyo revolt, was unconvinced, as the consequences were in line with what the Kodo Ha had wanted to happen. He claimed Japanese officers had no imagination.

For the first month of the war, however, after an initial Japanese push south from Manchuria, the fighting remained in the north of China as the Japanese sought to further consolidate Manchuria. The front lines were around the village of Tai'an and the mountain of T'ai Shan, almost 400 miles south-west of Shanghai, although the Imperial Army Air Fleet regularly raided the city, and Woo knew they would eventually return there in force. (PROSE: The Shadow of Weng-Chiang)

Behind the scenes

 * The Shadow of Weng-Chiang does not explicitly name the confrontation in-universe, nor does the text refer to it as an "incident". It is clear, however, that the fighting discussed corresponds to the and so the article had been conjecturally titled as such.