Manchukuo Post Office official seal tote bag
by William
(San Francisco)
Manchukuo Post Office official seal tote bag
(CafePress)
Officially Sealed by the Manchukuo Post Office? How cool is that?
What and where can this be done? An Officially Sealed stamp was applied by the post office to unsealed letters.
Most Asian envelopes had no gum to seal them, but rather you found a glue pot within the post office to seal your letters before mailing.
If you forgot, or didn't put plenty of glue on, the post office would put this stamp over the opening and 'seal' it for you.
Manchukuo is in northern China and known as Manchuria. China overthrew the Qing Dynasty in 1911 and became a Republic. As you might imagine, the Qing officials were none to happy with this.
In the early 1930s Japan had its eye on China, so these ex-Qing officials and the Imperial Japanese Empire took over Manchuria and renamed in Manchukuo, the country of the Manchus.
This was very obviously a Japanese puppet state, so in order to appear not to be so, they found the last boy Emperor, Pu-Yi and installed him as Emperor of Manchukuo in 1934. (You did see the academy award winning film The Last Emperor
, didn't you?)
Manchukuo ceased to exist after World War II, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan on Aug. 8, 1945 (two days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima) to get as much Chinese territory as they could grab before the ultimate surrender of Japan.
The Soviets held the area allowing usage as a base area for the Chinese People's Liberation Army in the Chinese civil war from 1946-1949.
Many more stamp T-shirts and gifts are available at StampGiftShop.com
.