Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905)

Another obscure war, though it represents Japan’s entry into the big time, defeating a European power on its own terms.  Russia’s defeat almost cost Tsar Nicholas II his throne; though he eventually lost it in February 1917.   Observing China’s embarrassment in the Opium Wars in the 1840s, and with Western ships forcing entry into Japanese ports, the Japanese were on notice that modernization would be necessary to avoid the same fate as China.  The Japanese Army modeled itself on the Prussian Army, victorious in 1870-71, while the Japanese Navy emulated the powerful and successful Royal Navy.  China became the first victim of Japan’s newfound power, losing Korea in a brief war from 1894-95.  Alarmed by Japan’s growing power, yet arrogantly seeking to assert its own interests in the region, the Tsar took various actions to counter Japanese plans. Manchuria, far northeast China, became an area of mutual interest to both Japan and Russia.  Russia sent in 100,000 troops during the unrest of the Boxer Rebellion.  For their part, the British wanted an ally in the Far East to counter Russian ambitions, so Japanese overtures to England resulted in modest alliance in 1902.  The US also started playing in the Pacific: it annexed Hawaii in 1898 and took the Philippines from Spain in 1899.  But Roosevelt warned Russia, France and Germany that it would side with England and Japan against them in the Far East.  When Russia abruptly and ominously abandoned its plans to withdraw its troops from Manchuria in 1903, the Japanese realized they had a real problem.

 The war basically occurred in three stages. 

 Stage One:  Battle For Port Arthur (February to December 1904).  Unlike Vladivostok, Port Arthur remains usable year-round, making it an important port for the Russians.  The main Russian fleet was there:  seven battleships (Petropavlovsk, Sevastopol, Poltava, Peresvyet, Pobeda, Tsesarevich and Retvizan) along with six cruisers and a merchant ship. The Japanese attacked from land and blockaded the port from the sea (six battleships, 10 cruisers, 30 destroyers and 40 torpedo boats).  All attempts to break the Japanese blockade were unsuccessful.  Laying mines outside the harbor, the Japanese sunk the Russian flagship, Petropavlovsk, which went down with the charismatic and heroic Vice-Admiral Makarov – as severe a blow to Russian morale as Makarov’s arrival had been a boost.  Several attempts by the Russian fleet to break out of Port Arthur for Vladivostok were all unsuccessful.  Having successfully bottled up the Russian fleet in Port Arthur, the Japanese were free to land troops in Korea.  They crossed the Yalu River (border between Korea and China) and defeated the Russians at Nanshan, a natural bottleneck of land protecting the approach to Port Arthur.  However, staunch Russian resistance stymied initial Japanese attacks, forcing them into siege position.  The Japanese defeated the Russians at Liaoyang, cutting off Port Arthur from Mukden.  The Russian commander, Kuropatkin, had a healthy respect for the Japanese, but was hampered by junior generals and officers who lacked his informed view (the Tsar himself dismissed the Japanese as “monkeys”) and almost complete absence of any intelligence on Japanese strength or movements.   After a series of battles in which the Japanese took various hills and destroyed concentric lines of defense, the Russians were forced to surrender Port Arthur in January 1905. 

 The Japanese were remarkably lenient with the local Chinese, in radical contrast to their later atrocious mistreatment of the Chinese in the 1930s, also in contrast with arrogant Russian treatment of the locals, which meant they were more willing to report Russian movements to the Japanese, than to assist the Russians against the Japanese.  While the Japanese built bathhouses keeping the soldiers clean and healthy, the dirty Russians suffered smallpox epidemics.

 Stage Two: Japanese beat the Russians at Mukden (January to March 1905).  Proceeding northeast from Port Arthur, Japanese forces faced various Russian around Mukden.  Southeast of the city, the terrain was not really suitable for attack, so the Japanese had a smaller army make a feint on that side as a diversion.  Kuropatkin, the Russian general, fell for this, oblivious to a much larger Japanese Third Army on his right (west), under General Nogi, whose plan was to circle wide left around and behind Mukden.  Believing himself surrounded, and certainly outmaneuvered, Kupopatkin withdrew his forces northeast, basically ceding the battlefield, the battle, and Mukden, to the Japanese.   Both sides suffered heavy casualties; had the Russians had cooler heads and better reconnaissance, the Third Army attack could have been blunted, and a bloody stalemate would have exhausted the Japanese.  

 Stage Three: Japan defeats Russian fleet at Tsushima (May 27-28, 1905).  The Tsar sent another fleet from St. Petersburg all the way to the Far East to defeat the Japanese.  Seven and half months later they reached China.

 Japanese Fleet: Admiral Togo (First Division) battleships Mikasa (flagship), Shikishima, Fuji, Asahi, cruisers Kasuga, Nisshin; Admiral Kamimura (Second Division) cruisers Izumo (flagship), Azuma, Tokiwa, Yogumo, Iwate, and Asama

 Russian Fleet: Admiral Rozhestvensky (First Division) battleships Knyaz Suvorov (flagship), Imperator Aleksandr III, Borodino, Orel; Admiral Felkerzam (Second Division), battleships Oslyabya (flagship), Sisay Veliki, Navarin, cruiser Adm Nakhimov; Admiral Nebogatov (Third Division), battleship Imperator Nikolai I (flagship), coast defense monitors Gen-Adm Apraksin, Adm Senyavin, Adm Ushakov

            The Japanese Navy was modern and British built; the sailors were literate and often former fishermen.  The Russian ships were a mismash, many obsolete, staffed by arrogant, drunken officers and illiterate peasants who received little training in the six months of twelve they actually served on their ships.  The Russian fleet was no match for the Japanese; at this crucial naval battle, the Russians were defeated: the Oslyabya, Suvorov, Aleksandr III, and Borodino were sunk; the Asama was damaged.  With this strategic defeat, further fighting by the Russians was pointless.

 Theodore Roosevelt brokered the peace between Japan and Russia, resulting in the Treaty of Portsmouth in September 1905, though hostilities had ended in June with Japan’s invasion of Sakhalin Island.  As noted before, this was Europe’s wake-up call that an Asian nation, Japan, was rising and militarily competitive.  Granted, the Russians were the weakest European nation, and had largely been defeated due to their incompetence and complacency.  A true test would have to wait until World War II.  Although the Japanese had easily defeated German forces in World War I, these forces had essentially been stranded far away from Germany and could not be supported, whereas Japan was operating in her own back yard, so to speak.  Both the Japanese and British had realized that maintaining an empire spread across several thousand miles of ocean requires substantial naval power, a power which Germany lacked – despite the Kaiser’s best efforts to compete.  Ironically, it’s quite possible that Japan’s defeat of Russia in this war, and Germany in the next, may have lulled her into her own complacency, a misplaced belief in her own superiority over Western nations which had grown fat and lazy over centuries of dominance – and which would have been confirmed by the early successes against the English in Burma and Malaysia and the US in the Philippines and Pearl Harbor.  Of course, the US was certainly knocked down by the Japanese, but quickly got its bearings and fought back, successfully.  The fat and lazy Americans drove the point home at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.