Ch 31 - Prelude to War

An Undeclared War

Concerned that Russian military strength in Manchuria would soon make it impossible to dislodge them, Japan launched a surprise naval strike against Russia's East Asia Squadron at Port Arthur simultaneous with landing 60,000 troops at Inchon, Korea.

Through incompetence, confusion and the dangerously mistaken belief that Japan would never dare to go to war against them, Russia continued to block any settlement of the Manchurian question. Throughout its negotiations with the Russians, Japan was diplomatically frustrated at every turn. Simultaneous with these negotiations however, Japan's military buildup at home and its encroachment in Korea grew in intensity. Japan hardened its position and refused to back down from its original demands, seeking instead to avenge the Russian seizure of the Liaodong Peninsula in 1895 and protect its position in Korea.

In late 1903, Japan's Supreme Headquarters, which included the Combined Staff Office of the Imperial Japanese Army and Imperial Japanese Navy, began working with the government to assess Japan's national power and compare with that of Russia. They ignored public opinion supporting a war of revenge against Russia and conducted a dispassionate review of the facts;   counting weapons and warships, estimating costs and analyzing Russia's overall situation. In their deliberations they became convinced they could meet all their goals for war if they managed to steer Japanese strategy and policy prudently, integrating everything necessary and taking all possible factors into account.

Japanese intelligence indicated that revolutionary factions in Russia faced were creating serious domestic instability. In addition, there was no national consensus among the Russians for a war against Japan. To exploit this weakness, the Japanese government ordered Colonel Motojiro Akashi to head an undercover mission to Russia with orders to conduct activities in support of Russian revolutionaries.

The operations planning room in the General Staff Office in Tokyo realized that because the tsar had to maintain military forces in western Russia as a check on Turkish, German and Austrian forces, Russia could not concentrate its entire army in the Far East. By concentrating most of the Japanese Imperial Army in Manchuria, they believed it possible to field a force strong enough to match the Russians. The general consensus was that, while Japan could not win the war outright, it might be able to fight to a draw or even to a slight advantage. This they referred to as the "sixty-forty reconciliation."

The Japanese would have to meet several tough conditions in order to achieve their "sixty-forty reconciliation." The first, and most difficult obstacle, would be to establish superiority over the Russian army in Manchuria. Second, the Imperial Navy would have to defeat the Russian fleets at Port Arthur and Vladivostok before naval reinforcements could arrive from Europe. Third, before a decision to go to war, the government would have to guarantee that it could afford to pay for it. Finally, Japan required the cooperation of the United States to mediate a peaceful settlement of the war.

Defeating the Russian army in Manchuria would not be easy. .Faced with a shortage of strategic reserves, insufficient stockpiles of ammunition and poor artillery, the Imperial Army sought to offset their handicaps with well-conceived planning, effective battlefield tactics and complete confidence in the hard discipline of their soldiers.

The single-track Trans Siberian Railway remained unfinished. The lines of communication from European Russia to Manchuria and the Far East were extremely long, hard to maintain and limited in capacity. The Japanese strategy was to hit the Russians hard and destroy their field army in Manchuria before its logistic capability became fully operational. Realizing their own logistics limitations, the Imperial Army could not afford to push the Russian army to far into Manchuria too fast, even if they held the advantage.

A military appraisal of the Russian army indicated they were too large, too ill-equipped and inadequately trained to deal with a highly maneuverable enemy on the vast Manchurian plain. Their poor communications did not allow them to execute coordinated operations and they were unable to fight in night engagements. To take advantage of this situation, the Japanese would organize and deploy smaller army corps of only two or three divisions to give them maximum mobility, In addition, Japanese soldiers were trained for night fighting.

Beyond the goal of destroying the Russian Pacific Fleet before reinforcements arrived from Europe the fleet admiral would have to avoid losses and ensure he had sufficient naval strength to defeat Russian reinforcements when they did arrive in the area. The Imperial Navy thought long and carefully about developing its operational plans. They knew their Combined Fleet had a slight edge over the Russian Pacific Fleet, but the biggest advantage held by the Japanese was that Russia has split its fleet into two mutually indefensible forces, one based at Port Arthur and the other at Vladivostok. Reinforcements for these two fleets would have to come from Europe, sailing the long route around the Cape of Good Hope and across the Indian Ocean. The Japanese government moved to encourage the British to apply heavy diplomatic pressure and its influence to ensure that few ports along the route would be available to the Russians and that no third party would support Russian reinforcements coming from Europe.

Ironically, the Anglo-Japanese Alliance enabled the Japanese to effectively raise money from several nations and Japan's economic leaders gave their full backing to the war effort. These two factors helped convince the government that it could afford a war with Russia, even if only barely.

On the diplomatic front, the Japanese government dispatched Kentaro Kaneko to the United States as a special envoy. As a member of the House of Peers in the Imperial Diet and an old acquaintance of President Theodore Roosevelt, Kentaro traveled to Washington, D.C. to elicit American public support and to convince Roosevelt to support Japan so that the U.S. government would be willing to mediate and end to the war.

By the early days of January 1904, Japan no longer doubted that Russia was dragging out negotiations to gain time to improve its military position. A Russian battle group comprised of a single battleship, two cruisers and seven destroyers was already en route to East Asia from the Baltic Sea. Admiral Alekseev. who sent his defensive war plan for the Far East to the War Ministry in late 1903, hoped his small fleet at Port Arthur would be able to tie up the Japanese navy in the Yellow Sea sufficiently to limit troop landings in Korea, thus delaying any Japanese advance long enough to mobilize Russian troops in preparation for the defense of Port Arthur.

On the sidelines, Britain and the United States, each for its own reasons, gave Japan tacit support in its challenge to Russian supremacy in Manchuria. Both nations gave the Japanese inferred "permission" to use Korea as an operations base against the Russians;  the British through the Anglo-Japanese Alliance and the Americans by virtue of their expressed opinions on the issue.

In early January 1904, Horace N. Allen, America's ambassador to Korea, informed the State Department in Washington that he felt "Korea should belong to Japan by right of ancient conquest and tradition." He also expressed the opinion that the United States would "make a mistake if it tries to have Japan simply continue this fiction of independence." Allen believed it would be better for Koreans and for the peace of East Asia if Japan were in full control of the peninsula. Allen's opinions were not unique. In varying degrees, this attitude was shared by many in the United States government.

Kaiser Wilhelm II personally encouraged Tsar Nicholas II to make Russia a Pacific power to challenge the Japan's growing strength. In the Kaiser's mind, everybody in Europe understood that Russia had to "try to get at the Sea for an iceless outlet for its commerce." By the law of national expansion, Russia was "entitled to a strip of coast where such harbours are situated." In a letter to the tsar in January 1904, Kaiser Wilhelm II noted that between Vladivostok and Port Arthur "is a tongue of land which may - in one adversaries hand - become a new sort of Dardanelles. That is impossible for you to allow." He wrote that, "it is evident to every unbiased mind that Korea must and will be Russian. When or how that is nobody's affair and concerns only you and your country." Adding further encouragement, the Kaiser wrote, "The sure end that Korea will once be yours is a foregone conclusion here like the occupation of Manchuria, hence nobody troubles themselves about it here!"

Fearing the potential danger involved in siding with either of the two belligerents, on January 21, 1904, the Korean government proclaimed its complete neutrality in case of a war between Japan and Russia. In the face of the gathering storm, it proved to be a futile gesture and did nothing to inhibit either nation, for the war between Japan and Russia that had long been only a probability had become a virtual certainty.

On January 22, Admiral Alekseev received a set of directives from St. Petersburg that denied his earlier request to mobilize Russian troops out of concern it would provoke the Japanese, a reluctance that reflected Tsar Nicholas' expressed desire that the Japanese fire the first shot. Nevertheless, Admiral Alekseev put Port Arthur and Vladivostok on a war alert status.

The directives also undermined Alekseev's contingency war plan, specifically that Russia would not interfere with Japanese troop landings south of Inchon. Alekseev could react only if the Japanese landed troops in northern Korea. That order cut his response time dramatically. Since the Japanese controlled Korea's telegraph system, it was highly unlikely he would receive a timely warning of Japanese troop landings anywhere on the peninsula.

Port Arthur itself presented a handicap to any rapid Russian naval response. Because of the narrow, winding entrance channel to the harbor area, the fleet customarily took a full day to steam out of the port to open water. Low tides could, on occasion, trap the squadron's larger ships in the harbor because of the entrance channel's shallow waters. On February 2, 1904, Admiral Alekseev ordered Vice Admiral Oscar Stark, commander of the Pacific Squadron, to take his ships for a one day cruise in the Yellow Sea. When the squadron returned on February 4, they were ordered to anchor in the roadstead outside the harbor, where they would be better positioned to respond to reports of Japanese troop landings. Alekseev apparently never considered the possibility that Japan might actually attack the squadron itself.

Admiral Alekseev hoped his small twenty-one ship diversionary force based in Vladivostok would deter any Japanese naval threat in the East Sea until the Russian battle group reached the Yellow Sea from the Baltic. The Russian Pacific Fleet, which operated under the command of Rear Admiral Stakelberg, included the armored cruisers Gromboi (Stakelberg's flagship), Rossya and Rurik each fitted with four 8-inch and sixteen 6-inch guns, the light cruiser Bogatyr, armed with twelve 6-inch guns, and a squadron of seventeen torpedo boats.

Togo Heihachiro's fame in the Sino-Japanese War had earned him a promotion to admiral. In 1903, Navy Minister Yamamoto Gonbee appointed Admiral Togo commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy. When the astonished Emperor Meiji asked Yamamoto to explain the appointment, the minister replied, "since Togo is a man of good fortune."

Admiral Togo's battle group, formed around two of the Imperial Navy's three squadrons, concentrated at the port of Sasebo on Kyushu ready for action. The 1st Squadron included six battleships:  Mikasa (Admiral Togo's flagship), Asahi, Fuji, Yashima, Shikishima, and Hatsuse (Rear Admiral Nashiba's flagship), each with four 12-inch guns and from ten to fourteen 6-inch guns. In addition to the fast light cruiser Chitose (Rear Admiral Dewa Shigeto's flagship), were the cruisers Takasago and Kasagi, each with two 8-inch and ten 4.7-inch guns, and the Yoshino with four 6-inch and eight 4.7-inch guns. Rounding out the 1st Squadron were twelve destroyers and eight torpedo boats collectively carrying a total of forty-eight 18-inch torpedo tubes.

The 2nd Squadron, under the command of Rear Admiral Uriu Sotokichi, included six armored cruisers Idzumo (Vice Admiral Kamimura's flagship), Adzumo, Asama, Yakumo, Tokiwa and Iwate (Rear Admiral Misu's flagship), each armed with four 8-inch and twelve to fourteen 6-inch guns;  four cruisers, the Naniwa (Rear Admiral Uriu Sotokichi's flagship), the Takachiho, and the Niitaka, each with six to eight 6-inch guns, and the Akashi, mounting two 6-inch and six 4.7-inch guns;  eight destroyers with two 18-inch torpedo tubes each;  and eight torpedo boats each mounted with three 18-inch torpedo tubes.

The 3rd Squadron, commanded by Vice Admiral Kataoka Shichiro, was charged with holding the Tsushima Straits and defending against any action by Admiral Stakelberg from Vladivostok. Kataoka's squadron included the former Chinese battleship Chinyen, the battleship Fuso (Rear Admiral Hosoya's flagship), the armored cruisers Itsukushima (Vice Admiral Kataoka's flagship), Hashidate, Matsushima, Idzumi (Rear Admiral M. Togo's flagship - no relation), Suma, Akitsushima, Saiyen and the cruiser Chiyoda. Rounding out the 3rd Squadron were five gunboats and twelve torpedo boats, each mounted with three 18-inch torpedo tubes.

Japan held the strategic advantage in terms of geography. In order to achieve their objectives, the Japanese had only to successfully occupy Korea and Port Arthur. The Japanese had a 200,000 man army and a modern naval fleet of some 260,000 tons, both well-equipped and well-trained. Japanese manufacturing capacity and manpower was located virtually in the backyard of the potential battleground. Large supplies of the best Welsh coal were still reaching Japanese storage depots despite the best efforts of the Russians to intercept the colliers. Unlike Port Arthur and Vladivostok, which were little more than supply depots, Japan's naval facilities were nearly all co-located with its production centers for war materiel. Ample supplies of ammunition, spare guns and replacement parts were ready at the shortest possible notice. Although Japanese supply lines were wholly dependent on control of the sea, the routes were very short, a fact which no doubt encouraged the military in developing its tactical plans.

Despite Japan's advantageous position, Russian Manchuria, with access to the Yellow Sea at Port Arthur and its southernmost land border in direct contact with Korea along an undefended and easily breached frontier, introduced a threat to Japan that was more serious and imminent than anything since the days of Kublai Khan. Japan feared Russia's next major move would be a push to make Korea a Russian province.

By February 2, 1904, the Japanese Imperial Army's 12th Division, under the command of Major General Kuroki Tamemoto, was already embarked aboard troop ships intended for a major landing on Korea's west coast with orders to pacify the capital area and seize the southern provinces. On February 4, the Japanese government committed the nation to war and embarked on a venture that would launch it to the status of a ranking world power. The follwoing afternoon, each of the senior military commanders at Sasebo received instructions to open their sealed orders.

On February 6, 1904, acting on orders from Komura Jutaro, Japan's minister in Beijing, Minster Kurino Shinichiro informed Foreign Minister Lamsdorff that the Japanese government had decided to halt all negotiations over Manchuria and Korea. Almost simultaneously, Prince Ito Hirobumi, acting under orders, broke off talks with the Russians in St. Petersburg. Without warning, he announced his immediate recall to Tokyo and severed all diplomatic relations with Russia. The Russians had been playing for time and failed. Japan had tried diplomacy and failed. When Ambassador Rosen finally received the Russian counter-proposal on February 7, it was too late to act.

At 9:15 a.m. on February 6, Admiral Togo's 1st squadron steamed out of Sasebo in line-ahead formation to the thunderous cheers of "banzai" coming from the enthusiastic crowds lining the shore. Early that afternoon, Rear Admiral Uriu's 2nd Squadron left Sasebo to an equally enthusiastic sendoff.

The Japanese had been eager to keep the peace in the region and stretched their readiness to compromise to its limits, but when a fight could no longer be avoided, they struck first, struck fast and struck hard. Even before a state of war had been officially declared, the Japanese High Command decided that a surprise attack was required - a tactic made infamous just thirty-seven years later at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the moral assumptions which form the foundation of modern international relations were neither appreciated nor widely accepted. In the context of contemporary international behavior, there was no historical precedent, nor any binding agreements in force among the nations of the world to prevent one nation from attacking another without a formal declaration of war. History is replete with examples of undeclared wars and under the international law that existed at the time, such a declaration was unnecessary. Even so, Admiral Togo's formidable fleet escorting 60,000 troops from Japan's Imperial Army across the Yellow Sea towards Korea presented a powerful declaration of intent.

Although the combined ground and naval forces of Russia were numerically far superior to those of Japan, the Japanese decided to quickly achieve naval superiority in the Yellow Sea by striking Russia's weakest link first, the Russian Fleet at Port Arthur. Admiral Togo's orders for the Japanese Fleet were to attack and destroy the Russian Far East Squadron at Port Arthur and his primary goal was to take out the majority of Russia's Far East Squadron in one swift blow.

The boldness of the plan was all the more remarkable in light of the fact that Japanese shipyards were insufficiently developed in 1904 to construct a single capital warship. For years, Japan had allocated a good deal of China's indemnity payment toward shipbuilding contracts in both Europe and the United States. Virtually every vessel of modern design in the Japanese Navy had been purchased from a foreign power. Two modern, Italian-built armored cruisers, the Nisshin and the Kasuga, originally built for the Argentine Navy and bought by Japan, were in Singapore with orders to sail for Japan no later than February 6. Matched ship-for-ship, four of Japan's battleships were better than anything in the Russian Fleet at the time and its remaining vessels were certainly the equal of any Russian warship afloat.

From the beginning, Admiral Togo faced a challenge unlike anything ever confronted by any other admiral in history. The Japanese understood they could not win a long, protracted war fought across a vast frontier, but they could win a short, localized war. To succeed, Admiral Togo had to undertake and maintain offensive operations against a navy nearly twice the size of his own and do so without reserves. Japan would have to fight with the ships currently at hand, because from beginning to end there would be no replacements available. Every ship lost in battle would incrementally weaken Togo's position at sea;  a single important reversal of fortunes at any stage of the battle would ruin the entire operation.

The Russian Fleet included the East Asia Squadron at Port Arthur and Vladivostok, the Black Sea Squadron, and the Baltic Squadron. Under terms of the 1870 Treaty of London, the Black Sea Squadron was locked up tight in the Black Sea and prohibited from sailing through the Dardanelles. The Baltic Squadron, which was free to sail through the Skagerrak Strait, was separated from Port Arthur by approximately three-quarters of the earth's circumference.

The Russian East Asia Squadron at Port Arthur under the command of Vice Admiral Oskar Stark included the battleships Petropavlosk (Vice Admiral Stark's flagship), Tzesarevitch, Retvizan, Sevastopol, Peresviet (Rear Admiral Prince Ukhtomsky's flagship), Pobieda and Poltava, each armed with four 12-inch or 10-inch guns. The Russians also had six armored cruisers in Port Arthur:  the Askold (Rear Admiral Reitzensten's flagship) and Bayan, each carrying two 8-inch and eight 6-inch guns, the Diana and Pallada, each with eight 6-inch guns, and the Boyarin and Novik with their six 4.7-inch guns. Each of the two torpedo gunboats and twenty-five destroyers at Port Arthur mounted two or three 18-inch torpedo tubes.

Superior to the Japanese in sheer numbers, the Russians were far inferior to Japan when it came to the efficiency needed for conducting warfare. Russian military history was almost entirely based on land warfare and the Russian Navy operated under the kind of thinking more common to an army garrison than to that required to fight at sea. As a result, the majority of Russia's senior naval ranks spent the greater part of their professional lives in all sorts of civil employment ashore and lost touch with the rigors of seaborne operations. Training and drills were carried out with such irregularity that crews became clumsy at ship handling. Ships often sat at anchor for months. Routine maintenance was spotty at best, ship hulls became overgrown with weeds and barnacles. Ship engines deteriorated from neglect. In view of the political climate at the time, high-ranking Russian officers displayed faulty judgment and, with few exceptions, displayed an amazing lack of enterprise and preparation for the events about to unfold.

In stark contrast, the Japanese Navy was probably second to none in the world at the time. Battle-seasoned by the Sino-Japanese War, every member of the fleet was highly motivated and conscious of belonging to a branch of military service proudly held in high regard by every Japanese citizen. Naval officers were characterized as much by their sound judgment and accurate foresight as by their devotion to duty. Well-trained, ably led and highly motivated, Japanese sailors honed their fighting capabilities and that of their ships to near perfection.

In stark contrast, the Russians displayed a remarkable disregard for defensive preparations at Port Arthur and took no more than routine precautions. Russia's Viceroy of East Asia, Admiral Evgenii Ivanovich Alekseev, responsible for the disposition of Russian forces and strategy in the region, appeared to be as inept at military strategy, tactics and deployment of his fleet as Vice Admiral Stark. Given the critical situation developing in East Asia and despite a clear warning from Russia's naval attache in Tokyo that Japanese fleet operations were to be expected immediately, Russia's East Asia Squadron displayed remarkable calm. After all, Admiral Alekseev had orders that if shots were fired, it would be the Japanese and not the Russians who struck the first blow.

Admiral Alekseev disregarded proposals made by Vice Admiral Stark to defend Port Arthur;  no orders were issued for a blackout, no torpedo-nets were deployed, no searchlights were in use, and no regular patrols were ordered. Things were little better ashore. There was no news censorship in effect and the Russian squadron's new disposition was reported in newspapers around the world. Virtually every defensive shore battery was essentially secured for the winter. The big guns were not fully manned and had been given a heavy coating of preservation grease to protect them from the harsh winter weather. Even the recoil cylinders of the larger 10-inch guns had been drained of hydraulic fluid. The Liau-ti-shan lighthouse continued to operate, its quietly rotating light providing an inviting beacon for Admiral Togo's approaching fleet.

Throughout their negotiations with the Japanese, the Russians never believed Japan would go to war. The Russians still did not believe that Japan's severance of diplomatic relations meant that war was imminent. Admiral Togo knew the invaluable secret that in this case, it did. He also knew that the declaration of war would not be delivered on paper, but from the muzzle of gun.