When The Japanese Navy Safeguarded The Med in WWI...
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- čas přidán 22. 05. 2024
- Looking back through history, it’s often difficult to see passed events that have so shaped our modern world. The story of Japan in World War II for example has often left those in the west with an impression that prior to 1945, Japan was always an enemy of freedom, when in fact while we associate Imperial Japan as Hitler’s ally, just twenty years earlier, Japan fought against the Kaiser and that particular tyrant’s quest for power.
In this episode, we are going to explore Japan’s entry into the First World War and examine its navy’s intriguing if often forgotten role in safeguarding the Mediterranean Sea from the Kaiser’s fleet of U-boats. Welcome to Wars of the World.
00:00 Introduction
01:13 Land of the Rising Sun
07:44 The 2nd Special Squadron
18:18 Short Changed
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Written & Researched by: Tony Wilkins
Edited by: James Wade
History Should Never Be Forgotten...
a part of history that I never had heard of before ! THANK YOU FOR THE HISTORY LESSON !
I very much enjoyed your video and I gave it a Thumbs Up
Vert good condensation of Japan contribution in WWI. Great vidéo research !
Great tidbit. I have never heard of this before.
Good video
Woah
You forgot France in south Asia!
What happened to the old narrator, used to like this channel a lot with the old narrator
Not sure, but it may be the same guy, but with a toned down, less dramatic delivery. It is almost as good as before😂
Several mistakes and omissions in this video.
1) Japan's modernisation, the 'major social and technological change' you mention @1:51, did not begin the18th century but the 19th.
2) Omission of Qing-Japan War of 1894 - 95.
3) The first global Asian power was not Japan but the Mongols under Genghis Khan and his descendants.
4) _'Being an island nation the Japanese inevitably _*_built_*_ a powerful navy.'_ No, the Japanese _bought_ a powerful navy. In the Russo-Japanese War the only warships built by Japan were its torpedo boats. Of all the principal units in Togo's battle line on 25 May 1905, when he met the Russian Baltic Fleet at Tsushima, not one had been built in Japan. _Mikasa_ the Admiral's flagship, _Asahi_ , _Fuji_ , and _Shikishima_ were all British built, while _Nisshin_ and _Kasuga_ had only recently come from Ansaldo's yard (Italy). Of Kamimura's armored cruiser division, _Idzumo_ , _Iwate_ , _Asama_ , _Tokiwa_ had been built at Elswick's (UK); _Adzuma_ at St. Nazaire (France); and _Yakumo_ , a German design, at Stettin. Japan began building large warships after the war.
5) The Russians were not alarmed by Japan. It was the opposite. Russia's leasing Port Arthur on the Liaodong peninsula from the Qing dynasty after the Qing-Japanese War outraged Tokyo. In 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion, Russia launched a separate invasion of Manchuria sending 100,000 troops there. Withdrawal after the rebellion was only partial. Further, Russia's obtaining concessions to build railways in Manchuria (Chinese Eastern Railway) caused Japan great upset.
6) Japan did _not_ decisively defeat Russia in the 1904 - 05 Russo-Japanese War. Japan decisively defeated the Russian navy, but the ground war in Manchuria was not a walkover for Japan. It was a bloodbath characterised by repeated IJA frontal assaults into Russian machine guns and artillery in fortified and well-entrenched positions. Western military observers were aghast by how many casualties Japan was taking in these assaults _and_ that they kept doing so. By the time the IJA pushed the Russians north of Mukden the IJA was a spent force that could not longer sustain offensive operations in Manchuria. Further, the war was bankrupting Japan. It was Tokyo that secretly approached Teddy Roosevelt and asked him to organise a peace talks so that Japan could get out of the stalemate and stop the financial bleeding. Everyone, including Japan after the Russo-Japan War, forgot the ground campaign and fixated on the Battle of Tsushima. Yes, a great naval victory, but only part of the picture.
7) Re the Washington Naval Conference, prior to leaving Japan Marshall Admiral Kato Tomosaburo, the architect of the proposed 8-8 Fleet (to be completed in 1928) and Minister of the Navy, realised Japan couldn't afford it. And it certainly couldn't afford an arms race if the US was not limited by treaty. Kato was appointed Japan's lead negotiator because the Government believed he was capable of resisting pressure from the IJA's militants, many of whom wanted an 8-8-8 Fleet. Moreover, the IJA was demanding expansion to 50 divisions (25 active and 25 reserve) that had been repeatedly delayed due to finances. And it wan't just personnel but costly equipment modernisation as well and industrial expansion. 'If the IJN gets the 8-8 Fleet, we get our expansion too.' The Government faced a crippling one-two punch to the nation's finances. Japan was in the midst of its post-WWI depression. The Government's civilian leaders and Kato realised that an arms race would be economically ruinous, and if the US continued to expand its fleet Japan's 8-8 Fleet would be greatly surpassed. Japan's chief goal was to avoid discussions about Japan's expansion into Korea, Taiwan, Manchuria, and the Caroline, Mariana and Marshall Islands groups (this was part of the Conference as well). A second goal was 70% of US and UK fleets, but if Japan could not attain that Kato was to propose the banning of fortification construction east of Singapore and west of Hawaii. Japan was very concerned about the Philippines and Guam becoming fortresses with large aerodromes for bombers that could reach Japan as well as locations for large US naval bases. Though there were talks about Japan's expansion in Asia and the Pacific, Japan was successful in its first goal that nothing came of it. Kato's proposal of banning fortifications was accepted by UK and US and Japan accepted 60%. Kato was given a hero's welcome upon his return to Japan and rewarded by being appointed Prime Minister. He intended to reduce the institutional power of the IJN's militants who where upset by the loss of the 8-8 Fleet, but in 1923 Kato died of cancer. His faction in the IJA was purged over time by the militants. Japan's military was like a 15-year-old boy who expects his working-class parents to buy him a Ferrari for his 16th birthday.The difference was the military did more than pout; it started assassinating civilian and military leaders who opposed expansion or, even worse, approved reductions.
Japan was fortunate it signed the treaty because the 1920s would prove to be economically tough with a costly incursion into Siberia by 70,000 IJA troops, the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake, the collapse of raw silk prices in 1925 upon the commercialisation of rayon (raw silk was the nation's most important export, and this hit the rural economy hard), the financial crisis of 1927, and, with the US stock market crash in '29 Japan's raw silk earnings decreased further. For Japan, the 1920s was one of deflation, financial instability, and economic stagnation. An arms race, especially one run by the IJN's 'gunners' who greatly favoured battleships and battle cruisers over other ships like aircraft carriers, would have seen Japan make poor investments.
A very basic understanding of history, I give this amateur give seconds before I would drive my combat boot out of my museum!!!!
Back then the Japanese military had not become radicalized yet so their mindset was more or less guided by the rules of warfare. Their sphere of operations during WW1 was mainly confned to the Pacific areas, mainly invading German military held island possessions as well as German ports in China. During this conflict the Japanese treated prisoners with dignity and respect. It was totally opposite to the way prisoners were treated during WW2.
Japan. ok