Japanese blockade ships

[Bloodstar]

Well, to get back to the game actually...

I have read the book "Tide at Sunrise" by the recommedation of Norm Koger (on his website) few years ago... Well, it is good book with some boring parts, but OK book, slightly better is naval combat showed...

There are couple interesting stuff there - you can laugh at Japanese fanatical menthality but they actually died there in thousands so it's not really so funny.

First episode that I remembered was about sinking of some Japanese transport ship that had full regiment (that is 3000 Japanese soldiers) on board, etc... and Russin cruiser I think have torpedoed it... as it slowly sunk, Japanese soldiers tear their ranks from uniforms and bayonetted each other to not fall alive into Russian hands :scream:

Other similiar episode was of, we can say first Japanese Kamikazes - Japanese volunteers that volunteered to take some old ships with them and sink it in the open entrance of Port Arthur harbour and that way whole Russian fleet there would be bottled up and Togo could have used his fleet to deal with threat from Vladivostok or another fleet coming from Europe etc...
Also when those volunteers failed to sink their ships and close entrance into harbour due to fire from Russian coastal batteries that have sunk them, when they survived on some cliffs they often beheaded each other (!) with their samurai swords eeekkk... huh. There is also present Japanese tradition I guess to not fall into hands of the enemy, honour of dying in the battlefield (see mountains of corpses in front of Port Arthur etc...)


I guess that this is not modeled in the game? :laugh:

It was big factor in the war I think... No matter I don't find as a really big deal I also wanted some discussion to roll on historical aspect of the war. Your turn gentlemen. :salute:




Mario

[Bullethead]

First episode that I remembered was about sinking of some Japanese transport ship that had full regiment (that is 3000 Japanese soldiers) on board, etc... and Russin cruiser I think have torpedoed it... as it slowly sunk, Japanese soldiers tear their ranks from uniforms and bayonetted each other to not fall alive into Russian hands :scream:

I'm not so sure how much faith to put into such stories. After all, thousands of Japanes became prisoners in the RJW, came home at the end of it, and nobody seems to have thought the worse of them back in Japan. Likewise, the Japanese captured thousands of Russians and seem to have treated them acceptably (at least compared to how they treated Allied prisoners in WW2). IOW, it seems like that whole twisted version of bushido that we associate with the Japanese in WW2 was a product of the generation between the RJW and WW2, but wasn't there (at least not nearly to the same extent) in the RJW.

[Lempereur1]

The thing that amazed me the most is just how far Japan came from the 1850-1860 time frame, where they were still a 15th century nation, to the 1895-1905 time frame, where they became a world power!

[Don Maddox]

The thing that amazed me the most is just how far Japan came from the 1850-1860 time frame, where they were still a 15th century nation, to the 1895-1905 time frame, where they became a world power!That's certainly true, but did they lose a little of themselves in the process? There are some that fought very hard to preserve the old Japanese traditions.

[Rhetor]

Likewise, the Japanese captured thousands of Russians and seem to have treated them acceptably (at least compared to how they treated Allied prisoners in WW2).

Japanese armed forces were ordered to treat the prisoners well. And they did.

One remark - on the beginning of the war, about 30% of the Russian Manchuria army were Poles - due to the policy of sending conscripts away from their homeland.

There were also many Polish officers in the army and the navy. Eg. Cmdr. Szczesnowicz was the CO of the "Retvizan". Lt.Cmdr. Porebski was second in command of the "Novik", later a Vice-Admiral in the Polish Navy.

[Lempereur1]

I also think that there was still a bit of Chivalry left over from the Napoleonic war. At this point, Europe had not gone through the horrors of the First World War. Japan wanted Europe to accept them as an equal. I suspect that this had something to do with it.