Marshal-Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō
What were Russia and Japan fighting over? They both wanted Korea and the Manchuria region of China. About the only thing they agreed upon was that neither the people of Korea nor the people of Manchuria should have any say in it.
The Japanese were ahead in the war the whole way, and their actions with Russian civilians in China -- especially the women -- presaged what they would do in the lands they took in World War II. Finally, the Japanese fleet engaged the Russian one at the Tsushima Straits, virtually wiping them out. Only 3 Russian vessels escaped to their main Pacific Ocean port at Vladivostok.
President Theodore Roosevelt invited the belligerents to send representatives to a peace conference at the port city of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The Treaty of Portsmouth was signed on September 5, and it got TR the Nobel Peace Prize.
A year later, George Sydenham Clarke, 1st Baron Sydenham of Combe, a British colonial administrator (and author of some stuff that was terribly racist even by the standards of his day), wrote, "The battle of Tsushima is by far the greatest and the most important naval event since Trafalgar," referring to Britain's win over Napoleon's France in 1805, led by Admiral Horatio Nelson, who nonetheless died in that battle.
This comparison is reflected in the fact that the Japanese commander in this war, Tōgō Heihachirō, became known as "the Nelson of the East." He died in 1934, and remains the most decorated naval officer in his country's history. His flagship, the battles hip Mikasa, is a museum ship in the port city of Yokosuka, outside Tokyo.
In contrast, the Russian commander, Zinovy Rozhestvensky, sustained a head wound from a shell fragment in mid-battle, and taken to another ship while his flagship, the battleship Borodino, was sunk. Taking command, Admiral Nikolai Nebogatov surrendered the fleet.
Rozhestvensky was later visited in the hospital by Togo, who comforted his opponent by saying, "Defeat is a common fate of a soldier. There is nothing to be ashamed of in it. The great point is whether we have performed our duty."
The various Admirals faced courts-martial. Despite his incapacitation during the battle, Rozhestvensky took responsibility for the defeat. Recognizing his honor, Czar Nicholas II pardoned him and a few others, and commuted the death sentences for others. Nevertheless, the Russian Revolution of 1905 had already taken place, due to the deprivations of the war, and nobody in the Empire -- not the Navy, not the Czar, not the Czar's opponents, and certainly not the common people -- came out ahead. Another revolution was no longer a matter of it, but when.
The victory at Tsushima helped to solidify Japan's view of itself as not only a modern military power, but as an unbeatable machine. This was further enhanced by the fact that they were on the winning side of World War I. That's something that a lot of people forget: In that war, Japan and the United States were on the same side. That would not be the case in World War II, in large part because they reached the point where they thought they could take it on the far larger China and win -- and were winning, until they made the mistake of bombing Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
*
May 28, 1905 was a Sunday. Sunday sports were still illegal in many States. But these baseball games were played that day:
* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 12-3 at The Palace of the Fans in Cincinnati. Honus Wagner went 2-for-2 with a walk.
* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Chicago Cubs, 6-1 at the West Side Grounds in Chicago. Win Kellum outpitched Mordecai "Three-Finger" Brown.
* The Boston Americans beat the Chicago White Sox, 8-5 at South Side Park in Chicago. The Americans became the Red Sox in 1908.
* And the St. Louis Browns beat the Washington Senators, 5-1 at the 1898-1908 version of Sportsman's Park in St. Louis.
No comments:
Post a Comment