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A he Japanese memorial battleship Mikasa is silent now except for the tread of tourists upon her deck. Permanently embedded in concrete in Yokosuka and revered as a national relic, the pre-dreadnought served as flagship for Admiral Heihachiro Togo, Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. The Mikasa is to the Japanese what the USS Constitution is to Americans or HMS Victory to the British—something very special in the lore of national history and pride.
From her decks, Admiral Togo commanded the Japanese ships which virtually annihilated the Russian Second Pacific Squadron during the Battle of Tsushima (also known as the Battle of the Japan Sea), 27-28 May 1905.
Russian expansion into Korea and Manchuria, lands regarded by the Japanese to be within their sphere of influence, precipitated the war which started with a Japanese surprise attack on Port Arthur (Manchuria) on 5 February 1904. In July of that year, the Russian First Pacific Squadron was virtually destroyed while attempting to leave Port Arthur.
The Second Pacific Squadron sailed from Kronstadt in the Gulf of Finland in October to relieve the beleaguered fleet and garrison at Port Arthur and assist in restoring Russian initiative at sea. Commanded by Vice Admiral Zinovi Petrovitch Rozhestvensky, the 42 ships of the squadron would have provided numerical superiority. Joined with remnants of the First Pacific Squadron still blockaded at Port Arthur, the combined Russian force might have overwhelmed Togo’s fleet. To Rozhestvensky’s bitter disappointment, Port Arthur fell to the Japanese in January 1905, while his fleet was still en route to the Far East.
Rozhestvensky sailed his fleet 18,000 miles from the Baltic to the Sea of Japan without fixed bases for replenishment—no mean feat in those days when warships were coal-fired, "short-legged,” and accustomed only to operating from friendly bases for comparatively short periods. Beset with mechanical difficulties, poor discipline, and a multitude of other problems, Rozhestvensky’s odd assortment of ships was simply no match for Japanese gunnery and Togo’s bold tactics.
The battle was fought northeast of the Island of Tsushima in the Sea of Japan, and when it was over only three ships of the Russian Fleet reached their destination at Vladivostok. During the engagement, Togo executed a classic "crossing-the-T” maneuver that momentarily confused the Russians and brought the bulk of his own well-served guns to bear. In half an hour, Japanese gunner)' made a shambles of the Russian ships. Although the engagement dragged on into another day, the fate of the Tsar’s fleet was sealed on the 27th. Thousands of Russian sailors were dead, Russian naval presence in the Far East destroyed, and Japan had achieved mastery of the seas. Japanese lines of communication were guaranteed, and her armies in Korea and Manchuria could be supplied from the home islands with impunity. In Russia, signs of popular discontent were becoming manifest, and the defeat at Tsushima added one more straw to the back of revolutionary ferment.
By the end of August 1905, Japan and Russia had signed the Treaty of Portsmouth (New Hampshire). Japan, at a terrible price in lives and material resources, had gained what she sought: recognition of her influence in Korea and a Russian promise to evacuate Manchuria. Of singular importance to the Japanese was the fact that they were now the foremost military power in the Western Pacific and indeed had been catapulted into the role of a world power.
To naval historians the Battle of Tsushima means more than an international shift of power. Tsushima was the first large-scale fleet action fought since Nelson defeated the French-Spanish Fleet at Trafalgar in 1805. The warships at Tsushima represented the latest in naval technology in the pre-dreadnought era. Never before had radio, range-finders, torpedos, sophisticated explosives, and a host of other such innovations been employed in such a large-scale fleet action.
The Mikasa, perhaps more than any other vessel at Tsushima, represented the advances in technology up to that time. Laid down in January 1899, at Vickers, Barrow, the ship was completed in March 1902. Along with many other ships in the Japanese Navy, the Mikasa was built in a British shipyard partly because the Mikado’s Navy was closely patterned after the Royal Navy.
Massive for her day, the Mikasa was 430 feet long, had a beam of 75.5 feet, and displaced 15,140 tons. Capable of driving the ship at 18 knots, the Mikasa'% coal-fired engineering plant could produce 15,000 horsepower. Her main battery, like those of many capital ships of the time, consisted of four 12-inch guns mounted in two heavily armored turrets, one forward and another aft.
Her secondary armament consisted of 14 6-inch and 20 3-inch guns. The 6-inch pieces were installed in casemates, and the 3-inch were primarily located on a sheltered portion of the main deck. Gunners not only served their weapons in these spaces but lived, slept and ate in them as well. Looking down the length of the hull on- the Mikasa'% main deck is like seeing a veritable forest of gun barrels. The battleship carried four 45-centimeter (17.7-inch) torpedo tubes, a trait she shared with her big-ship Imperial Japanese Navy
successors of World War II.
The ship, with other major units of the Japanese Fleet, was equipped with "wireless” radio which was used extensively from the beginning of the battle when the Russian Fleet was sighted to the broadcast of victory back to the home islands.
A heavily armored conning tower (steel, 345 mm. [13.6 inches] thick) beneath the wheelhouse contained a duplicate wheel, engine room telegraph, and voice tubes. The admiral, ship’s captain, and the admiral’s staff were supposed to fight the ship from this protected enclosure, but Togo disdained it at Tsushima, saying, "I am already an old man. You young men, on whose shoulders the future of our country depends, had better get in there.”
Togo fought the battle from the exposed bridge, and while he did receive a shell splinter in the leg, he emerged otherwise unscathed. Curiously, Rozhest- vensky was seriously wounded and several of his staff killed outright when shells made direct hits on his own conning tower. Ironically, his wounds were treated and his life saved by Japanese surgeons at Sasebo naval base after his capture.
Shortly after the war, the Mikasa was sunk by a magazine explosion at Sasebo. Salvaged a year later, she subsequently served as a flagship, a coastal defense ship, and as a training ship until she was slated to be scrapped as a result of the Washington Naval Conference of 1922.
Even prior to the decision to scrap her, the Mikasa
This copy of a color painting now displayed on board the Mikasa memorial depicts Admiral Heibachiro Togo on the bridge of his flagship at the battle of Tsushima. At left, the ''zulu" flag is being hoisted. It called upon the Japanese Fleet to do its utmost against the Russians and thus paraphrased Nelson’s famous signal at Trafalgar.
had gone aground on sunken rocks in the Strait of Ascold. Although temporary repairs were effected and the ship returned to Yokosuka, she suffered more damage from the disastrous earthquake which struck Japan in 1923. National pride and the affection of the Japanese people for the old ship saved her from the breaker’s yard when the signatories of the naval conference decided to exclude her from the list of ships to be scrapped. Declared a national relic, the Mikasa was restored and placed on display in 1926.
When she was seized by U. S. forces at the end of World War II, the ship lost her status as a memorial ship, and her condition gradually deteriorated. Through the efforts of the Mikasa Preservation Association of Yokosuka and with the assistance of the Japanese government and goodwill of the U. S. Navy (including Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz), restoration of the ship commenced in October 1959, and the ship was again opened to the public on 27 May 1961.
Thus preserved, the Mikasa is tangible evidence that sea power can transform a nation into a world power and change the course of history.
Now embedded in concrete, the Japanese memorial battleship Mikasa, top, sits just outside the large U. S. naval base at Yokosuka, Japan. Below, a Japanese family, visiting the old pre-dreadnought warship on a Sunday afternoon, looks at a diagram which contains descriptions of the ship in both Japanese and English. Of modest stature in real life, Admiral Togo's form takes on heroic proportions in Dr. Takashi Shimizu’s statue which stands not far from the Mikasa.
An officer’s head on the Mikasa's first deck provides a glimpse of shipboard living conditions in the first decade of this century. The Mikasa is one of the world's oldest memoralized warships. Bottom, tired visitors rest in Admiral Togo’s cabin in the stern of his old flagship. Note the fireplace and mantel. The picture below depicts a portrait gallery in a long first deck passageway. Doors along the side lead into other exhibits.
The photo at top, taken from the battleship’s after conning tower, shows a 12-inch gun turret and the stern. In the distance is the Yokosuka waterfront. Above left, the sculptured chrysanthemum, symbol of Imperial Japan, adorns the Mikasa'j bow. Above right, an auxiliary anchor is secured to the ship’s side. The 6-inch gun of the secondary battery was protected when not in use because of its proximity to the water line. At right, Japanese tourists examine ground tackle on the forecastle.
Details of the ship's construction, left, show widespread use of stays for her stacks. The yards are reminiscent of square-rigged sailing ships. Below, children examine a replica of one of the battleship's boats. As originally equipped, the Mikasa had both steam launches and pulling boats. Bottom left, where Japanese sailors once rushed to their battle stations, a child now scrambles up a ladder on the after part of the ship. Bottom right, a Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force sailor and his family visit the ship.
A 3-inch gun, above, pokes its barrel through a casemate in the ship's side and points toward Tokyo Bay. Above left, a 6-inch projectile of the type used in the secondary battery. Above right, closeup detail of one of the MikasaV 12-inch main battery turrets. Shown above is a viewing port for man inside the turret. A line of the anchor chain, right, is still in good condition, although covered with countless coats of paint.
Left, two French sailors on liberty walk alongside the Mikasa. The point where the concrete touches the ship’s side was approximately her waterline. Protruding from casemates are 3-inch and 6-inch guns. Japanese sea scouts, below, practice semaphore in unison on the forecastle. In the bottom photo, another dusk approaches for a warship whose day in the sun ended long ago.