7

PORT ARTHUR

The Combined Fleet considered the attack on Inch’ŏn the responsibility of a separate naval unit, but they saw attacking Port Arthur as the job of the main force. Almost the entire main force of the 190,000-ton Russian Pacific Fleet was in Port Arthur, since the port of Vladivostok had iced over. These ships had to be destroyed, but unless the enemy squadron came out onto the open seas, the artillery emplacements that guarded the harbor would keep the Japanese fleet from coming near.

And so torpedo tactics seemed vital. The idea of sending destroyers loaded with torpedoes against the enemy was a naval tactic that had been planned by the Navy General Staff for a long time. But the state of Port Arthur’s artillery emplacements and of its naval squadron remained a mystery to the Japanese side.

“Port Arthur is not going to be an easy place to attack!” declared Yamashita Gentarō, the Navy General Staff’s chief of operations. He had been sent to Yantai in September of the year before the war began and made this point very forcefully after his return. He had gone to Yantai to find out about conditions in Port Arthur. At the time, the most he could do was observe Port Arthur from across the Bohai Gulf at Yantai on the Shandong Peninsula. Even so, he could learn something about the conditions at sea.

“People who talk of sending destroyers into the narrow sea entrance to Port Arthur,” he observed, “don’t understand the sea conditions in winter. There’s the well-known cycle of three cold days and four warm ones, and, when the north wind is blowing strongly during a cold spell, the sea becomes very rough, and a small destroyer would lose speed and stability. If attacked at a time like that, it would be lost. The Russian authorities at Port Arthur are very vigilant. The Novik”—a small protected cruiser—“goes out every day as far as Gaojiao Cape, at the tip of the Shandong Peninsula. If our ships fell into the Novik’s clutches, there’d be no way to help them.”

So said Yamashita, and he had been saying the same things to Tōgō, Shimamura, and Akiyama before the war began. These observations of Yamashita were all that was known about the situation in Port Arthur.

The conclusion was that a considerable defensive force should be sent to a point not quite within the range of Port Arthur’s artillery emplacements. This plan was centered on the main force of the Combined Fleet, which would form that defensive force. Akiyama Saneyuki intended to employ the extraordinary dual strategy of having the destroyers attack the harbor while at the same time blocking the entrance to the harbor by sinking dilapidated ships there. Even Tōgō, however, who usually agreed with all of Saneyuki’s plans, crushed this idea of blocking the harbor entrance. “The group who carried out this plan would almost certainly not survive. We shouldn’t do it.” And so an attack by destroyers alone became the plan.

The Combined Fleet’s main force that had left Sasebo on the morning of February 6 reached the waters near Yuandao—“Round Island”—44 nautical miles to the east of Port Arthur, at six o’clock on the evening of the eighth. The waves were low with a slight wind blowing from the northwest; the sky was cloudless, with a reddish evening afterglow. Saneyuki had chosen this area as the place to launch the destroyer group against Port Arthur.

“This is the spot,” he said to Shimamura, who then turned to Tōgō and repeated the same words. Tōgō nodded.

In time, a signal flag fluttered from the mast of the Mikasa with the message: “Attack as planned. We pray for your success.”

Saneyuki had planned to throw the Combined Fleet’s entire destroyer force into this attack, and that is what he did. He sent the First, Second, and Third Destroyer divisions to Port Arthur and the Fourth and Fifth Destroyer divisions to Dalian Bay (though it turned out that there were in fact no enemy forces in Dalian Bay).

“We are confident of success” was the reply signal sent by Captain Asai Shōjirō, commander of the First Destroyer Division on board the Shirakumo (372 tons), as representative of the attack group, which then moved away from the Combined Fleet, leaving an arc of white foam in its wake. When at last the destroyers had disappeared beyond the darkening horizon, the Combined Fleet moved on its set course. Later, it too would head for Port Arthur, but only after first spending some more time at sea.

“What do you think? Will it succeed?” Shimamura asked.

“All we can do is pray for Heaven’s help,” Saneyuki answered rather brusquely.

He hoped to be able to sink five Russian warships in this surprise attack by the group of destroyers. If Japan didn’t reduce the number of enemy warships, it would be at a great disadvantage in the coming sea battle between the two countries’ main forces. The whole point of the surprise attack strategy was to weaken the enemy in advance.

The results, however, were not as Saneyuki hoped. Not a single Russian warship was sunk, and only two battleships and one cruiser suffered fairly extensive damage. It was Saneyuki’s very first chance to carry out a strategic plan of his own, so naturally he had hoped and prayed for success. A strategist has some time on his own after the group that is to carry out his plans has left. Saneyuki wanted to use this time to sleep. In the military, there’s a set time to go to bed, but Saneyuki didn’t care much about such military regulations.

“Chief of Staff, I’m going to get some sleep now,” he declared, going to his cabin and lying down on his bed still in his military uniform.

Shimamura had no objections to this, but Tōgō always looked unhappy about such actions on Saneyuki’s part. Shimamura did not go so far as to excuse Saneyuki by saying out loud, “He’s a kind of genius, after all,” but by the expression on his face he did manage to convey his wish that Tōgō too say nothing about it. And, in fact, Tōgō never did rebuke Saneyuki for his behavior.

It was unfortunate for the Russian fleet in Port Arthur that they were unaware even that war with Japan had begun, much less that a sudden attack force was on its way that very night. They were not even patrolling the seas in an extensive way. And yet a crucially important telegram from the tsar had already arrived, addressed to Viceroy Alexeyev. “Japan may be about to start hostilities. If the Japanese fleet appears off the west coast of Korea moving northward, do not wait for them to fire on you. Attack them at once.”

But, on this night, Port Arthur was so calm that it seemed foolish to imagine any danger approaching. Unfortunate too was the fact that it was a feast day of the Blessed Virgin in the Russian Church. It was the custom to congratulate women with the name Maria on this day. A group of army officers went to the quarters of the head army doctor in Port Arthur in formal dress and held a party complete with dancing in honor of the doctor’s wife, who was named Maria. Most unfortunate of all was the fact that the wife of Vice Admiral Oskar Stark, the commander in chief of the Russian fleet, was also named Maria. She had invited many officers under her husband’s command to the official residence for a festive dinner. With witty conversation and graceful dancing, this gathering was reminiscent of aristocratic dinners in the capital of St. Petersburg, though on a smaller scale. The party went on far into the night. No one suspected that all the while the “uncivilized monkeys,” as they termed the Japanese, were stealing into the entrance to the harbor.

Suddenly, thirty minutes after midnight, the assembled party heard an explosion that rocked the floor, followed by several more.

“What was that?” asked Vice Admiral Stark of the officer next to him, in as calm a manner as possible so as not to disturb the pleasure of the guests by his own surprise.

Several of the officers left the hall and contacted army staff headquarters in the fort. The response was reassuring. “We think the battleship Retvizan has been doing nighttime firing exercises.”

Everyone felt relieved and the party continued, but thirty minutes later a tremendous artillery blast made the window glass shake. Now everyone looked rather anxious, but still no one left the party. They had full confidence in the immense size and power of their nation’s fleet. Very shortly after, a siren sounded a warning. Now they knew for the first time of the Japanese attack. Panic-stricken and with no time to change into battle dress, they rushed, dressed in their formal clothes, to their various posts. The command headquarters, the fleet, and the fortifications were all in turmoil, with people running about—it is hard to describe the degree of confusion.

The Russian fleet at Port Arthur had been totally unprepared. Not only had the various ships not bothered to set up protective nets against torpedoes, but the Russian fleet’s ships were lined up together near the entrance to the harbor, like so many sitting ducks taking an afternoon nap. The battleships were anchored near the coast of the port while the group of cruisers was a bit further out in the offing.

The Japanese destroyers neared the harbor entrance around half past ten at night on February 8, but they didn’t immediately enter, spending some two hours outside the harbor in order to assess the enemy’s situation. During that time, the Russians’ searchlights were busily sweeping over the surface of the water. In time, two destroyers charged with sounding any necessary alarm to the Russian side approached, shining their searchlights. This threw the Japanese side’s plan of action into confusion. The ten Japanese destroyers of the First through Third Destroyer divisions were at the time proceeding side by side. This lead group became alarmed and, in order to avoid being discovered by the Russian ships, immediately slowed down and indeed began to reverse direction. This threw the ships that were following into confusion. It was night, and there were no lights. The attack group’s formation fell apart, and there were some ships that were not even sure of their own present position.

Thus, it became necessary for the ships to launch separate attacks. Each ship proceeded blindly through the darkness. This disorder was the reason for the Japanese side’s relatively small gains, despite the Russians’ lack of preparation.

On the Russian side too, there was an incredibly great mistake. Though the two Russian warning vessels had discovered the Japanese surprise attack, they did not fire on the Japanese. And not only did they fail to open fire, but they left the scene and returned to the harbor entrance in order to report to headquarters. Because of this failure to open fire, the Russian ships anchored in the harbor slept on undisturbed. The Japanese destroyers then moved in on them with their torpedoes.

The actions of the two Russian warning vessels were unbelievably stupid, but they had their reasons for what they did. They had already been issued orders by Commander in Chief Stark that flew in the face of common sense. Captain Aleksandr Bubnov, the commander of the gunboat Bobr (950 tons), which was in the harbor at the time, described this later in his memoir, Port Arthur:

On the night in question the two warning vessels had received orders from Commander in Chief Stark not under any circumstances to fire even if they discovered a surprise attack being carried on by the enemy. If they discovered something suspicious, they were to return and report directly to the commander in chief. When they finally discovered the Japanese destroyers, they were amazed, but the commanders of the two ships obeyed their orders. They did not fire but returned quietly and, wanting to report to the commander in chief, approached his flagship.

By that time, the cruiser Pallada was sending up great columns of fire in the darkness far behind them.

The Japanese attack had begun.

The destroyers of this period were small ships, barely large enough to be termed “ships,” in fact, 200–300 tons at most. They carried only two torpedoes. The rule was “Fire, then flee.”

They were sailing in the dead of night. If, for example, the enemy ship that was their target was 2,000 meters away, a ship would need to carefully regulate its engines and cut through the waves at a speed of 12 knots. Time had to be measured using that fixed speed, and the distance to the enemy ship calculated minute by minute. When within 1,000 meters or so, a shape that might be the enemy vessel would be dimly seen through binoculars, even in the dead of night.

The cruiser Pallada (6,731 tons) had been torpedoed in the night attack on Port Arthur. No precautions had been taken before the attack that night. This was despite the fact that the ship had been ordered to leave port at dawn and go to the Tsushima Strait as a precautionary measure, since war seemed to be near. The evening before that planned departure, the Pallada was fully loaded with coal for fuel. Scheduled to leave port early the next day, it must have been somewhat on alert.

Several high-ranking officers of the ship were on land that night. One of the officers on duty on board was a young sublieutenant second class, just recently appointed; it was he who first saw the approaching group of Japanese destroyers. There were four in all. He didn’t think they could possibly be Japanese vessels. Each had four smokestacks. They looked very like the destroyers built at the Nevsky Shipyard in Russia.

“What are those destroyers?” he asked, turning toward the signalman. Just then, there was a flash of light from one of the unknown ships. Even this inexperienced sublieutenant second class realized that it was the flash that occurs when a torpedo is fired. He could also see the white wake left by the speeding torpedo.

“Torpedo to portside!” he shouted, but since the ship was at anchor, it could take no evasive action. Immediately, there was a great roar as if heaven and earth had been split apart, and the 6,731-ton Pallada was violently shaken, with its deck suddenly sloping upward. The ship listed to the right. The explosion raised a great column of seawater, which then collapsed and fell on the deck like a waterfall.

The ship was in tumult. Sailors and low-ranking officers raced about, and the gunners ran to their posts heedless of their officers’ orders, starting to fire haphazardly at the dark surface of the sea.

The scenes on the battleships Tsesarevich and Retvizan were much the same.

Gunfire came from all the ships in the harbor entrance, and the glare from over twenty searchlights began to sweep crazily over the surface of the water. But the Japanese destroyers had already scurried away, like so many mice.

However, the Japanese torpedo attack group too had proved itself very unskillful. It had fired twenty torpedoes in all, yet only inflicted heavy damage on two battleships and one cruiser, and even these three were able to return to service after two months’ repair. Given the excellent conditions that the Japanese ships were working under, this was an almost unthinkably poor showing.

The Russian viceroy for the Far East, Alexeyev, was at the time in Port Arthur. Wearing the formal uniform of an admiral, he was giving a party for his staff officers and civilian officials in a large room in Navy Hall. Even after the sound of firing came from the harbor entrance, he remained undisturbed, until the report on it came to him. And, when he learned that there had been a surprise torpedo attack by a group of Japanese destroyers, he continued to drink on in a quite relaxed way. Indeed, he asked the man who had brought the report, “Did the Japanese really attack, then?” with a dubious look. The messenger had to repeat that it had certainly been an attack by Japanese destroyers. No one was as completely certain of Russia’s greatness as Alexeyev. He had received a lot of information to the effect that Japan might be about to launch a war, yet he had neglected even to have the ships at the harbor entrance set up anti-torpedo nets. When his Naval Department suggested doing so, he had actually replied, “It’s too early for that, I’d say.”

Alexeyev had no reputation whatsoever as an able admiral of the navy, but he may have been very able as viceroy for the Far East, a political post. Even after learning of the Japanese surprise attack, he kept the party going. This may have partly been out of his utter contempt for the enemy—mere Japanese, after all; but it may largely have been out of concern not to upset his subordinates and injure their morale over the simple fact that destroyers from the Japanese fleet had intruded into the harbor entrance.

The highest-ranking officer of the Russian Army in Port Arthur was the commander of the fortifications, Lieutenant General Anatoly Mikhailovich Stoessel. He was in his official residence at the time of the sudden outburst of firing at the harbor entrance. Surprised, he merely asked about what had happened.

He took seriously the report that it was a naval exercise and, giving no orders regarding the fortifications, simply went to bed that night in his usual way. That night would be the last peaceful one he would know for some time. Incredibly, over an hour passed before the news of the first outbreak of firing was brought to Stoessel’s official residence by a most reliable messenger—Captain Dmitriyevsky, a high-ranking adjutant to Stoessel, who had received word of the attack from the viceroy’s staff. He told the orderly at the official residence to wake General Stoessel, but the orderly asked the captain himself to do this. And so the captain had to knock on the general’s bedroom door. Stoessel’s wife Vera Alekseyevna emerged.

“The Japanese have come to the harbor entrance,” the captain said, relaying to Madame Stoessel all the information he was sure of. At last, Stoessel roused himself and went to headquarters at two o’clock in the morning. His staff officers were already there.

Some of the greatest fortifications in the world were under Stoessel’s command, but there were as yet no plans for the efficient mobilization and movement of the forces inside if war broke out. This fact alone shows that Russia did not believe that Japan would ever rise up in an offensive assault.

The night Japan attacked Port Arthur, a telegram relaying the news was sent to St. Petersburg. Though the news came late at night, Nicholas II was not in a bad mood. The tsar, who longed for heroic ventures, had exactly the same attitude toward Asia and Japan as Viceroy Alexeyev. In fact, having heard so much positive propaganda regarding Russia’s great chances for expansion from his trusted minister Alexeyev, Nicholas must have thought that the war that the “monkeys” had launched would provide a brilliant start for the control of Asia that Russia had already embarked on. He never dreamed that the war would ultimately lead to a revolution ending in the cruel death of himself and his whole family.

In fact, the tsar must have been listening to Home Minister Plehve’s very particular “theories” about war and revolution. Plehve was one of the ministers who ingratiated himself with the military and was in charge of the domestic police force. His view was that “a small-scale war was absolutely necessary to sweep away the revolutionary feelings stirring in the hearts of the people at present. Of course we must win that war and show the trustworthiness of the imperial government.”

This view was not Plehve’s alone. Rather, it was a theory held in common by the political adventurers who were in cahoots with Plehve. The tsar was insensitive to the latent revolutionary feelings that Plehve was speaking of, but he must have listened to Plehve’s adventurist notions and surely thought that war would be advantageous to Russia, on both domestic and foreign fronts.

However, the pro-war “political adventurist group,” as Witte had called them, was represented in the cabinet by Plehve alone—they were not numerous. Even War Minister Kuropatkin was critical of Plehve and by no means wanted to hasten the war with Japan. The tsar, in short, was being pulled along by what was a minority opinion.

At dawn on February 9, the tsar issued a declaration of war, and a great prayer service was held in the Winter Palace. The Eastern Orthodox Church, which was the state religion of Russia, is richer in solemn liturgical forms than any other religion on earth, and the prayer service on this day was especially so. But, according to Witte, who attended the service, “The chapel was somehow wrapped in gloom, and people’s spirits were not raised by the service at all.”

But as the tsar was retiring after the service, General Bogdanovich, thinking perhaps to relieve the gloom, shouted “Hurrah!” in a loud voice. Witte says, however, that only a few people present shouted along with him. Even the aristocracy was either indifferent to this war in the distant Far East or was very nearly opposed to it. Moreover, among the general populace, it was clearly unpopular and cursed in many quarters. In order to improve popular morale, the Home Ministry gathered people together for meetings and parades of support, but still this did not raise people’s spirits in the least.

At nearly the same time, Tōgō was aboard ship on the Yellow Sea. Having learned the results of the previous night’s torpedo attack by the Japanese destroyer group, he telegraphed Tokyo: “Damage was inflicted on three large enemy vessels.” He was disappointed that none had been sunk.

At any rate, Tōgō approached Port Arthur at the head of the main naval force.

“I think that once or twice should do it,” Saneyuki said to Shimamura Hayao during the voyage. He was talking about how to carry out the attack on Port Arthur. Tōgō wanted desperately to destroy the fleet at Port Arthur prior to the Baltic Fleet’s arrival from Russia. Yet, if, in an excess of enthusiasm for the battle at Port Arthur, the Japanese side suffered major damage, it would be unable to fight the Baltic Fleet. Tōgō’s very difficult problem was how to sink the whole of the enemy fleet at Port Arthur while suffering no damage to his own ships.

The Russian fleet at Port Arthur did its best not to fall into this trap. Even though equipped with roughly the same naval strength as the Japanese side, it adopted a policy that might be termed “making the fleet a fortress.” This meant that the Russian fleet withdrew deep inside the harbor and, protected by the fortifications on land, took a passive posture. The artillery battles meant to drive Tōgō off were left entirely to the fortifications’ guns, while the fleet itself waited inside the harbor until the appearance of the Baltic Fleet, which the Russians knew would be coming at some point. If by any chance ships did venture from the harbor, they had all been ordered by Commander in Chief Stark to “stay within range of the fortifications’ artillery fire.” Stark’s strategy was arithmetically correct, but he failed to take into account morale, that very important element in warfare. His policy greatly diminished the morale of the fleet in Port Arthur.

Tōgō was on his way. His forces sailed in single-line formation with the Mikasa in the lead. The Asahi came next; then the Fuji, Yashima, Shikishima, and Hatsuse. Then came, from the Second Division, the Izumo, Azuma, Yakumo, Tokiwa, and Iwate; and, from the Third Division, the Chitose, Takasago, Kasagi, and Yoshino.

When the fleet neared the entrance to Port Arthur’s harbor, the protected cruiser Diana (6,731 tons), which happened to have ventured into the waters outside the harbor just then, discovered the Japanese fleet. Immediately, the Diana made a bold and provocative approach. It was a feint aimed at drawing the Japanese side within range of the fortifications’ artillery. Eventually, the Diana turned around and started to withdraw but fired its tail guns at the Mikasa as it fled. The Diana fired three times. Spray fell around the Mikasa, but none of the shells scored a hit. Tōgō was standing on the fore bridge. He had the crew raise the battle flag—the first time the flagship had done so. Then Tōgō ordered Saneyuki to have a line of signal flags raised as well. Soon the mast bore this message to the fleet: “Victory or defeat will be decided in this battle. Everyone, do your best!”

This naval engagement later came to be called “the battle outside Port Arthur Harbor.” It cannot be regarded as a real success for the Japanese side.

Tōgō was standing on the fore bridge, and he first caught sight of the enemy ships at the entrance to the harbor through his binoculars. These binoculars of his were the latest “8 magnification” model made by Zeiss—the only ones of this type in the whole Japanese Navy. Shimamura and Saneyuki, standing beside him, both had only old-fashioned “2 magnification” binoculars. So, of the three, Tōgō was always the first to sight the enemy.

“Ah, you can see them?” Perhaps the innate good nature of the large, sturdily built Shimamura caused him to put a note of admiration in this comment, which made all the staff officers relax a bit.

The Russians’ casual attitude was evident in the way their ships remained concentrated near the harbor entrance, just as they had been when attacked by Japanese torpedoes the previous night. It may have been inevitable that the three damaged vessels should remain stranded there, but most of the other ships also were still at anchor there. Seven battleships, seven cruisers, and a number of destroyers and gunboats were grouped there together.

Tōgō continued to observe them through his binoculars, but when the Japanese flagship came within 8,500 meters of the enemy ships, he had it change course. The ship was now moving from east to west so as to pass directly in front of the enemy. It was an intentional provocation. The enemy finally panicked. Some vessels rushed to raise anchor, while others tried to turn to the right, belching forth clouds of black smoke, and still others to the left, attempting to flee into the safety of the harbor. There was utter disorder and confusion.

Captain Bubnov of the Russian side left notes on what happened. A bit earlier, when four cruisers acting as a Japanese scouting party came to investigate the situation at the harbor entrance, the Russian small protected cruiser Boyarin (3,020 tons) suddenly appeared, sometimes pursuing and sometimes withdrawing. Captain Bubnov writes that “on the Russian side, the all-important commander in chief himself was not with the fleet.” Stark had been on board the flagship, but in the midst of it all, he was, oddly, summoned to attend on Viceroy Alexeyev, who wanted “a report on what is happening.” Alexeyev was, of course, in his official residence in the town of Port Arthur at the time. It would take a full hour for Vice Admiral Stark to make the round trip from the flagship. Stark left the ship, boarded a launch, and raced to the viceroy’s residence after landing in Port Arthur.

Meanwhile, Tōgō raised the battle flag over the Mikasa, fired test rounds from the ship’s forward 12-inch guns at a distance of 8,000 meters, and landed them all around the group of enemy ships. Then, at a distance of 7,500 meters, Tōgō ordered his entire fleet to fire an artillery barrage. It was nine minutes after noon.

The various gun emplacements that defended Port Arthur like a manyspined porcupine began to roar out their fire, and the Russian fleet in the harbor entrance started to shoot wildly. Among all these, the Dianqi Reef artillery was especially effective in its firing, and the Mikasa was immediately hit by three large shells, one of which scraped its mainmast, cutting the flag lines. The other shells injured seven men including a staff officer.

The warships at sea could exchange fire with the artillery in the land fortifications but were ultimately no match for them. That is an iron rule of combat. Tōgō did not want to fight against the fortifications at Port Arthur. Yet, without coming within range of the fortifications’ artillery, he could not fire shells against the Russian fleet inside the harbor.

“It’s a real problem for us,” Chief of Staff Shimamura was always complaining to Saneyuki.

“The enemy fleet will at some point go far into the harbor,” Saneyuki always replied. “At that point, we may have to blockade the harbor entrance.”

Tōgō, however, would not permit that. A strategy that forced one’s men to die showed the incompetence of the strategist; it was not, in fact, a strategy in the real sense. That seemed to be Tōgō’s point of view.

The naval battles continued. The Russians’ coastal artillery all blasted away, and their fleet too became more active. The Russian land and sea artillery together wrapped Tōgō’s fleet in fire and smoke and jets of water; the Japanese side too sent forth clouds of smoke as it fired away. The sea and sky darkened until the fleets of friend and foe became indistinguishable.

The first battle flag that the Mikasa raised was soon shot down, but it ran up a new flag at once. That too was torn away by a shell that came in rather high. The battleship Fuji, the third vessel in line, also received two hits, and its chief gunner died on the spot. In all, there were twelve dead and wounded on the Fuji. The Shikishima, the fifth battleship, was hit by one shell that wounded seventeen crewmen, including the chief navigator. The battleship Hatsuse, which was bringing up the rear, received two hits, and sixteen men, including its chief navigator, were killed or wounded. Human flesh was stuck to the mast, and the decks were awash with blood. Every ship was in a terrible state.

Nonetheless, Tōgō was unruffled. He led the fleet in a very long single file right past the entrance to the harbor, heading west. After passing just in front of the enemy, each of the ships changed direction one by one and moved southward. By the time the Mikasa, in the lead, had moved beyond the range of the enemy’s guns, the Combined Fleet’s Second Division (made up of armored cruisers), which belonged to the Second Squadron led by Kamimura Hikonojō, was passing just in front of the enemy and began an artillery barrage.

The Russian side too had its brave commanders. Nikolai von Essen, a young commander of German-Russian descent in charge of the small protected cruiser Novik (3,080 tons), was known on both sides for his valor and seamanship throughout the war. The seamen serving under him were a group of wild men whom the various ships in the Port Arthur Squadron had found too hard to handle. Von Essen knew how to control these crew members, and the morale on his ship was exceptionally high.

When the Novik with von Essen in command left the Russian ranks and suddenly moved in the direction of the Japanese Second Division, the Japanese side was surprised. A small protected cruiser’s armor plating was as thin as tin, and it had far more wooden sections than did a protected cruiser. One hit from an enemy shell would put paid to it. Von Essen seemed to have decided to attack in the manner of a Japanese warrior, without helmet or armor, clad only a fundoshi loincloth.

Von Essen’s aim was accurate, and the Second Division on the Japanese side suffered several severe hits.

“It’s like a falcon!” said Matsumoto Arinobu, the captain of the Yakumo, the third ship in the Second Division. He was stunned at the ferocity of the Novik’s solitary sally.

Though, of course, the Novik had the aid of the artillery from the fortifications to the rear, it was no more than a small protected cruiser just over 3,000 tons, while Japan’s Second Division, though consisting of cruisers only, was made up of large ships, all close to 10,000 tons. Moreover, there were five ships in all: the flagship Izumo in the lead, followed by the Azuma, Yakumo, Tokiwa, and Iwate. There was no way the Novik could win, and indeed the ships on the Japanese side ignored it and kept lobbing shells at the larger ships that were hiding far beyond the Novik.

Only the Yakumo decided to attack the Novik, ignored by all the others. Its main guns fired away, and the first shell hit the Novik’s central section, blowing away the structures on deck, yet, amazingly, the Novik didn’t falter but continued moving, firing its own guns.

The Yakumo grew stubborn, this large ship going after the small Russian ship, which was moving about like a hunting dog, and blasting away at it. But the more stubbornly the Yakumo attacked, the fewer hits it scored against the smaller ship. And soon the Yakumo slipped past the harbor entrance and moved out of firing range.

Kamimura, commander in chief of the Second Squadron, made the ships under his command turn, following the First Division under the direct command of Tōgō. The ships slowed as they turned, and this gave the Russians an opening. All the fortifications’ artillery roared out, and the ships of the Port Arthur Squadron near the harbor entrance increased the rate of their artillery fire as well. The Yakumo was hit by one shell and suffered one wounded. Another shell hit the Azuma, and its flag was torn away. The Iwate was hit by two shells, and ten men, including the chief gunner, were wounded. The Japanese Navy learned from bitter experience the terrible power of Port Arthur’s fortifications.

Far to the left, Laotie Hill at the tip of the Liaodong Peninsula showed white against the sky, with no fire from artillery to mar it, but all of the other peaks and shore reefs kept belching forth so much fire that they seemed to turn deep red. In particular, the artillery on Golden Hill and Dianqi Reef inflicted terrible damage.

“In comparison with Port Arthur, taking the fortifications at Santiago blockaded by the American forces was mere child’s play,” thought a surprised Saneyuki, who was the main strategist for the Japanese side.

In the midst of all this, only the Novik continued to dash about. After the Second Division had left, the Third Division next appeared on the scene. It was comprised of the Chitose (4,760 tons) as flagship and four protected cruisers. The Novik proceeded to attack these as well, joined by the protected cruiser Askold (5,905 tons). The joint attack was fierce, and the Third Division faced a crisis: fighting on meant the possible loss of one of its ships.

Tōgō, watching from afar, gave the order to escape. “The Third Division is to move beyond artillery range.” Tōgō was always thinking about the coming battle with the Baltic Fleet, and he did not want to lose even one ship until then. The Third Division hurried to escape, and eventually the entire Combined Fleet left the area.

Neither side lost a single ship in this first battle between the main forces of the Japanese and Russian fleets just outside the harbor of Port Arthur. The two sides were too far apart for the artillery to be used to good effect. Also, only when the Japanese fleet passed by the harbor entrance could the battle be joined, and that was only for about one hour. The brevity of the battle reduced the damage to both sides.

More Japanese shells had actually hit their target, but this could not be taken as proof of their superior artillery skills. The Japanese had attacked when the Russian ships were at anchor and not on alert. The Russians could not shift position until they finished lifting anchor and thus provided the Japanese with stable targets, easy to hit.

If we are to grade the Russian side, we have to say that one or two of the cruisers performed very well, while the battleships were all clumsily handled, perhaps because they were commanded by mostly elderly officers. The Russian naval forces did not in general respond forcefully; the army’s artillery barrage from the land fortifications was far better. Stoessel had reason to be proud of himself.

“Well, we failed,” Akiyama Saneyuki frankly told Shimamura as they sailed away from Port Arthur. The goal of the strategy had been to lure the enemy out, but that had not happened.

The Russians, however, saw that this battle had a remarkably bad effect on their Russian sailors’ morale. Viceroy Alexeyev had ordered them “not to go beyond the range of our land artillery.” That was why, even though the Russian sailors had fired so many shells, they could not escape the feeling that they had been helplessly pounded by the Japanese side. When the Japanese fleet turned tail and fled, the Russian forces were not able to give chase. This was very damaging to the Russian sailors psychologically.

Pavel Stepanovich Nakhimov, whose name has gone down in Russian naval history as a great admiral, led the Black Sea Fleet in fighting the Turkish fleet during the Crimean War in 1853 and won. Later, he was to be mortally wounded, but the advice he left is famous: “Whenever you find the enemy, you should attack. You should not stop to compare your relative strength and the enemy’s.” The head of the Russian Navy at Port Arthur forgot this, and, from an excess of prudence in preserving his fleet, forgot too that to cause a loss of morale in one’s own men is a far graver matter and inflicts far greater damage than the loss of two or three warships.

Tōgō made the area just outside Inch’ŏn Harbor in Korea his base and took his fleet there. “Since you’re faced with an enemy that doesn’t want to move,” he instructed the assembled commanders of the various divisions, “you’re going to need great patience to get them out onto the open seas. You’ll also have to bombard them constantly and fiercely.”

Two days later, the weather grew worse. Great waves roiled over the ocean. The winds were strong, and it even snowed. In spite of this, the small 375-ton destroyers Hayatori and Asagiri set out on a difficult voyage through the rough seas, pushing through the Yellow Sea until they reached Port Arthur Harbor. Immediately, they fired torpedoes and then fled back across the Yellow Sea. Later, the Japanese learned that the flagship Petropavlosk had been severely damaged, which again weakened the morale of the Russian squadron sitting there in the harbor.

It had not, in fact, been Akiyama Saneyuki who first strongly suggested the emergency strategy of “blockading Port Arthur,” even though he had been a careful witness of the American blockade of Santiago Harbor and had written the scientific report that had amazed the Naval Ministry. He was, in that sense, the only authority in Japan on the special strategy that the Americans had planned and executed at Santiago. The view that “Akiyama really knows about blockades” may have been one small reason for his being selected to be one of the fleet’s staff officers. In the event of war with Russia, the navy’s first-stage strategy would of course have been a battle over Port Arthur Harbor. There had been talk of plans for “a blocking operation” at the Navy General Staff from early on. This meant sinking several decrepit ships at the entrance to the harbor and physically penning the enemy fleet inside by capping the “mouth of the bottle.”

The entrance to the harbor at Port Arthur was very narrow. It was only 273 meters wide, and, since there were shallows on both sides of this channel, a large ship could only leave or enter at the channel’s very center, with a width of only 91 meters. The idea was to block that area by sinking five or six old ships side by side there.

Tōgō’s vice chief of staff Arima Ryōkitsu and Lieutenant Commander Hirose Takeo, in charge of torpedoes on the battleship Asahi, had been insisting since before the war began that “a blockade is the only way to go.”

Arima took the lead; he was very good at getting things done. “Stop arguing and start preparing!” he said, and prior to the war, while the fleet was still at Sasebo, he had been making preparations in a semi-official way. Tōgō’s attitude to this was always noncommittal. Arima even chose five steamships, prepared the explosives, and packed them on board. He was helped in all this by one of Tōgō’s other staff officers, Lieutenant Matsumura Kikuo. Though staff officers, these two intended to command the task force assigned to the mission. Tōgō wasn’t happy about that either.

On February 9, Matsumura was wounded on the aft bridge of the Mikasa during the first attack on Port Arthur by the Combined Fleet and sent to the naval hospital at Sasebo. Arima, therefore, was in need of an officer to take Matsumura’s place. He raised the matter with Hirose, who had been thinking of the same thing for some time and now agreed without raising a single objection.

Saneyuki, however, the sole “authority” on blockades, was doubtful about the idea. Once he understood the full extent of Port Arthur’s fortifications, he raised objections. “A blockade was possible at the port of Santiago, but Port Arthur is a different story. It has a thousand times the firing power of Santiago, and, first and foremost, we’re dealing with a major Russian fleet, not a Spanish one. If we go ahead with this blockade, some of our men will certainly die.” Saneyuki always said that “the best strategy is the least bloody one.” So he was cold to the idea of a blockade, but, doubtful though he was, he could not directly oppose a plan that Arima, a staff officer senior to him, was so eager to carry out.

And yet Saneyuki’s ideas seemed to swing back and forth like a pendulum. At times, he thought, “Perhaps a blockade is the only thing to do.” His indecisiveness on this matter is rather strange, given his resolute character. The staff officers are regarded as the principal planners of wars and battles. They must change their plans moment by moment according to how the fight is going, which changes moment by moment. The task force then has to carry out the plans moment by moment. A good or a bad plan determines the number of men who die carrying it out.

“Strategy is the most terrifying thing of all,” Saneyuki often said. He hated bloodshed to a degree that may have made him a bit unsuitable as a military man, and, after the Russo-Japanese War had ended, he declared, “I want to leave the military.” He thought of becoming a Buddhist priest so he could devote himself to prayer for the souls of those who had been killed as a result of his strategies. The Naval Ministry hurried to mobilize people who were close to Saneyuki to convince him to stay on, but he wouldn’t listen, and some people thought for a time that he had gone mad. At any rate, it would have meant trouble for the Naval Ministry had Saneyuki actually become a priest. If they had gone along with his reasoning on this point, then, every time a war ended, there would be a great rush to the clergy.

Given his dislike of bloodshed, he was not in favor of the blockade strategy, even though he was uniquely expert in that field. “If you want a strategy that depends on luck and the deaths of a large number of your men,” he occasionally said outright, “then there’s no real need for a strategist.”

As an advocate of the blockade strategy from the very beginning, Arima argued, “There is nothing wrong with such a plan if I, as the planner, am willing to put myself in mortal danger by leading the mission—what you could call acting on ‘a reason beyond reason.’”

The blockade was finally ordered on February 18, and very careful preparations were made for the operation. As part of these, the commanders of the various task force squads were assembled on board the Mikasa.

At the meeting, Saneyuki had some very discouraging things to say. “If midway the Russians discover what we’re doing, and heavy shelling begins, I suggest that the squads withdraw and put the mission off till another time.”

“Don’t talk like that!” Hirose Takeo, who would be leading the task force, stood up to object. “We can’t adopt such a weak and negative attitude in this operation. ‘If one acts with resolve, even the demons will give way’—that’s the attitude to take. Of course the Russians will start heavy shelling. The only way to succeed in this is to push on and push on to the death. If we follow your advice, we’ll never make it, no matter how often we try.”

In the end, Tōgō made the decision—a compromise. “We’ll leave the decision as to whether to come back to base or proceed with the mission to the commanders on the spot.” Next was the problem of how to evacuate the task force, and in this Tōgō took the safest course. Each steamship would be accompanied by a torpedo boat that would wait just outside the entrance to the harbor until the mission was completed and then evacuate the task force members. The actual planning of the blockade was assigned to Arima Ryōkitsu and Hirose Takeo.

Five steamships were to be sunk at the harbor entrance: the Tenshin Maru, Hōkoku Maru, Jinsen Maru, Buyō Maru, and Bushū Maru. Fourteen or fifteen men would be aboard each of these ships. Leaving aside the commanders and chief engineers, a total of sixty-seven men would be needed. Petty officers and below would be recruited from the whole Combined Fleet. In the event, Arima and Hirose were amazed to find that two thousand men applied immediately. Some of them had written their requests to join the task force in their own blood.

“We’ll win this war,” Hirose told Saneyuki. He pointed out that the officers had put themselves forward for the military when still very young, received excellent treatment, and trained themselves to die in battle, whereas the ordinary sailors had come from purely civilian backgrounds, to use the term commonly employed abroad. They too had volunteered with much enthusiasm, proving that this was a “people’s war.” Hirose could say this because he knew so much about Russia. He had returned to Japan before the war began, so he didn’t know exactly what was happening in Russia now that the war had begun, but he had some idea of how things must be. The people of imperial Russia were not so simpleminded as to rejoice at this foreign invasion, carried out to preserve the tsar’s new properties in China. In the cities of Russia, there was already some revolutionary feeling, and the imperial regime itself was in danger. Hirose was aware of all this.

From the two thousand volunteers, sixty-seven men were chosen on the basis of who had the fewest living relatives. At six o’clock in the evening on February 19, Tōgō invited the officers of the blockade task force on board the Mikasa for a farewell banquet. Hirose was of course one of the honored guests, and Saneyuki attended as one of those saying farewell.

“Your task will be a hard one.” Tōgō rose slowly to his feet and raised a glass of champagne after everyone was seated at the table. He spoke in a low voice. “I am hoping for your complete success.” It was quite a long speech for so reticent a man as Tōgō. “I am hoping for your complete success,” he had said, but it is doubtful how confident he was in his heart of the chances of success. Even Arima Ryōkitsu concealed strong doubts inside.

The blockade plan was to be carried out at night, and, since they would be working in the dark, their intuitive feel for the situation would determine whether things went well or not. Arima’s plan had been to make their approach quickly just before dawn and begin the actual work as the darkness gradually lifted. This meant that they would carry on their mission in sunlight, and every member of the task force would probably die under enemy shelling. But Tōgō had the time of the operation changed so it would be carried out at night. After the job was done, everyone could be picked up safely under cover of darkness. This meant that the chances of the men returning alive from their mission were greatly increased, but the likelihood of success in blowing up the old steamships and blocking the channel was reduced to that same degree.

It had been decided that Hirose Takeo would command the Hōkoku Maru (2,400 tons). The chief engineer would be Kurita Tomitarō, and the crew members would number fourteen in all. This old steamship had already been loaded with rocks and concrete to make sure it would sink. The explosive devices had already been set by another technical expert.

Yashiro Rokurō, whom Hirose and Saneyuki both looked up to as an elder brother figure, commanded the armored cruiser Asama, the ship that had attacked the Varyag and the Koriets.

Yashiro was fond of Hirose. When he learned that Hirose was one of the five commanders of the blockade task force, he immediately dispatched a letter by courier boat to Hirose on the battleship Asahi. When Hirose opened the letter, he found this message: “If you should die in this action, you would exemplify the saying, ‘He who seeks virtue finds virtue.’ The future of our nation will be glorious, without question. You need have no worries; you can die with an easy mind.” Yashiro, who was known as “the brave hero of the Japanese Navy,” had a fine epistolary style, and after his death a book entitled Collected Letters of Navy Admiral Yashiro Rokurō was published, in 1941.

The message to Hirose is simple but has a meaningful background. After the Meiji Restoration, the clan domains were dissolved, the privileges of the samurai class were abolished, and a conscription system was introduced. Thus, men of both samurai and commoner origins entered the military, and for the first time in Japanese history a popular nation-state came to exist, at least formally. Yet in reality the consciousness of being a member of such a nation-state was still amorphous. As a result of the First Sino-Japanese War, such feelings became stronger, but even then soldiers of commoner origin still only faintly sensed a duty to volunteer to serve their country in its time of need.

Then ten years later, the Russo-Japanese War began, and at the very start there was the call for volunteers for the blockade task force. Yashiro assumed there would be no more than about one hundred volunteers, yet some two thousand men came forward. For the first time in post-Restoration Japan, a truly national feeling had emerged as a result of this undertaking—that was Yashiro Rokurō’s view.

That was why he wrote, “The future of our nation will be glorious, without question.”

Yashiro and Hirose had originally been brought together by their shared love of judo. Later, their mutual study of the Russian language deepened their friendship, and, when both of them were posted to St. Petersburg as military attachés around the same time, they came to regard themselves as closer than brothers. They were similar in temperament, and their shared interest in classical Chinese poetry also must have drawn them together. One day, as they were on their way to the Japanese embassy in St. Petersburg, Yashiro suddenly chanted a line of Chinese poetry rendered into Japanese: “The Great Wall did not keep out the Huns . . . ” He then demanded that Hirose turn it into a haiku as they took the next thirty steps. They had not taken more than five or six steps when Hirose turned to Yashiro and recited: “They built a hedge/ not knowing that the robber/ was among their sons.” Yashiro was filled with admiration.

While in Russia, Hirose had translated several poems of Pushkin into classical Chinese and had devoted himself to reading Nikolai Gogol’s Taras Bulba, as well as all the works of A. K. Tolstoy. He was one of the first Japanese to be able to read Russian literature in the original.

Hirose Takeo remained single all his life. When not at sea, he spent most of his time on judo practice. There is no evidence that he played around with geisha or the like while in Kure and Sasebo. It may well be that in the thirty-seven years of his life he never had intimate relations with a woman.

“He was a happy, good-natured man,” said Takeshita Yūjirō, his onetime classmate at the Navy Academy, “and very kind to his subordinates, so the ships he was on all had a bright, cheery sort of atmosphere. They performed well too.”

Even if Hirose himself made a point of not getting too close to women, he was popular in their circles as is evidenced by the beautiful Ariadna Kovalevskaya’s great love for him. She was the daughter of Rear Admiral Count Vladimir Kovalevsky, who had accepted Hirose as one of his closest family friends. Ariadna was a highly literate young woman of St. Petersburg, famed for her intelligence and beauty among the single officers of the Russian Navy. During the nearly five years of Hirose’s stay in St. Petersburg, she was unable to think of any man but him. The letters they exchanged show that Hirose too became extraordinarily fond of her. Ariadna would send him poems she had written in Russian, and he would respond with classical Chinese poems, with a Russian translation attached. This exchange of letters, reminiscent of love poems received and sent by ancient Japanese in the eighth-century Man’yōshū anthology, has been examined by Shimada Kinji in his Hirose Takeo in Russia.

This romantic relationship ended with Hirose’s return to Japan, but before noon on the day he set out for Port Arthur on the Hōkoku Maru blockade mission, he sat in the commander’s room and first wrote a final letter to his beloved Ariadna, whom he thought he would never meet again on this earth. We have no way of knowing what he actually wrote to her. Sent by courier boat to the Combined Fleet and then on via a neutral country’s post, it would eventually arrive in St. Petersburg.

Hirose was also much loved by Dr. Pavlov and his family in St. Petersburg. Boris Vilkitsky, a young cadet just graduated from the Naval Academy, was a frequent guest at the Pavlovs’, and he looked up to Hirose as an elder brother, calling him “Take-niisan”—Older Brother Take. When the time came for Hirose to return to Japan, he made the following promise to the Russian youth at a farewell party at the Pavlov home: “It might happen at some point in the future that Russia and Japan will have the misfortune to fight each other. Each of us will want to fight to the end with all his strength for his own fatherland, but I want us to remain friends for life, whatever happens. Even if it comes to war, let’s keep in touch and make sure we know each other’s whereabouts.”

And, in fact, Hirose knew what became of young Boris Vilkitsky and where he was. He was later commissioned as a sublieutenant second class and assigned to a battleship. Leaving aside the matter of whether it was Vilkitsky’s good fortune or bad, that battleship was the newest and largest in the Russian Navy, the Tsesarevich (12,912 tons). Shortly after the sublieutenant second class joined it, the battleship was sent to the Far East and entered the harbor of Port Arthur. This was at the end of the year before the war began. Vilkitsky kept his promise to Hirose and immediately sent a letter to Sasebo, where he thought Hirose was likely to be: “I am in Port Arthur, on board the battleship Tsesarevich.”

Hirose had read this letter in the torpedo section chief’s office aboard the battleship Asahi, which was at anchor in Sasebo. With intense emotion, he recalled all those who had been so kind to him when he was in St. Petersburg. He thought particularly of Ariadna, who had been the only woman in his life. Hirose had an excellent memory, and he could recite by heart all of the love poems that Ariadna had sent him. He had been very busy at that time, and he couldn’t reply to Sublieutenant Second Class Vilkitsky in Port Arthur just then. Very shortly after that, the war began.

Because the Tsesarevich had its hull damaged during that nighttime torpedo attack launched by the Japanese Navy at the very start of the war, it was left stranded in the harbor. Hirose’s Asahi had participated when, on the ninth, the day after the torpedo attack, the Japanese Combined Fleet had approached the waters outside Port Arthur and, from the great distance of 6,000 meters, fired the massive artillery of its battleships on the Russian fleet near the harbor entrance. He had looked for the Tsesarevich, but the battleship Retvizan, heavily damaged and listing stranded in front of him, blocked his sight.

Vilkitsky was aboard the newly constructed ship that now sat stranded in the harbor shoals. When the Japanese Combined Fleet approached, the Tsesarevich, though run aground, kept up ceaseless fire from its 6-inch guns. What Hirose and Vilkitsky had secretly feared that night in St. Petersburg had now become a reality.

Aboard the Hōkoku Maru, Hirose also wrote to Boris Vilkitsky in Port Arthur, and we know the contents of this letter. As Hirose was writing it, Lieutenant Commander Katō Hiroharu of the Asahi, who had been with Hirose for a time in Russia, came by, and Hirose told him what he was writing. “I truly regret that we are now engaged in hostilities with your country. Yet, even as each of us does his utmost on behalf of his own nation, there is no change in our personal friendship. I was on board the warship Asahi on the ninth and engaged in intense shelling of your country’s fleet. Even that seems extraordinary, given our friendship, and now I am in command of the Hōkoku Maru, which we plan to use to blockade your harbor. Dear friend, be well!”

This letter too was sent off by courier boat and reached Vilkitsky some months later, via a neutral country.

The five ships of the blockade task force assembled 20 nautical miles southeast of Round Island at the twilight of February 23. They would all leave from here but pursue their own courses to Port Arthur. The Combined Fleet was also gathered there to see them off. When the time for departure came, a band aboard the Mikasa played music, and the crew members aboard each ship of the Combined Fleet gathered on deck to salute and give three cheers of “Banzai!”

The First Destroyer Division, which would act as defense for the five steamships, took the lead, while the Fourteenth Torpedo Boat Division, comprised of four torpedo boats including the Chidori, served as a defensive group to the right of the five steamers, and the Ninth Torpedo Boat Division followed. The sun went down and the moon, waxing, rose. Compared to the previous day, which had been so rough and windy, the sea was calm. With Arima Ryōkitsu on board, the Tenshin Maru was the first of the five ships, followed by Hirose’s Hōkoku Maru, the Jinsen Maru, the Buyō Maru, and the Bushū Maru.

Hirose had his evening meal on the bridge. The secret ocean charts and other important documents had already been burned, and there was nothing particular to do after dinner.

“What do you think, Kurita?” asked Hirose. “I’d like to write something to commemorate this . . . ” Only Hirose himself, however, knew what he really meant. He wanted to wrap a large piece of cloth over the bridge and paint some words on it.

“What is there to commemorate?” wondered Kurita, but he helped Hirose to do what he wanted. What Hirose wrote in large letters on the cloth was a line in Russian, which the two of them wrapped around the bridge. When the ship was sunk at the harbor entrance, probably only the bridge would appear above the waterline, and the Russians would read it.

“What did you write?” asked Senior Engineer Kurita. As Kurita recalled in later years, the expression on Hirose’s face was a mixture of pleasure and a strange embarrassment. The original is of course no longer extant, but, according to what Hirose said to Kurita at the time, the meaning was “This is Hirose Takeo of Japan. I’ve come to blockade your harbor. But this is only the first time—I may be back many times after this.”

After the Hōkoku Maru sank, the Russians read this message. Captain Bubnov recorded the message as follows: “Respected Gentlemen of the Russian Navy, please remember me—Lieutenant Hirose Takeo of the Japanese Navy. I have come here aboard the Hōkoku Maru. I intend to come several times again!”

Hirose wrote this because he assumed that many of his acquaintances from St. Petersburg would see it. Moreover, he probably assumed that the news of this inscription, making its way to St. Petersburg, would serve as a final word of farewell to his Ariadna as well.

This came to be called the first blocking operation. It didn’t produce much in the way of results. The moon had set at about thirty minutes after midnight, and the sea was very dark. In place of the moonlight, the searchlights of the enemy began to flash here and there. The searchlights from the gun emplacements on Golden, Chengtou, and Baiyin hills swept over the surface of the water outside the harbor entrance, denying access to even the tiniest thing.

“When the glare of the many searchlights that had been sweeping the waters suddenly focused on one spot,” Aleksandr Stepanov wrote in Port Arthur, “our side discovered a large steamship there. It was creeping along the coast just under Laotie Hill, making for the harbor entrance.” This steamship was the Tenshin Maru. The beams from numerous searchlights fastened on the Tenshin Maru, and shells rained down on the helpless victim from all the gun emplacements. The steamship’s decks became a living hell, with shells bursting all around and explosions on board from direct hits. The glare from the searchlights blinded the pilots of the ship, and they didn’t know where they should be heading. Thus, they were unable to reach the harbor entrance, with the prow of the steamship running up against the rocky reef beneath Laotie Hill, still far from their goal. They became stranded there. Arima believed that their situation was hopeless. It was rather pointless, but he decided to blow the ship up then and there.

Then the other steamships started to arrive. “To starboard, to starboard!” Arima shouted to them from the Tenshin Maru’s deck. Hirose’s Hōkoku Maru turned sharply to the right, and the Jinsen Maru did so as well. The gun emplacements roared out and concentrated their fire on both the Hōkoku Maru and the Jinsen Maru. The Hōkoku Maru alone succeeded in getting just below the lighthouse at the harbor entrance, where it ran aground but was far from being able to block the channel. The Jinsen Maru, which was following Hirose’s ship, turned too sharply to the right and lost its way for a time, ultimately sinking at a point rather distant from the harbor entrance.

Next came the Buyō Maru under the command of Lieutenant Masaki Yoshimoto. It struggled forward under a hail of shells until it saw a ship that had run aground just ahead. This was the lead ship the Tenshin Maru. The commander thought, mistakenly, that they may have arrived at the entrance to the harbor. Soon he realized his error and that the Tenshin Maru had become stranded while attempting to move forward. As the Buyō Maru moved past the other ship, the final ship in the convoy, the Bushū Maru, came up very unsteadily from behind. Helm broken by an enemy shell, it could no longer control its course. But Masaki was unaware of his sister ship’s true condition. The Bushū Maru could no longer keep to a course, so it blew itself up near the western entrance of the harbor.

“That must be the entrance to the harbor proper,” Masaki wrongly concluded. Apart from this misapprehension, his management of the situation was very cool and composed. He brought his ship up alongside the Bushū Maru and halted there. Then he opened the Kingston valves and sank his own ship.

“To prepare five unarmed steamships and send them to blockade an enemy port is an unprecedented measure. Its effectiveness is of course not to be judged solely on what was achieved.” Chief of the Navy General Staff Itō Sukeyuki sent this telegram of congratulations to Tōgō after the event.

This first attempt at blockade ended essentially in failure, but the injuries among the crew were unexpectedly light. Tōgō was pleased at this. He accepted Arima Ryōkitsu’s request via Chief of Staff Shimamura to “continue the attempts.” Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo also took concrete steps to support this decision and immediately began preparing more steamships for the blockade. The vessels were dilapidated and so cost very little. What did cost money was loading them with rocks and cement, and fitting them with explosive devices. Even this represented a notable financial burden given Japan’s wartime fiscal conditions.

Four ships were chosen for the second attempt. The commanders were the same as the first time. The policy was not to permit ordinary crew members to take such a risk a second time, whereas officers could go any number of times. The commander in chief of the squad was Arima Ryōkitsu; the other commanders were Hirose Takeo, Saitō Shichigorō, and Masaki Yoshimoto.

“The enemy will be prepared this time,” Saneyuki said to Hirose, who was visiting the Mikasa. It wouldn’t be like the first time, when the other side was caught unawares. “And Vice Admiral Makarov should soon be taking charge at Port Arthur. The morale of the men there will have received a tremendous boost.”

Vice Admiral Stepan Osipovich Makarov could be called the greatest treasure of the Russian Navy. He was a true Slav, and what made him so exceptional a figure in the Russian Navy was that he was not of aristocratic background but a commoner. He rose from the ranks of sailors during the navy’s sailing ship days but he was not a simple, practical man of the sort that is often seen among those who rise from the ranks. On the contrary, no other European navy could boast so great a theorist as he. His method was to abstract a theory from reality, then return to the reality to rework the theory, and to repeat this process over and over until an appropriate system could be evolved. His On Strategy was world famous, and Saneyuki had read it thoroughly in his student days. Makarov’s works were not limited to naval strategy, by the way; he wrote on oceanography and the science of shipbuilding as well. He may well be termed the most able scholar that Russia had at the time.

In addition, this scholar was exceedingly muscular in build, quicker than anyone in climbing a mast when he was young. He was the type of man who, if asked, could handle every kind of work aboard ship, from stoker to commander in chief. Due to this and to his commoner origins, he was immensely popular with the petty officers and seamen. He assumed command at Port Arthur on March 8, replacing Commander Stark. He was an extremely dynamic head of command, and the morale of the Port Arthur Squadron rose to an astonishing degree with his appointment.

Hirose had met Makarov, then serving as chief of the naval station at Kronstadt. “He was a very energetic old man,” Hirose told Saneyuki. That Hirose should now be taking the blockships to Port Arthur, which was being guarded by Vice Admiral Makarov, a man he knew, was in itself a strange twist of fate. Still more strange was the fact that Makarov knew exactly the day Hirose would come, and how many ships he would bring with him for the second blockade.

The term, Ro-tan, “Russian spy,” was often heard in Japan at that time. Russian spies were apparently very active in Tokyo and Sasebo, though there was little concrete evidence even after the war. Such information networks had kept Port Arthur informed about the attempt at a second blockade. All the Port Arthur authorities had to do was lie in wait for it. Makarov did everything possible to prepare. For example, in order to prevent the blockships from approaching the harbor entrance, the Russians themselves sank steamships in the area where the Japanese ships seemed likely to come. Makarov himself oversaw the operation on the spot, and the Hailar and Harbin were sunk there. Mines were also laid, and two destroyer divisions were put in place to prevent any blockade.

The Japanese side, learning from its earlier failure, installed two machine guns on the foredecks of each blockship to offer resistance to any enemy destroyers that might obstruct the Japanese vessels around the harbor entrance.

March 24 was set as the date of departure from the Japanese fleet’s base area, but the whole area was engulfed in thick fog, the wind was fierce, and the waves high on that day, so the departure was postponed. Saneyuki went to see Hirose on board the Fukui Maru that day. Hirose was waiting for him in the ship’s “saloon,” by the stove.

“If you’re overwhelmed by enemy fire, come right back.” Saneyuki warmed himself by the stove and repeated what he had already advised Hirose.

“That’s what you keep telling me,” Hirose answered. “A strike force is different from a strategic planner—we mustn’t expect to come back alive. The key to victory is to press on, no matter what.”

At half past six in the evening on March 26, the four blockships left the base area. At two in the morning on the twenty-seventh, they went into a single-line formation as soon as they came just south of Laotie Hill, with the Chiyo Maru in the lead, followed by the Fukui Maru, Yahiko Maru, and Yoneyama Maru. They then proceeded toward the Port Arthur Harbor entrance. The night fog was rather heavy and made the moonlight hazy. Conditions were good for setting up the blockade. Each of the ships “pressed on,” to use Hirose’s words.

At half past three in the morning, the searchlights of the Port Arthur fortifications discovered the Chiyo Maru in the lead. The sky and sea were enveloped in flashes of light and the roar of artillery.

“We knew of this enemy attack several days beforehand,” a Russian history of the war relates. “Two sentry ships were watching the sea, while maintaining constant contact with the artillery on land. At ten minutes after two in the morning”—a time different from that given by the Japanese side—“our artillery’s searchlights discovered ships approaching, raising waves as they moved over the dark sea. The Chiyo Maru was in the lead, followed at some distance by the other three vessels in a single-line formation. The enemy ships were able to establish a formation and maintain their progress in the correct direction despite the darkness of the night. Our land artillery and the various ships all rained intense fire on the Japanese, but the damage was slight, and the enemy ships kept coming on, maintaining the same course.”

The first ship, under Arima’s command, was blinded by the constant glare of the Russian searchlights, as it had been on the first attempt, and once again lost its sense of where the harbor entrance actually was. Arima’s ship veered too far to the right of the harbor entrance, entering a channel near the shore beneath Golden Hill. His ship cast anchor with its prow landward, then blew itself up, and sank.

Hirose, watching this from the second ship, the Fukui Maru, believed that this had occurred at the harbor entrance. He moved his ship up to the left of the Chiyo Maru and was trying to cast anchor when a Russian destroyer approached and launched a torpedo. It made a direct hit on the Japanese ship’s prow, causing a huge explosion and ripping open the hull. At once, water poured in, and the Fukui Maru began to sink.

Nonetheless, the Japanese crew was able to escape in time. They lowered a lifeboat, as had been planned. The crew had been told to assemble on the aft deck after the operation was finished, and they did so. According to Senior Engineer Kurita Tomitarō’s later account, Hirose went around checking all relevant areas of the ship and then, arriving at the assembly point last of all, shouted in his lively, rather high-pitched voice, “Okay, okay—is everyone here?” and ordered them to call out their numbers. Some men were already in the lifeboat. Checking their numbers, it became clear that Superior Petty Officer Sugino was missing. He had been working on the foredeck when the explosion occurred.

“Sugino! Sugino!” shouted Hirose as he ran about the upper deck with the sailors who had not yet evacuated.

Shells large and small were exploding around them, and the enemy searchlights revealed everything. It was a horrific sight, not of this world.

Everyone returned to the aft deck and started to search again. Hirose asked each of the crewmen, but none had seen Sugino in the course of the mission.

“Superior Petty Officer Sugino must have been blown off the ship when the enemy torpedo hit us.” Only Petty Officer Iimure Nakanosuke ventured to speculate. But that was merely a surmise.

“Sugino! Sugino!” Shouting, Hirose set off on a third search for Sugino. He ran toward the foredeck. As Hirose’s voice grew distant, there seemed less and less hope, Kurita said later. Hirose did not return for a long time. It seems he went into the hull to look for the missing petty officer. By the time he came back, the water was at everyone’s feet.

“We’re sinking!” Kurita could not stop himself from exclaiming.

Hirose at last gave up on Sugino and ordered the explosives to be prepared. The whole crew shifted to the lifeboats. The long explosive fuse extended far, even to the lifeboat. The lifeboat moved away from the ship, and, when it was about four or five boat-lengths away, Hirose himself pressed the switch. The aft portion of the ship was blown up splendidly.

All that was left to them was to keep rowing the lifeboat. Hirose sat on the rearmost portion of the right gunwale wearing a mantle on top of his overcoat, shouting encouragement to the crew members, some nearly immobilized by sheer terror. “Look me in the face, all of you! Look at me, and row!” The enemy searchlights continued to fix on the lifeboat. Both shells and bullets fell all around them, seeming to bring the waters to a boil.

Just then Hirose vanished. A huge shell flew across the lifeboat, sweeping him away. It happened so quickly that even Iimure, who was sitting next to him, holding the tiller, didn’t notice.

When news of Hirose’s death reached St. Petersburg, his beloved Ariadna, though the daughter of a count and rear admiral in the Russian Navy, went into deep mourning, wearing black for the Japanese naval officer whom she had hoped to marry.