9

MAKAROV

A great military leader is surely one who can vastly improve morale and thus perform a “group miracle.” Vice Admiral Makarov of the Russian Navy was just such a man. After his assumption of command in Port Arthur at the beginning of March, the Port Arthur Squadron changed from what it had been under Stark.

During this period, a humorous song called “Old Man Makarov” was popular among the sailors. One of the sailors had composed the song, and, when the men got together to drink vodka, they always sang that song in chorus.

“Do just what Makarov says, and Russia will be victorious” was the confident belief that spread, not so much among the officers, as among the petty officers and ordinary seamen. Makarov was not just famous worldwide as a naval strategist, but as a commander in chief who had risen from the ranks of the sailors, he clearly felt himself a father to his men. Rather than stay cooped up in his office, he pushed himself spiritually and physically to move from ship to ship, giving appropriate directives and commands to everyone from the ship captains on down, and then seeing to it that his directives were carried out.

Makarov was more physically active than any ordinary sailor. Until he took command, the Port Arthur Squadron was criticized by the army officers and men in the fortifications. “The cowardly navy,” they would say, or “They’re just ducks waiting to sink themselves in the puddle of Port Arthur!”

But as soon as Makarov took over, he made his policy clear to the entire squadron. “Why can’t we go out onto the open sea?” His predecessor Stark never bothered to explain the reason for this to the ordinary sailors. Makarov did.

The Port Arthur Squadron was awaiting the arrival of the Baltic Fleet. When it arrived, the two Russian fleets would combine forces and attack Tōgō’s single fleet. Until then, the Port Arthur Squadron was to be circumspect, staying in the harbor. Up to this point, Makarov’s policy was no different from Stark’s.

“But I will not simply sit here and do nothing,” Makarov declared. “We’ll go out a short distance to attack as often as possible, sink as many of Tōgō’s ships as possible, and that way we’ll gain the advantage in the great sea battle to come.”

The sailors were thrilled at this grand strategy.

“Here’s what we’ll do,” the vice admiral continued. “We’ll keep a group of ships at the harbor entrance to protect the channel, and we’ll make use of the cruisers’ speed to attack the Japanese. Make sure the cruisers’ boilers are always fired up so we can leave harbor whenever necessary.”

Normally, such policies, tactics, and stratagems are not communicated to ordinary sailors, since such matters are regarded as beyond them. That was particularly true in the Russian Navy. Makarov’s method of command, however, involved letting all the sailors understand what they were doing and what they were expected to do. By making everyone aware of his strategic goals, Makarov aimed at increasing their will to fight. At this period, when the nineteenth century had just ended, Makarov’s approach was truly innovative.

Makarov was somewhat old, but he hadn’t a trace of an old man’s excessive prudence or concern about his own dignity. “Most old men don’t react to things,” he was always saying, “and seem always calm and peaceful. That’s just because they’ve lost the flexibility of mind that would enable them to react—it has nothing to do with ‘the dignity of age.’” The whole world acknowledged that Makarov possessed immense intelligence, but the true miracle was that someone of his age should have muscular abilities and agility even surpassing his intellectual skills. Throughout the world’s navies, the commander in chief used a battleship as his flagship, but Makarov used to say, “How can anyone command an entire fleet aboard a slow, heavy vessel like a battleship? A fast-moving cruiser should be the flagship.”

This was to some extent an extreme view, as Makarov himself well understood. A battleship is so well armored with thick plating that a cruiser can’t compare with it in defensive capability. Even a crushing blow is far less likely to sink a battleship than a cruiser. So the commander in chief is less likely to die in battle, and thus the chaos attendant on such a loss is avoided. Also, the commander’s office is larger and can accommodate the many staff officers needed for command. For all these reasons, a battleship makes the best flagship.

Yet, at Port Arthur, Makarov chose a cruiser. Or, rather, he was willing to jump aboard any fast-moving warship, even if it was not of cruiser class, in order to go on the attack. His preference for a cruiser as a flagship was almost certainly a special case, born of conditions at Port Arthur. He wanted to lead the attacks himself. Often, he left the squadron as a whole safely inside the harbor and went off on a single ship to fight alone. His view was that “the flag of the commander in chief should always be the one flying wherever the rain of shells falls most heavily.” Boldly pressing on against the enemy with his own physical self was, he felt, the only way to get rid of the sluggishness that had afflicted the Port Arthur Squadron until his arrival. This boldness and bravery of his was reflected in the song the sailors sang, “Old Man Makarov.”

The battleships inside the harbor of Port Arthur were really very restricted. At low tide, their hulls scraped the bottom of the channel near the harbor mouth, making free passage difficult. In addition, the Japanese blockships had been sunk here and there in the area. As a result, it sometimes took as much as two hours to navigate the entrance to the harbor.

Here the cruisers proved their worth, and, of them all, Makarov especially loved the small protected cruiser Novik, at 3,080 tons. The Novik was not only fast—its captain, Commander von Essen was a truly brave officer and a skilled handler of his ship, and the crew was lively and efficient. Apart from the Novik, Makarov was fond of the armored cruiser Bayan (7,726 tons). He admired the daring of its commander, Captain Robert Viren, as well.

A naval port is equivalent to a fort on land. Tōgō’s fleet seemed to be following a regular schedule as it passed outside the entrance to this “fort” that was the harbor of Port Arthur.

“Tōgō is as careful as the leader of some great nation!” Makarov often remarked. And, indeed, Tōgō’s fleet would come to the waters just outside the entrance to Port Arthur, but, fearing the tremendous power of the fortifications’ artillery, the fleet would trail its white wake just outside the range of the Russian guns. As if on parade, the Japanese warships, large and small, would file past the harbor mouth. Tōgō’s principal aim was to blockade the harbor; his secondary aim was to provoke a Russian reaction.

Makarov’s predecessor Stark always avoided going out on attack beyond the entrance to the harbor, staying deep within his “sea fortress.” Makarov, by contrast, always went out to attack, though he did not go far into the open waters. He took care to stay within the zone protected by the Russian land artillery as he rushed madly about that limited area of the sea, lobbing shell after shell at Tōgō’s fleet.

Occasionally, he would venture beyond the range of his land artillery, as if to challenge the Japanese to “come this close!” If he could provoke the Japanese into pursuing him, he would use his aft guns to fire at them as he fled and then go back within range of the Russian land artillery. If the Japanese were careless enough to continue their pursuit and come within range, shells from the land artillery, which had already taken aim, would rain down on the Japanese ships.

This splendid coordination of sea and land forces was termed “Makarov’s breathing technique” by Saneyuki, who observed it all from on board the Mikasa. Indeed, viewed from the sea, the whole of Port Arthur seemed to be breathing in and out at Makarov’s will.

“Makarov is like Uesugi Kenshin,” Saneyuki sometimes thought, remembering the famed sixteenth-century military leader. Makarov moved his troops sharply and swiftly, and sometimes he would appear in person, his long sword raised in the command to attack. If Makarov was like Uesugi Kenshin, then there was something of Kenshin’s rival Takeda Shingen in Tōgō’s cautious and meticulous strategy.

Saneyuki hoped to use Makarov’s boldness to the Russian side’s detriment. “If we go there, the enemy is sure to come out to attack us,” he said at a staff officers’ meeting. “And they seem to follow a set pattern when they come out and go back.” Just as individuals follow set patterns in their movements, so too do naval fleets. “Why don’t we lay mines at the spot where the Russians always pass?”

No one considered this a particularly brilliant idea because only chance would determine whether the enemy bumped into one of these sea mines. A strategy that relied mostly on chance could not be regarded as first-rate. But on the battlefield one has to use whatever means are available to attack the enemy, regardless of whether the outcome depends on chance or is viewed as inevitable. For example, the attempt to blockade the harbor had failed so many times, but the Japanese Navy had not given up even though they didn’t have any good new ideas about how to get this job done. They had asked Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo for an additional twelve old steamers for the purpose.

So, for lack of anything better, they decided to plant the sea mines. No one dreamed that this would swing the balance of the two nations’ struggle at sea in Japan’s favor.

Saneyuki had Lieutenant Commander Takeuchi Jirō, the captain of the Hayatori in the Fourth Destroyer Division, check on the movement patterns of the enemy’s attack squads. Eventually, the report came back: “The enemy always comes as far as the area around Laolucui and then goes back.”

Commander Oda Kiyozō had already been put in charge of the work of laying the mines. He had studied sea mines for many years and had devised a new type of his own, named after him. He and several petty officers, who acted as his research assistants, had come to the battle area especially for this. They were aboard a special duty ship called the Kōryū Maru. Oda was a taciturn technical specialist, and even when he came to the Mikasa on official business he spoke no more than was absolutely necessary.

Saneyuki promised to provide ample protection, handing him a memo listing the names of the ships, but Oda simply nodded briefly and put the memo in his pocket. Saneyuki found himself wondering if everything would go all right. Finally, the plans for the mine laying were complete.

When Oda returned to his own ship, he assembled the petty officers assisting him as well as the ordinary seamen involved, and issued what was, for him, a rather long directive. “We’re going to sneak in under the enemy’s guns to do our job. I suspect that the day we go will also be the day we die, so be prepared for that.”

The strategy was similar to trying to sneak into the enemy’s castle carrying a load of firewood on your back. They would be carrying a great many mines with them, and, if they were hit by enemy gunfire midway, the resulting explosion would shake the sea and land of Port Arthur, and not one hair on the heads of those on board would be spared.

At last the day came. The action would take place on the night of April 12. A fine misty rain was falling on the sea outside the entrance to Port Arthur. Visibility was poor: it was perfect weather for Oda and his men to sneak near the harbor. The rain would prevent the enemy’s searchlights from fulfilling their function adequately. With only a light wind and few waves, there could not be better weather for the laying of the sea mines.

As the Kōryū Maru moved away from the Mikasa, the various ships all sent a signal: “We congratulate you on your success in advance!” The escort squad consisted of the Fourth Destroyer Division under Commander Nagai Gunkichi (the Hayatori, Harusame, Murasame, and Asagiri), the Fifth Destroyer Division under Commander Mano Iwajirō (the Kagerō, Muragumo, Yūgiri, and Shiranui), plus the Fourteenth Torpedo Boat Division.

They moved forward without any lights. As time passed, the temperature fell, reaching –20 degrees Celsius, though it was April. The rain changed to snow. As they approached the target area, the enemy searchlights shone brightly as always and played over the surface of the water, but their glare could not extend far, due to the snow. They actually helped the Japanese side, since they served as aids to the Japanese in determining their own location.

The Kōryū Maru moved at a very slow speed, quietly circling around this dangerous area of the sea. Oda Kiyozō stood on deck, directing the laying of the mines. Snow collected on the shoulders of his cape. “Heaven is aiding us,” he thought again and again. Oda insisted that his men make no noise even when they sank the mines deep into the water. When at last the operation was over, the Kōryū Maru slipped away, letting off only a slight amount of steam, and returned to the offing, like a burglar stealing silently away.

The escort squadron was in an area somewhat removed from the operation. It was not the same destroyer group that had brought the Kōryū Maru to the operation area, but the Second Destroyer Division that was on guard during the operation itself. Since neither the ship that laid the mines nor the escort squad was illuminated, it was hard to tell even whether the Kōryū Maru had completed its work or not.

“They must have finished by now,” muttered Commander Ishida Ichirō, in charge of the Second Destroyer Division, on the bridge of the destroyer Ikazuchi as dawn approached. The destroyers began to move. The Ikazuchi led the way, with the Oboro, Inazuma, and Akebono, all 341-ton ships of the same type, following behind. This Second Destroyer Division had been constituted in accordance with the rules of naval strategy that had ships of the same type acting in concert. After its protective duties were finished, the division would have to engage in its regular, daily duty of patrolling just outside the entrance to Port Arthur’s harbor.

As the group moved across the sea at dawn, a single enemy destroyer was sighted approaching the harbor from the east. At Makarov’s orders, Russian destroyers also patrolled outside the harbor. This ship must have been on its way back from such a patrol mission.

The Japanese learned later that this particular Russian destroyer was the Strashny, far smaller than the Ikazuchi at only 240 tons. It was also slow, capable of no more than 26.5 knots per hour. The Ikazuchi could reach 31 knots, and this clearly shows the inferior strength of the Russian destroyer. Not a single destroyer in the Japanese Navy was as slow as the Strashny.

“It’s going back to the port,” said Ishida, deciding to engage the ship in battle. In short order, the four Japanese ships made a skillful approach and rained fire down on the Russian ship. The Strashny fought bravely but having received countless direct hits almost immediately, it was engulfed in flames. After a battle that lasted only ten minutes, the ship lost the ability to move in any direction and started to sink.

“Rescue them!” ordered Ishida, and the Ikazuchi drew nearer the unfortunate Russian vessel. The sea was already growing light in the dawn. The Strashny was to sink within thirty minutes, but before that could happen, something amazing occurred.

From the Russian side, a cruiser, which a destroyer has difficulty handling, heard the firing of the guns and appeared from inside the harbor. It was the Bayan, an armored cruiser commanded by Captain Robert Viren, who was well known for his bravery.

In sea battles, the size of the warships almost completely determines which side wins. A big ship has correspondingly big guns, and thick armor plating. By contrast, a little ship has little guns, and, no matter how many of them come to challenge the larger ship, they will almost certainly lose.

And now, here was the Bayan! The four Japanese ships, each 341 tons, would be no match for its 7,726-ton power, no matter how clever their strategy might be. There was only one possible and necessary response: flight. The Ikazuchi hurriedly reversed course. The Russian sailors from the burning destroyer Strashny were leaping into the sea, one after another, but the Ikazuchi had no time to save them. The other three Japanese destroyers, taking their cue from the Ikazuchi, also began to leave the scene as quickly as possible.

“We’d never win against the Bayan,” said Commander Ishida Ichirō, wiping the sweat from his brow as he stood on the bridge and turning to look at the ship’s captain, Lieutenant Mimura Kinsaburō. For Mimura, this was no laughing matter.

The first shell from the Bayan, coming in hot pursuit, barely missed the Ikazuchi’s stern, sending up a great cloud of spray. The Japanese ship went faster, steam pouring from its funnels, and waves washing its deck.

This minor battle has the appearance of one small Russian ship being harried to its destruction by four Japanese destroyers, but in battle one event becomes a cause that gives rise to another event—so it has always been. That other event can easily be one that was quite unexpected.

Inside the harbor, the sound of the guns of the Ikazuchi and the others roused Vice Admiral Makarov from his slumber. He had been in bed in his commander’s office on the warship Petropavlovsk (10,960 tons) that early morning.

“Attack!” he ordered.

On the mast of the great warship, the standard that indicated he was on board was raised. The ship already had its boilers stoked so that little time elapsed between his order and the actual attack.

Meanwhile, the situation outside the harbor had further changed. The four Japanese destroyers fled, with the armored cruiser Bayan in pursuit. Then in the offing the six ships of the Japanese Combined Fleet’s Third Division (the armored cruisers Tokiwa and Asama had been added temporarily) commanded by Rear Admiral Dewa Shigetō were seen approaching. These were the Chitose (4,760 tons), the Takasago (4,155 tons), the Kasagi (4,900 tons), the Yoshino (4,150 tons), the Tokiwa (9,855 tons), and the Asama (9,750 tons). All had a speed of 22.5 knots, and all of them billowed forth great plumes of black smoke from their funnels.

Dewa, hoping to save the Ikazuchi and the other three destroyers, ordered a sudden artillery assault on the Bayan, which should by all rights have fled. Its captain Viren, however, showed incredible bravery in attempting to fight with his single vessel against the Japanese side’s six cruisers and four destroyers. The Russian ship approached at full speed, parting the waves before it. Makarov was informed of what was happening, and he decided that now was the time for a limited battle.

One might conclude that Makarov was being too brave in this case. Like a cavalryman who hears that the enemy is in sight and then leaps onto his horse to ride off, Makarov’s flagship the Petropavlovsk slid out of the harbor. Not many other ships joined it. The small protected cruiser Novik commanded by von Essen was, as always, one of the first to leave the harbor’s protection. Next came the battleship Sevastopol, the protected cruiser Askold, the protected cruiser Diana, and the battleship Pobeda—a rather motley collection. There were in addition nine destroyers.

Seeing them from a distance, Commander Dewa looked at his staff officers and asked, “Isn’t that Makarov?”

They had no reply, since the distance was still too great to see the standard that would indicate if he were on board or not. Yet three Russian battleships had certainly appeared, along with a group of destroyers and several cruisers. Never had such a mighty Russian force made its appearance on these seas.

“Let’s lure them into the open sea,” thought Dewa, but to do that he would first have to expose himself to a hail of enemy artillery shells.

When the Petropavlovsk opened fire, the other ships fired as well, and immediately shells fell one after the other into the sea around Dewa’s flagship Chitose, roiling the waves.

All the Japanese ships from the Chitose on down opened fire, although they knew they were no match for the Russian force, and soon the surface of the water was covered in smoke from both sides’ guns. The Chitose, scurrying about the area, almost collided with the Yoshino.

The Japanese side would engage the enemy and then retreat, retreat and then engage, trying to lure the Russians into the open sea by these complex maneuvers. At last, Makarov decided on pushing his attack into the open sea. He had his ships shift into single-echelon right formation. The entire flotilla increased speed and approached Dewa’s force to attack.

“They’re coming!” Dewa realized. He made for the spot where Tōgō’s group of battleships was lying in wait and tried to draw Makarov toward it.

Relying, no doubt, on the massive size of his naval forces, and above all on his own courage, Makarov allowed himself to be led on by Dewa. He raced along and finally went outside the 15-league limit, into the open sea. Tōgō was waiting for him. He had his Mikasa, as well as the Asahi, Fuji, Yashima, Shikishima, and Hatsuse, and, in addition, the newly built cruisers Kasuga and Nisshin, which had been added to the fleet only two days before.

“There they are!” Makarov saw that he had reached a point beyond which he should not dare to venture. He immediately ordered his entire fleet to withdraw, and his flagship crashed through the waves as it reversed course, attempting to get back within the range of the land artillery. The other Russian ships followed suit. At last, they came back within their side’s artillery range, but Makarov did not enter the harbor, since he was still attempting to fight.

Just then, the mists lifted from the water, and one could see the blue of the sky. In a complete reversal of weather conditions from the previous night, visibility was excellent, and each side could easily see the other’s ships and their movements.

Makarov was too daring on this particular morning for reasons unknown. We say “too daring” because he forgot about a very important practice he customarily followed upon leaving the port: he failed to have the harbor entrance swept for mines.

Without fail, he always had sent a small ship ahead to remove any mines that might have been laid beneath the surface of the water. Only then would he leave port on his flagship. This was just normal prudent behavior for a naval commander, but on this particular day, Makarov was indignant that one of his destroyers had been beaten and destroyed by a squadron of four Japanese destroyers. He’d sent out the armored cruiser Bayan to save the Russian destroyer, and, when that didn’t work out, his fighting spirit turned into uncontrollable indignation. He didn’t bother having the harbor entrance swept for mines. He set sail at once, so he could arrive at the scene of battle without losing any time at all.

That too didn’t work out when he was challenged by the main force of Tōgō’s fleet. Withdrawing, he fired his guns from the stern of his ship and tried to draw Tōgō within range of the Russian land artillery. He directed the operation very deftly indeed, as was his way.

“Ah, that Makarov is something!” Saneyuki thought, as he watched the scene from on board the Mikasa, highly impressed.

The battleships from Mikasa on down fired shells at the battleship Petropavlovsk as far as their range permitted, but they only made one hit—the other shells landed in the water. Meanwhile, Makarov outran the pursuing Tōgō.

“Oh, he’s started his usual return-to-port maneuver,” thought Saneyuki, watching without the benefit of binoculars from his distant perch.

Tōgō, however, was using his binoculars. His other staff officers also continued to watch the movements of Makarov’s flotilla, though their binoculars did not have the great magnification of Tōgō’s. Makarov was not in charge of the handling of the flagship—that was the job of Captain Nikolai Yakovlev. The ship was, as always, moving parallel to the mountain range on the Laohuwei Peninsula, reducing speed as it moved along the coast and headed for the entrance to Port Arthur’s harbor. The bell signaling the end of hostilities sounded. The sailors left the ship’s guns and sat stretching their legs on the ship deck here and there.

As Makarov emerged from his battle command station, he happened to notice military artist Vasily Vereshchagin standing there and greeted him in high spirits. “How’s the sketching going?”

The artist raised his eyes from his sketchbook and, seeing it was the admiral speaking to him, presented the sketchbook for inspection with both hands, rather shyly. The Japanese fleet was depicted on the horizon in the sketch.

The Japanese fleet could be seen on the actual horizon, as well. Numerous plumes of smoke colored the sky.

Just then, there was a roar so loud it seemed as if earth and sky had been blown apart. The ship’s hull was lifted up, the deck sloped sharply upward, and a great pillar of fire arose. All this happened at once. Makarov was tossed into the air by the blast and then thrown down upon the deck.

When Makarov tried to make his way, he discovered that he was covered in blood. Immediately, he unbuttoned his greatcoat and took it off, and then did the same with his boots. This aged admiral, so accustomed to the sea, intended to jump into the water to save himself. Unfazed by his severe wounds, he tried to make his way to the gunwales.

The deck, however, sloped upward like the steepest part of a steep hill, and he found it hard to keep his footing. Then there was a second explosion. Knowing that escape was now unlikely, he fell to his knees and offered a final prayer. It took only one minute and thirty seconds from the time of the first explosion until the Petropavlovsk sank beneath the waves. Makarov went to the bottom along with his ship. More than 630 other men joined him in death.

“This is unbelievable!” shouted the Russian soldiers manning the gun emplacements near the water’s edge at Golden Hill as they watched the scene.

Makarov had a fine reputation also among the soldiers, even though they belonged to a different branch of the armed forces. They had been watching the Petropavlovsk quietly making its way back to port after the battle had ended, together with the ten to twenty other vessels, large and small. As the flagship came alongside the reef, there was a sudden, great explosion. The seawater rose up like a wall and engulfed the ship. Then there was a second explosion, and the ship started to belch forth great clouds of greenish-yellow smoke. Almost at once, the prow of the ship sank, and the stern rose high up into the air, its screw propeller turning with tremendous force in empty space. The whole ship sank as they watched, and all that was left was smoke on the surface of the water.

That was the scene of the flagship’s sinking witnessed by the solders manning the guns on Golden Hill. They all knelt down, doffed their hats, and offered prayers in the Russian manner, crossing themselves three times, with the thumb and first two fingers of the right hand brought together in a Trinitarian symbol. Thus, they mourned the death of the world-famous admiral in whom they had taken such pride.

The men of the Japanese fleet had also witnessed the sinking from a great distance—so great that they could not clearly make out what had happened. A ship that seemed to be the Petropavlovsk was suddenly engulfed in black smoke, and a great roar echoed across the water, audible on the Japanese ships as well. And, in the next instant, the ship could no longer be seen.

“What happened?” asked one staff officer of another. Certainly, a huge ship to the rear had vanished. But it had happened so suddenly that they thought they might have been mistaken and could not quite believe what they had seen. Saneyuki, one of these staff officers, did not have binoculars (why will be explained later) and therefore did not see what had happened at all. The staff officers were about to report to Imperial General Headquarters that “An enemy ship appears to have been sunk, though the report cannot be confirmed.”

Tōgō, however, lowered his binoculars and stated as fact, “It sank, all right. And it was the flagship Petropavlovsk.” With his high-powered binoculars, he was the only one who could confirm what had happened.

The flagship of the Port Arthur Squadron had sunk beneath the waves, together with the commander in chief. When this was confirmed by a cable from Reuters, a staff officer on the Mikasa proposed to Tōgō that they send a wireless message of condolence to the enemy. It was a perfectly natural suggestion. This sort of chivalrous code was still observed throughout the world at this period, and indeed the Japanese Navy had done the same kind of thing for Chinese admiral Ding Ruchang during the First Sino-Japanese War.

Everyone expected that Tōgō would nod and say, “Of course.” But to their surprise, he said simply, “No.” Because his refusal had been all too clear, the others fell silent, and no one said another word. Of course, everyone wanted to know the reason for Tōgō’s refusal, but no one dared to raise the subject again with this famously taciturn admiral.

Ogasawara Naganari later became Tōgō’s biographer, and after the war he asked the admiral the reason for his refusal. Tōgō just smiled slightly and said, “Because I didn’t feel like doing it.” That was the kind of man he was. He never made excuses for his behavior. It was not that he was completely lacking in such feelings as “loving one’s enemies.” After the naval battle of Tsushima, he went to see the wounded Russian admiral Rozhestvensky in the Sasebo Naval Hospital. When Ogasawara asked him about his reasons for that visit as well, Tōgō once again smiled slightly and replied, “Because I felt like paying him a visit.”

And that was that.

Tōgō must have been in a complicated state of mind at the time of Makarov’s death. The Japanese had not yet arrived at even the foothills of the precipitous pass that was this war. Makarov’s death would not resolve the tremendously difficult situation that Tōgō had found himself in from the very start. The Japanese might lose the decisive battles that were to come. What happened to Makarov today might happen to Tōgō tomorrow, so it seemed pointless and disagreeable to make a show of sympathy now—so Tōgō must have felt.

At any rate, Makarov and his flagship had sunk to the bottom of the sea due to the mines that the Japanese side had laid the previous night. Right after the explosions and sinking, the entire Russian military was seized with the suspicion that a submarine had been behind this deed. The Russian ships all fired their guns wildly into the sea as they fled pell-mell into the harbor. The United States already had submarines at this date, and the Russians thought that perhaps Japan had them too, though they were in fact a “still unborn form of weapon,” so far as Japan was concerned.

One month after Makarov and his flagship’s encounter with the mines, the same tragedy befell Tōgō’s fleet. Japan lost two battleships in a single day, and thus the mines may have done far more damage than Russia had suffered earlier.

After Makarov’s death, the Port Arthur Squadron stopped coming out to attack as before. Their morale seemed to have weakened, like a flame that has been snuffed out. But this did not mean that all of the officers and men of the squadron were unfaithful to their duties. For example, Commander Fyodor Ivanov, the captain of the minelayer Amur, kept on showing his face at the harbor entrance, just as in Makarov’s days, carefully noting the movements of the Japanese fleet on the open seas beyond. He discovered that the Japanese followed a set pattern of movements. Ivanov concluded that if he studied those movements and then laid mines accordingly, the Japanese ships would probably run into them. In short, he was trying to pay them back for what they had done, using the same ideas and operations that the Japanese had employed against Makarov. He expressed his views to Admiral Vitgeft, who was acting as commander in chief after Makarov’s death.

“You want to lay mines in the open sea?” said Vitgeft, surprised at the unusual plan. Usually mines were laid near harbors and bays to prevent the entry of enemy ships, but Ivanov wanted to lay them in the open sea. He proposed using the essentially defensive weapon of a minefield in an aggressive, attack mode. “Aren’t the open seas too wide an area?” Vitgeft wanted to know.

Ivanov had already made a very careful investigation of that issue. “The open seas are very wide, but Tōgō moves in a set pattern. If we determine where he customarily passes, the area won’t be too wide. Then, if we lay fifty mines, he’ll fall into our trap for sure!”

The plan was to lay fifty mines over a distance of 1 nautical mile at a right angle to the Japanese fleet’s habitual course. The problem was that these were international waters according to international law. Territorial waters were defined as extending only 3 nautical miles from the coast, but the plan was to lay mines in the open seas more than 10 nautical miles from the coast. There was sure to be opposition from various foreign countries, but Captain Ivanov didn’t say a word about this. If he so much as touched on this problem, he was sure that the timid Vitgeft would try to protect himself from criticism and crush Ivanov’s plan.

But as things were, Vitgeft, who tended to be passive regarding all matters, approved the plan and implemented it with a zeal that seemed close to miraculous. Captain Ivanov was overjoyed. He crept onto the open seas under cover of darkness that night and laid the mines, finishing the job. Ivanov was an eager student of tactics, and, though at first he laid the mines in a straight line, he later revised this to a half-circle. His mines gave the Russians a military advantage beyond anything he himself had expected.

Making their greatest mistake, the Japanese failed to conceive of the simple fact that the same mine strategy they had first used against the enemy would now be used by the enemy against them. Neither Shimamura Hayao, the chief of staff, nor Akiyama Saneyuki, vice chief of staff, felt any uneasiness on that score. However, the captains of the destroyers and ships that constantly patrolled the waters just outside the entrance to the harbor of Port Arthur came to the Mikasa and strongly urged changes in the main fleet’s routes. “If the main force of the fleet always follows the same set course in the open seas beyond Port Arthur, the enemy will do the same thing to us that we did to them—they’re not fools, after all!”

“But would the Russians have the temerity to lay mines in international waters?” one of the staff officers asked. Ships other than those from the two warring sides passed through these international waters. If the Russians laid mines there, and one of the neutral nations’ ships went down, international criticism would be merciless.

Still, changing the Japanese fleet’s habitual patterns of movement seemed best. Saneyuki did research on possible new routes, drew lines on the map, and got Shimamura Hayao’s permission to make the changes. However, when such a large fleet is engaged in repeated actions involving a number of different subgroups, it’s impossible to make sudden changes, and so they decided to use the old routes until May 15. Ironically, the greatest misfortune for the Japanese in the entire war took place precisely on May 15.

Prior to that, they learned that the enemy gunships were making frequent forays into the open sea under cover of night. Their mission was unclear. Meeting in the Mikasa’s strategy room, the staff officers judged that they might be laying mines, and so it was decided to send the Third Squadron, commanded by Vice Admiral Kataoka Shichirō, to conduct sweeping operations. The Third Squadron began work at seven in the morning on May 12.

To carry out such an operation while under shelling from the Russian artillery emplacements was indescribably difficult. First of all, the main force of the Third Squadron would undertake the protection of the ships that were actually doing the sweeping. But the main force of the Third Squadron was made up of dilapidated ships dating from the First Sino-Japanese War: the protected cruiser Itsukushima was the flagship, and the Chin’en (this was the Zhenyuan, the Chinese battleship captured by the Japanese during the First Sino-Japanese War), Hashidate, and Matsushima made up the rest of the group. From the sea, they kept up protective fire against the Port Arthur fortifications, while the minesweepers did their work.

Around four o’clock that afternoon, minesweeper No. 48 suddenly blew up during the operation and split in two. There were fourteen dead and wounded. Two days later on May 14, the dispatch vessel Miyako (1,772 tons) was moving about the area to be swept at 20 knots, its top speed. Charged with collecting intelligence about the enemy and firing artillery at enemy land fortifications, the ship struck a mine at half past four in the afternoon and sank twenty minutes later. There were two dead and three wounded.

The Japanese managed to destroy fifteen mines in the sweeping operations that took place from the twelfth through the fifteenth, and they felt rather relieved to have done so. But, of course, they did not realize that the Russians had laid a total of fifty mines—a very large number—in the open seas.

The destructive power of a mine laid beneath the surface of the sea is greater than the biggest artillery shell that can be fired at a warship. An artillery shell may be able to inflict particularly great damage on a battleship encased in strong steel armor but cannot sink it, unless the ammunition stores happen to be set alight and explode. A mine, on the other hand, destroys the hull of a warship—ripping out the bottom—and so can sometimes sink a huge ship in an instant.

Now Tōgō’s fleet was not patrolling outside the harbor of Port Arthur every day at full force. The fleet had been divided into two parts, which alternated in going out on patrol.

There were six battleships in the fleet: the Mikasa, Asahi, Fuji, Hatsuse, Shikishima, and Yashima. Japan’s destiny rested on these six ships. Out three of them went, on alternate days. When Tōgō was in charge, the Mikasa would be the flagship, with the Asahi and the Fuji following behind. On the fateful day of May 15, Tōgō was not on duty. Had he been, he might well have suffered the same fate as Makarov. But Yamamoto Gombei had said that he had chosen Tōgō as the commander in chief of the Combined Fleet because he was “a lucky man.” And, true to his good luck, Tōgō was at a base on the northwest coast of Korea that day.

Rear Admiral Nashiha Tokioki was on board the Hatsuse, substituting for Tōgō. He led the Shikishima and the Yashima, as well as cruisers, destroyers, and other smaller vessels on the regular patrol. An “X-point” (close to Laotie Hill) had been set in the open sea outside the harbor entrance, and the patrol would go to that point, then turn right around, and come back. May 15 was the last day for use of this “X-point,” which was to be abolished after that.

A powerful battleship of 15,240 tons and capable of going 18 knots per hour, the Hatsuse was the lead with the Shikishima and the Yashima following behind in that order. The group proceeded to an area near Port Arthur and reached there just as the day dawned. The thick nocturnal mist had lifted, and visibility was good.

“We moved forward calmly, without any worries,” reminisced Vice Admiral Teragaki Izō, looking back on the time when he was still a captain in command of the Shikishima. The water was deep in that area, and since they were 11 nautical miles to the south of Port Arthur, the Japanese ships were far outside the range of the enemy’s land artillery. At a little before eleven in the morning, there was a huge explosion ahead of the Shikishima, and, when Captain Teragaki looked in that direction, he saw a great swirl of smoke rising up near the Hatsuse’s stern, and then the ship began to sink, stern first.

As they learned later, the bottom of the Hatsuse’s stern had struck a mine, and the helm was broken. Immediately afterward, it struck another mine, and this time the ammunition stores exploded. Debris was sent flying in all directions, and the ship sank in one minute and thirty seconds. Four hundred ninety-three men died.

The Yashima (12,514 tons), immediately to the rear, tried to rescue the Hatsuse’s crew and also struck a mine. A great explosion ripped open the bottom of the hull. It was finally able to strand itself on a nearby reef but then sank before long. The entire crew, however, was saved.

Since ancient times, people have believed in the mysterious thing called fate or destiny, and the misfortunes that continued for the six days around May 15 made everyone connected with the wartime Japanese Navy think that there might indeed be such a force. All of these misfortunes involved mine incidents and accidental collisions between Japanese vessels, leading to the loss of warships.

On May 12, No. 48 of the minesweeping squad had hit a mine and was blown up, and two days later the dispatch vessel Miyako struck a mine and sank. On the fifteenth, the battleships Hatsuse and Yashima were lost around the same time. In a different area of the ocean, the protected cruiser Yoshino (4,150 tons) and the newly built armored cruiser Kasuga collided with each other in the dark of night. The Kasuga’s ram bow, beneath the waterline, tore a hole in the hull of the Yoshino, which at once began to list and then sank before the crew had time to escape. Three hundred nineteen men died, from the captain on down. The Yoshino was by then no more than a second-rate player by the standards of the naval drama of the Russo-Japanese War, but because of its high speed, the ship had played a leading role in naval battles during the First Sino-Japanese War ten years earlier.

On the same day, the dispatch vessel Tatsuta (864 tons) got stranded on the southeast coast of Guanglu Island, while, on the sixteenth, the gunboat Ōshima sank after colliding with the gunboat Akagi. Then, on the seventeenth, the destroyer Akatsuki (363 tons) struck a mine in the offing near Laotie Hill while involved in a battle and sank, with the loss of twenty-three men from the captain on down.

Captain Teragaki, who had been on board the battleship Shikishima, later described the sinking of the battleship Hatsuse. “The deck sloped upward, and men fell down from there like a human waterfall.” This series of tragedies befell Tōgō’s fleet, which had hitherto been untouched, in the short space of six days. We can only wonder why.

The Japanese fleet had lost eight ships without receiving any hostile artillery fire. In particular, the loss of two battleships that would have been overwhelmingly effective in any forthcoming sea battles boded ill for the future of Japan’s naval war. The Japanese side had up to then preserved a balance vis-à-vis the six enemy battleships in the Port Arthur Squadron, but in one day it was reduced to only four battleships, a thirty-three percent loss. Ten years would be needed to replace them with new ships, if we include the time required for the requisite political maneuverings. The ship captains there on the spot where the Japanese side incurred so much damage were stunned and found themselves wondering, “Just how are we to fight this war from now on?”

Tōgō and his Mikasa were at a temporary base in the Changshan Islands, 30 nautical miles to the northeast of Dalian Bay. Snippets of bad news reached the Mikasa’s wireless office one after the other, and, when they learned of the sinking of the Hatsuse and Yashima in particular, even the magnanimous chief of staff Shimamura Hayao could say nothing. Saneyuki’s face seemed frozen, his eyes not so much as blinking for a while. The whole business of naval strategy had now become very difficult. Only Tōgō, strange man that he was, showed no signs of strain.

Tōgō had been regarded as an extremely lucky man through all the naval engagements of this war, but his steely nerves in the face of bad luck were amazing. Two battleships had been lost, and, when the captains who managed to survive returned from the entrance waters of Port Arthur and came on board the Mikasa to report what had happened, not one of them could look Tōgō in the face. All wept openly at the cruel fate of their ships.

But Tōgō was calm, as always. “Thank you all for your efforts,” he said, and nothing more. He then pushed a dish of sweets on his table toward them, urging them to eat.

The British officers who were on board the Asahi as observers were amazed and impressed at Tōgō’s attitude at the time, and various accounts of that scene made their way to many foreign countries.

Saneyuki, who functioned as the “brains” behind Tōgō’s operations, asked himself, “In Tōgō’s place, could I act the same way he has?” Tōgō seemed to be leading the fleet not so much with his brain as with his spirit. Had Saneyuki (the “brains”) been in Tōgō’s position, he might well have become enraged or indignant, or tried to bluff his way through.

All his life Tōgō was a strange person who never openly showed either his wisdom or his foolishness. When his appointment as commander in chief was announced, there had been discussion at the Combined Fleet’s base in Sasebo about whether he was a wise naval leader. Most of the officers thought that, though he might not be incompetent, he was at best a mediocre leader.

“Tōgō was a rather vague presence, even among the officers at Sasebo.” Moriyama Keizaburō, Saneyuki’s close friend since Naval Academy days, offered this recollection years later at a panel discussion. “There was no agreement about his abilities. Many of us officers felt among ourselves that it was wrong of the navy to send along this half-senile commander in chief just as we were about to enter a war. They must have chosen him because he was from Satsuma. Things weren’t looking good with him in charge—anyway, that’s how we evaluated him at the time.”

When Tōgō arrived in Sasebo by train, only three people went to meet him at the station: Lieutenant Commander Moriyama Keizaburō, Rear Admiral Nashiha Tokioki, and the captain of the Mikasa, Ijichi Hikojirō. “Normally, the sailors of the fleet would have been there,” Moriyama recalled, “and Tōgō would have been greeted with fanfare from a naval band perhaps. But as it was, the welcoming ceremony was very subdued. It was the first time I ever saw Tōgō.”

He looked like any other small, old man; there was nothing of an admiral of the fleet’s impressive presence about him. “The area in front of the station was reclaimed land,” Moriyama continued, “and the surface was uneven, with several puddles. Tōgō walked over this patch of land uncertainly, looking down. I felt all the more that he was a man of no importance. Yet, after he had been the commander of the Combined Fleet for a while, all of the sailors were impressed by him. I felt once more that he was a very mysterious person.”