Japan will not send troops to Europe
- Category:
- Diplomacy
- Date:
- 14 November 1914
- Author:
- Natalia
- Tags:
- Japan, France, Great Britain
The British chronology of the war records under 14 November 1914 that the government of Japan refused to send troops to Europe. This was the reply to Allied appeals, which grew louder in the autumn, when bloody fighting was going on in Flanders on the Western Front and Japan had just captured Tsingtao and ended its campaign in China. The exact date of the cabinet’s decision itself is hard to establish from the sources. What is certain is that in mid-November Tokyo answered in the negative and kept to this position until the end of the war.
French hopes
Japanese soldiers in Europe were talked about most loudly in France. As early as August Georges Clemenceau wrote in his newspaper that Japan should send an army to the Western Front, and similar appeals were published by the former foreign minister Stéphen Pichon. In the autumn France, Russia and Britain jointly asked Tokyo for help. The Foreign Secretary, Edward Grey, under pressure from the allies, raised the matter at the beginning of November.
Refusal
The proposal was examined by the Japanese war and navy ministries, after which the cabinet of Prime Minister Ōkuma Shigenobu decided that Japan could not accept it. The foreign minister, Katō Takaaki, explained to the allies that the Japanese army served solely for the defence of the country, and that sending it far from home for any other purpose would be contrary to the foundations of its constitution. It was also stressed that Japanese public opinion did not feel involved in the European war, and that most of parliament would oppose such an expedition. The strongest opposition came from the army command, which considered an expedition extremely costly and of no benefit to the country.
Japan had also rejected earlier requests to send its fleet to the Mediterranean. Its ships did, however, help in the hunt for German cruisers in the Pacific and the Indian Ocean and escorted convoys from Australia and New Zealand.
Destroyers in the Mediterranean
Appeals for Japanese troops recurred throughout the war and each time ended in refusal. The fleet was another matter. In 1917, when German submarines threatened shipping in the Mediterranean, Japan agreed to send a squadron of a cruiser and eight destroyers there, later reinforced. In April 1917 the ships reached Malta and escorted Allied transports until the end of the war. In June 1917 the destroyer Sakaki was torpedoed by an Austro-Hungarian submarine, and several dozen Japanese sailors were killed. Only in this form did the Japanese take a direct part in military operations in Europe.
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