Japanese destroyers in the Mediterranean

On 13 April 1917 the Japanese 2nd Special Squadron arrived at Malta, the main base of the British Mediterranean Fleet. It was commanded by Rear Admiral Kōzō Satō and consisted of the protected cruiser Akashi and eight destroyers of the 10th and 11th Destroyer Divisions: Kaede, Katsura, Ume, Kusunoki, Sakaki, Kashiwa, Matsu and Sugi. For the first time ships of the Imperial Japanese Navy were to operate in European waters. The British chronology of the war records the inclusion of the Japanese flotillas in the Allied forces under 17 April. Japanese accounts, however, state that the squadron reached Malta on 13 April, and the British official history says that Satō’s ships arrived in mid-April and at once began escorting transports.

The road to the Mediterranean

For two and a half years Tokyo had refused to send ships to Europe. In November 1914 the Japanese government declined to send troops and ships to Europe, and when in February 1916 the British asked for destroyers, the Japanese agreed only to patrols in the Indian Ocean. This changed at the beginning of 1917. In January London again asked for ships to escort transports in the Mediterranean, where German and Austro-Hungarian submarines were sinking more and more ships. This time the Japanese agreed, but in return Britain secretly promised to support their claims to the German rights in Shantung and to the German islands in the Pacific north of the equator.

The squadron was formed in February. According to the British official history the ships were to leave Singapore on 11 March. They sailed via Colombo, the Indian Ocean and the Suez Canal to Port Said, and on the way were to sweep the shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean, where the German raider Wolf was then at large. The Kaba-class destroyers, built in 1915, displaced about 665 tons and made 30 knots. The Akashi was an older ship, launched in 1897.

Under their own command

Satō was subordinate to neither British nor French admirals. Tokyo had expressly stipulated that the Japanese ships would remain under Japanese command, and the rear admiral was merely to cooperate with the British authorities and help wherever needed. What was needed most was escorts for troop transports on the route from Marseille via Malta to Alexandria. The Japanese officers took on this task willingly, because escorting ships offered the best chance of meeting a submarine. At the end of April, when the Allies at the Corfu conference counted all their escort vessels in the Mediterranean, the eight Japanese destroyers were already included in the reckoning.

The first hard task came soon. At the beginning of May the destroyers Matsu and Sakaki were escorting the large transport Transylvania, which was carrying about 3,000 soldiers from Marseille to Alexandria. When a German submarine torpedoed her in the Gulf of Genoa, the Matsu came alongside the sinking ship and took men off her, although the submarine was still nearby. Most of those on board were saved by the ship’s boats, the Japanese destroyers and Italian patrol vessels, but, according to various sources, between about 270 and more than 400 people died. In June the Sakaki herself was torpedoed off Crete by an Austro-Hungarian submarine. The explosion wrecked the bow of the ship and killed 59 sailors, including her captain.

The Japanese squadron operated in the Mediterranean until the end of the war. Later new ships joined it, among them the cruiser Izumo and more destroyers. According to Japanese accounts it carried out 348 escort voyages and escorted almost 800 ships, which carried 700,000–750,000 soldiers. Japan lost more than 70 men in this service. They were buried in the British naval cemetery at Kalkara on Malta, where in 1921 Crown Prince Hirohito paid tribute to the fallen.