Japanese occupy Yap

On 7 October 1914 Japanese warships occupied the island of Yap in the western part of the Caroline Islands. The German garrison offered no resistance. The crew of the German survey ship Planet, which was lying off the island, scuttled her so that she would not fall into Japanese hands.

A communications hub

Yap was a small island but of great strategic importance. Undersea telegraph cables belonging to a German-Dutch company converged here, linking the island with Guam, Shanghai and Menado on Celebes. The Germans had also built a powerful radio station on Yap, one of several intended to provide communication with warships in the Pacific and with the colonies in Oceania. In the first days of the war the station became a British target. On 12 August the armoured cruiser HMS Minotaur shelled the island, brought down the radio mast and set the station’s buildings on fire, but did not put a landing party ashore.

Japan’s march through Micronesia

After declaring war on Germany, Japan did not confine itself to the siege of Tsingtao. At the turn of September and October its navy sent two squadrons into the Pacific. The first was commanded by Vice-Admiral Yamaya Tanin, the second by Rear-Admiral Matsumura Tatsuo, who, in his flagship, the battleship Satsuma, led the operation in the western Carolines. Within a few weeks the Japanese occupied the German islands north of the equator without a fight. At the beginning of October they landed on Jaluit atoll, the administrative centre of the Marshall Islands, and over the following days on Kosrae, Pohnpei, Yap, Palau and Chuuk. In mid-October it was the turn of the German part of the Mariana Islands.

The islands south of the equator were meanwhile being occupied by the Australians, who in September had taken control of German New Guinea. As early as August London had asked Australia to destroy the German radio stations, including the one on Yap, but the Australian expedition concentrated on New Guinea and the Japanese got there first. In Australia the Japanese presence so close to its northern borders caused unease, but in 1917 Britain agreed in a secret understanding that Japan could keep the islands north of the equator.

The dispute over Yap

Japan treated the occupied islands as spoils of war. After the war they were awarded to it as a League of Nations mandate. The United States protested against handing Yap in particular to Japan, since for the Americans the island was an important hub of the cables linking them with the Philippines and China. The dispute was settled only by a treaty signed in Washington at the beginning of 1922. The island remained under Japanese rule, but the Americans obtained free access to it and rights equal to those of the Japanese to use the cables and radio station.