2 September 1914, Japanese forces landed on China's Shandong Province and surrounded the German settlement at Tsingtao (Qingdao). During October, acting virtually independently of the civil government, the Imperial Japanese Navy seized several of Germany's island colonies in the Pacific - the Mariana , Caroline , and Marshall Islands - with virtually no resistance. The Japanese Navy conducted the world's first naval-launched air raids against German-held land targets in Shandong province and ships in Qiaozhou Bay from the seaplane-carrier Wakamiya . On 6 September 1914 a seaplane launched by Wakamiya unsuccessfully attacked the Austro-Hungarian cruiser Kaiserin Elisabeth and the German gunboat Jaguar with bombs [ 5 ] The Siege of Tsingtao concluded with the surrender of German colonial forces on 7 November 1914. In February 1915, marines from Imperial Japanese Navy ships based in Singapore helped suppress a mutiny by troops against the British government . With Japan's European allies heavily involved in the war in Europe, Japan sought further to consolidate its position in China by presenting the Twenty-One Demands to Chinese President Yuan Shikai in January 1915. If achieved, the Twenty-One Demands would have essentially reduced China to a Japanese protectorate , and at the expense of numerous privileges already enjoyed by the European powers in their respective spheres of influence within China. In the face of slow negotiations with the Chinese government, widespread and increasing anti-Japanese sentiments, and international condemnation (particularly from the United States), Japan withdrew the final group of demands, and the treaty was signed