From: miklg@acuson.com (Michael Goldman )
Newsgroups: soc.history,soc.culture.japan
Subject: The Seige of Port Arthur (part 4)
Date: 31 Jul 92 14:45:05 GMT
Organization: Acuson; Mountain View, California


	Several posters noted the importance of 203 meter hill in the
	taking of Port Arthur, and the futility of the human waves
	in contrast to the use of artillery.  They are correct.  The
	following derived mostly from  "The Tide at Sunrise" by Denis and Peggy
	Warner provide some details that I found interesting.

	Napoleon said that the forces attempting to storm a fortress
	should outnumber the defending forces by 5-to-1.  Japanese forces
	never were more than 2-to-1 at Port Arthur and with sickness the
	effective ratio was closer to 1.6-to-1  Nogi and some other Japanese
	were fixated on the ease with which Port Arthur had been taken from
	the Chinese.  In the intervening 100 years since Napoleon, technology
	had given more weapons to the defender than to the attacker in
	the form of machine guns, barbed wire, and electrified wire (the
	last killed a large number of Japanese scouts).  The realization
	that direct frontal assaults on well-fortified positions was pointless
	and suicidal was demonstrated at Port Arthur, with correspondents and
	military observers from all the world watching, but did not seep
	into the consciousness of many generals until the Battle of the Marne
	in WWI (if then).  "...Nogi should have been impressed with the
	strength of the walls of the Russian forts, built of...stone...This was
	no place to launch a frontal assault."

	"Both [Army General] Kodama and Colonel Matsukata, chief of
	the first first division of general staff, had opposed any sort of
	attack, feeling that it was undesirable to divide their forces and
	that Port Arthur could be left until later. [Due to Naval requirements]
	Marshal Yamagata, who had taken over from Oyama as Chief of Staff and
	Amiral Ito, the chief of the naval staff, met to discuss the situation,
	and on June 24 [1904] Nogi received the order to attack and occupy
	Port Arthur as soon as possible.  Ten thousand casualties were
	regarded as an acceptable loss.

	"On July 3 a meeting of the combined army and navy staffs went a long
	step farther.  It decided that even if much heavier sacrifices
	were required, and Nogi's preparations for a frontal assault proved
	to be in vain, Port Arthur had to be taken without delay."

	"After the loss of the heavy seige guns aboard the Hitachi Maru, the
	Third Army launched its assault desperately short of heavy artillery
	and blissfully unaware of its need."

	"At Imperial General Headquarters...Major-General Iguchi shared
	General Nagaoka's view that Port Arthur might...be impregnable.."

	"When Iguchi handed over a message from Yamagata setting out these
	fears, Major-General Ijichi Kosuke, Nogi's chief of staff, read it 
	through and sniggered, as if to say, 'What nonsense.'  Ijichi's
	views...were so diametrically opposed to those of General
	Iguchi...that the two generals almost reached the point of physical
	combat.

	"At dawn on August 19, General Nogi started his general attack
	with a bombardment.  Only a mile [1.6 km] separated the two forces.  
	Before this space was crossed by the Japanese four-and-a-half months
	later, the two sides were to lose more than 100,000 men killed,
	wounded, or stricken by disease."

	"...Nogi's staff showed little enthusiasm for personal investigation.
	'They are so far away that shells would not reach them,' reported 
	General Nagaoka.  'Reports of Nogi and his staff state that 'the
	enemy fortress batteries are stronger than we had imagined...it
	should not be necessary to kill 10,000 or more troops to discover 
	this...If the public knew this, what would be their reaction?...I
	therefore omitted this part when we had reports printed for the
	Emperor to see.'"

	Nearly everyone in Japan expected Port Arthur to fall in one day - 
	reporters slept outside the War Ministry all night to be ready
	for the news of success when the attack began - some newspapers
	had already printed up "extras" without a date celebrating the
	expected success.

	Kodama visited in September, briefed by a Russian defector who
	had told him all about the Russian defenses.  He quickly ordered
	many more artillery and pointed out for the first time the
	importance of 203 meter hill as having a clear view of the town and
	harbor.  In October, Nogi tried again, this time with over 400 guns,
	including naval guns from the sunken battlehip Hatsuse and Krupp guns
	captured from the Russians at Nanshan.  The hope was to capture
	Port Arthur for the Emperor's birthday on November 3.  It failed
	with nearly 5,000 Japanese dead or wounded.

	When it was suggested to Meiji that Nogi be replaced, he said "Who
	would replace him?" and walked out.

	Finally in mid-November, the HUGE seige guns that Kodama had ordered
	were put into place.  They rained 500 lb (222 kg) shells onto the
	defenders of 203 Meter Hill, but to take the hill required men to
	rush it.  Even 50 yards (50 meters) was an impossible distance to
	rush up the hill with the machine guns and hand grenades from the
	defenders, and moats over 40 feet deep surrounding it.  More tunneling
	was needed.

	The hill passed back and forth between the Russians and the Japanese.
	"On the night of November 30 General Kodama was told that 203 Meter
	Hill had at last fallen to the Japanese.  The next morning at
	breakfast he learned that the Russians had recaptured the hill.  He
	threw his plate on the ground and walked angily from the room to
	see Nogi...[and] said he wanted to issue the orders.  Nogi thought
	for a moment and and then agreed.  Though he had Oyama's letter in
	his pocket naming him as Nogi's successor, Kodama still hesitated
	to produce it.  Nogi might eventually hand over the Third Army by
	his own decision, but the order from Oyama requiring him to stand
	down would bring disgrace on the Third Army and on Nogi, and he
	would kill himself.

	"General Oseko's Seventh Division, which had arrived from Japan
	only a few weeks before, had been reduced to a thousand men.  He
	asked to be allowed to attack again.  Kodama looked up at the weeping
	commander. 'Let them do it once more,' he said.  The Seventh Division
	fought for the next week, losing almost all its remaining men.

	"...About 4 P.M. on December 5 the only Russian officer left alive on
	the hill reported that the Japanese were holding [most of the hill and]
	called for reinforcements, and almost immediately the phone went dead.
	By 5 P.M. the whole of 203 Meter hill was in Japanese hands."

	A British correspondent wrote "It would have been an ideal spot for a peace
	conference.   There have probably never been so many
	dead crowded into so small a place since the French stormed the great
	redoubt at Borodino."

	14,000 Japanese and 5,000 Russians had died in the struggle for
	203 Meter hill.

	- Michael Goldman

-- 
"History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have
exhausted all other alternatives." - Abba Eban
	Disclaimer:  All views are solely my own & not the views of Acuson.
	<sun!sono!miklg>  or  [miklg@acuson.com]
Newsgroups: soc.history,alt.revisionism