page_title: Japanese cruiser Suma
section_title: Early career
hierarchical_section_title: Japanese cruiser Suma / Service record / Early career
caption_attribution_description: Japanese cruiser Suma in 1897, Kobe
context_page_description: Suma was a protected cruiser of the Imperial Japanese Navy, designed and built by the Yokosuka Naval Arsenal in Japan. She was the lead ship in the Suma-class cruiser, and her sister ship was Akashi. The name Suma comes from a geographic location near Kobe, in Hyōgo Prefecture.
context_section_description: Completed too late for combat operations in the First Sino-Japanese War, the first overseas deployment of Suma was to Manila in the Philippines during the Spanish–American War, where she helped safeguard the interests and citizens of Japan during that conflict.
  From June to July 1900, Suma was under the command of Commander Shimamura Hayao, and supported Japanese naval landing forces which occupied the port city of Tianjin in northern China during the Boxer Rebellion, as part of the Japanese contribution to the Eight-Nation Alliance.
caption: Suma off Kobe, 1897
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