 | The city of Port Arthur (Lüshunkou), located at the southern extremity of the Liaodong Peninsula commanding the entrance to the Bohai Gulf, became a fulcrum of historic conflict a century ago when the Russians and Japanese fought a fierce and bloody war over control of its strategic harbor and the surrounding territory in southern Manchuria. The city had received its English name in 1860, when a British tea clipper took shelter in the then fishing village during a typhoon. The ship was commanded by a Capt. Arthur, who made note of the excellent anchorage and communicated his findings to the Admiralty in London.
Why was Port Arthur so valuable that two of the foremost empires of the time would sacrifice up to 100,000 soldiers apiece and stake their navies and their national prestige on its possession? Location, location, location.
Guns at 203-meter Hill Today
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Strategic Location of the City
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As can be seen from the map, the city controls a choke point on all waterborne trade with Beijing. It is closer to the Chinese capital than the Shandong Peninsula with its port of Qingdao (then occupied by Germany), which projects from the opposite shore of the Yellow Sea. Port Arthur also overlooks the western shore of Korea, with its chief cities of Pyongyang and Seoul. There could not be a more strategic location. Port Arthur has an excellent landlocked, deep-water harbor with a back harbor and a basin suitable for drydocking and cleaning ships.* It is surrounded by lofty peaks perfect for fortification with long-range cannon to protect the approaches by land and sea. It was also the key to controlling the mineral wealth of Manchuria -- enormous coal, iron, and copper deposits.
 For the Russians, there was the additional advantage that Port Arthur was a warm-water port, protected from the Siberian blasts by the brown, eroded hills of Manchuria: its harbor did not freeze over in the winter. Russia's other Far East port was Vladivostok, on the eastern side of the Korean Peninsula and some four degrees further north, on the Sea of Japan; its otherwise superb harbor was unusable in the winter months because of icing. With its fine double harbor, oceanic climate, defensible position, and ready access to the mineral wealth of the region, Port Arthur was a strategic prize of incalculable value to the Tsar.
Port Arthur had already been the seat of conflict during the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95. During a 20-month occupation, the Japanese had allegedly massacred the Chinese garrison and oppressed the inhabitants in reprisal for brutal treatment of Japanese POWs (though it seems likely the extent of this atrocity was exaggerated by an American journalist to justify sensational headlines.) Under the terms of the Treaty of Shimonoseki which ended the war, Japan was to have occupied the Port Arthur region and all Korea; but in the Tripartite Intervention of 1895, France, Germany, and Russia strong-armed Japan into relinquishing her demands on Liaodong and the Port. Soon afterwards, the Russians coerced a 25-year lease on Port Arthur from the decadent Chinese Empire, including a rail corridor through Manchuria. Russian military engineers moved in aggressively, building a rail line from Port Arthur up to the Trans-Siberian railhead at Harbin. The Russians proceeded to erect a chain of fortifications on the heights around the city, to build batteries on the spit which protected the harbor (the "Tiger's Tail") and all the surrounding headlands and hills in town, and to establish a large naval base on the harbor with hull graving facilities, machine shops, ammo depots, and all the support facilities their burgeoning fleet required. The Pacific Squadron based at Port Arthur included 7 modern battleships, 12 cruisers, and dozens of TBs and TB destroyers. 1904 fortifications are marked in red on the map at right.
The Japanese observed growing Russian influence in their region with mingled trepidation and resentment. The Japanese felt that Port Arthur was rightfully theirs after their hard-won victory over China. They viewed the Russians as usurpers, resented the overt racism expressed in the Intervention, and felt that Port Arthur as well as Korea should be integral parts of Dai Nippon, the powerful empire they were constructing in East Asia. Several years after the crushing of the Boxer Rebellion, an extensive European military presence was felt in China. The Qing Dynasty was on its last legs, their realm a sovereign state in name only, desirable parts of its territory already carved up by western Powers which were not subject to Chinese law, or effectively broken off by local strong-men in a foreshadowing of the warlord era. With huge segments of their former revenues diverted into the pockets of crooked officials or earmarked to pay indemnities, with omens indicating the withdrawal of the Mandate of Heaven from the Manchu dynasty, China was tumbling into chaos. Small wonder the Japanese felt the need for a well-fortified buffer zone to prevent incursions on their own sovereignty. They were also anxious to exploit China's weakness and disunity to their own ends: they had been avid participants in the suppression of the Boxers, in fact leading the armed expedition against Beijing in 1900-01, and adamantly demanding their share of the indemnity used to settle the incident. Having endured years of delay, duplicity, and calculated insult from Viceroy Alexeiev at Port Arthur, Japan delivered an ultimatum to St. Petersburg in December 1903. The two sides recalled their ambassadors a few days before hostilities commenced.
 Japan launched war on February 8, 1904 with a surprise torpedo attack on the Russian naval vessels at Port Arthur, temporarily disabling 3 battleships and 4 large cruisers and exchanging fire with the Russian forts. This was a serious setback for Russia, since they had only one repair dock capable of handling the largest ships. Thereafter the Japanese Navy continued to harass the Russians, depleting their fleet with mines and torpedo attacks, bombarding the town and port from long range, and inviting fleet action by sending weak squadrons to cruise close offshore, within sight of the harbor, while their battleship division lurked just over the horizon, ready to swoop down on unwary Russians. One of the signal Japanese successes was to lure out the Russians' charismatic and inspiring commander, Admiral Makaroff, and lead him over a freshly laid minefield. Makaroff's flagship, the battleship Petropavlovsk, detonated two mines and dissolved in a tower of grey-brown smoke, sinking instantly with all hands.
This catastrophe left the Russian navy bereft of its most capable and daring commander, as became apparent when the remaining Port Arthur fleet, attempting a breakout for Vladivostok, clashed with the Japanese in the Battle of the Yellow Sea, August 10, 1904. In the opening phase of the action, Japanese and Russian vessels appeared to inflict damage in equal measure. The Mikasa sustained several hits. After 90 minutes of this, the Russian C-in-C, Adm. Wilhelm Vitgeft, was killed by a shell splinter at 6:30 p.m.; soon after, all the flagship's bridge personnel were killed by a direct hit. These hits also disabled the steering of the Russian flagship Tsesarevich; helpless and smoldering, she steamed in gigantic circles as Japanese shellfire burst around her decks.
Witgeft's second-in-command attempted to assume command in the Peresviet, but this was not recognized by the other ships, and they diseregarded his signals, following the demented path of the Tsesarevich instead. The Japanese soon succeeded in shooting away Peresviet's signal-flag halyards altogether. The Russian line fell into confusion and retreated to Port Arthur. Evening was drawing on and Togo was running low on ammunition by this time, so he retired without clinching a conclusive win, but having inflicted heavy damage without suffering unduly themselves. Badly mauled, the Tsesarevich limped into Qingdao and was interned, while Askold and Diana also showed a clean pair of heels to pursuit. But the remainder of the Russian fleet turned back for Port Arthur, where it remained bottled up, its battle damage largely unattended, rusting and listing around the harbor: a premonition of defeat. Above left, the Pacific Fleet sorties to the battle. At left appears the Retvizan, perhaps Russia's best battleship, built by the Cramps yard at Philadelphia and half-sister to the famous battleship Potemkin; at right, the cruiser Askold, which suffered a punctured boiler and lost two of its five funnels in the action, but nevertheless reached Shanghai and safety on the 14th. At left foreground and far right, turn-of-the-century TBs bob in the heavy swell.
Meanwhile the Japanese had been moving a powerful army up the Korean peninsula and across the Yalu to attack Port Arthur from the land, investing the fortress in late May. The well-trained Japanese troops mounted numerous suicidal frontal assaults on the forts north and east of town. These attacks were repulsed with great losses (in one case, 10,000 killed in 15 hours of fighting). Starting in Nov. 1904, General Nogi deployed his growing strength to lay siege to the fortress.
Siege guns crash and thump in an accurate movie re-creation of the siege, as "Gen. Nogi" watches from the left.
This was a deliberate, brutal example of modern siege warfare, foreshadowing the horrific Battle of Verdun and other clashes of the First World War. An extensive siege-works of trenches was dug around the Russian perimeter. Mortars and siege guns of ever greater size were moved up on specially-laid railroad tracks and emplaced to batter down the defenses. Japan's many batteries were coordinated by a central fire control command, linked by field telephones. All the technology of modern warfare was brought to bear: massive mortars that could shoot a 500-lb projectile 5 miles; rapid-firing howitzers, machine guns, bolt-action magazine rifles, barbed wire, and hand grenades. The Russians fought back with all the strength conferred by their occupation of the high ground. But gradually the Japanese drew the noose ever tighter. Blockaded by land and sea, the Russians started to run low on food and ammunition. They also suffered from unimaginative leadership verging on incompetence (Gen. Anatoli Stoessel). With their 5,800-mile supply line -- the railroad to Moscow -- broken, first their means of fighting and then their will to fight began to flag.
 The beginning of the end came on December 6, when Japanese sappers succeeded in tunneling under the ramparts of the fort on 203-meter Hill, the key to the entire position. With a great boom and huge clouds of dust, charges exploded, demolishing the rampart and sending a generous slide of dirt down the steep hillside. This afforded the Japanese a natural ramp upwards as they rushed the fort. In a desperate spate of bayonet work and hand-to-hand fighting, the Japanese stormed the fort and turned its guns on the doomed city. No longer fearing bombardment from the heights, they brought up colossal 11-inch siege guns and began a relentless cannonading of the port and its surrounding forts and batteries. The ships caught in harbor were damaged and sunk in the shallows. One by one the Russian gun emplacements were pummeled into dust.
Things were not good behind Japanese lines. The malnutrition-related disease beri-beri had devastated thousands of the Emperor's best soldiers. Grieving for the loss of his son in the assault on 203-m. Hill, Gen. Nogi contemplated suicide, but steadied by words from the Meiji Emperor himself, he continued to press the campaign. Among the troops, morale held firm, with faith in their commanders and a quasi-religious fervor in the rightness of their Emperor's cause. On the Russian side, by contrast, things were falling apart. Three quarters of the garrison of 40,000 had been killed or wounded. Ammunition was running low. Starvation was taking a dreadful toll. Morale collapsed.
On December 20, the outer ring of forts capitulated. The city and harbor held out until an armistice could be signed on December 30, formally surrendering on January 2, 1905. In Japan, where the effort to supply and field their great Army had placed considerable strain on society, rejoicing and fireworks greeted the news. The long-cherished objective was now gained, a jewel in the crown of the Mikado's empire.
But the cost had been steep: 57,780 sons of Japan killed and wounded in action, plus some 30,000 dead of beri-beri The Russians had suffered 31,306 casualties at Port Arthur and were about to suffer many more in other defeats around the theater. Although writings and telegrams had shown a defeatist perspective setting in, the Japanese discovered vast untouched hordes of food, medicine, and ammunition within the fortress after the surrender. This suggests sabotage or, at the least, treasonously poor management or defeatism in the Russian leadership. In the outer forts of the vast and complex Port Arthur system, many of their troops had died of starvation and long run out of ammunition that fall. They were past defending their posts in the last months of the siege.
 The war ground on for many more months, with the highlight being the Battle of Mukden (Shenyang), the ancient Manchu capital. In this 21-day siege, the largest land battle in history prior to WWI, the combined Japanese armies attacked on all sides simultaneously, picking off the well-fortified buffer erected by the Russian C-in-C, Gen. Alexei Kuropatkin, one village at a time. Eventually Kuropatkin found himself surrounded and his outlying troops cut off or surrendered; though he had started the battle outnumbering the Japanese 3:2, he was now outnumbered and outflanked; his only option was to abandon the position and retreat. The retreat soon became a rout, with the Japanese driving the defeated Russian army up the rail line toward Harbin and the Siberian border. The Tsar could not admit defeat, least of all to a yellow race! He replaced Kuropatkin with his subordinate, Gen. Gripenberg, and commanded his remaining Baltic Fleet warships to sail from Europe all the way to the Far East, to avenge the defeat of the Pacific Squadron. In reality, the Tsar signed their death sentence, for they sailed not to victory but to annihilation at Tsushima. Meanwhile the Russians were forced back ever further in Manchuria by battle-hardened Japanese armies (at right, a journalist's impression of a Russian column's retreat through the winter -- click here for a beautiful enlargement). Even then, facing defeat in the East, starvation and revolution at home, the Tsar mulishly stuck to his guns, while the Tsarina Alexandra purred in his ear, "Be more autocratic, darling!"
In Japan, meanwhile, the continuing prosecution of the war was severely straining the economy, but the government continued to borrow in order to protect Japanese gains heretofore. But there seemed no honorable way out for either side. Enter U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt, who offered to act as a mediator between the two sides too proud to talk to each other. Indeed it was high time to end the war: total killed in battle exceeded 25,000 Russians and almost 50,000 Japanese; wounded, some 150,000 Russians and 175,000 Japanese. Informal talks aboard the presidential yacht Mayflower flowered into full-blown peace negotiations at the U.S. naval base in Portsmouth, N.H., with the Russian delegation led by Sergius Witte, the Japanese by Baron Komura. By the terms of the peace treaty (September 1905), the defeated Russians gave up their claim to Port Arthur and the railway line through Liaodong, and also ceded half of Sakhlin Island, stormed by Japan in a surprise offensive during the final weeks of the war. The Japanese had been confidently expecting to impose a huge indemnity on the Russians for causing the war (much as Bismarck had done on the French for the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, and as the western Powers had continually done in their incursions upon China, up to and including the Boxer Rebellion of 1900-01). Roosevelt refused to back Japan's demand for reparations, and it was not incorporated into the Treaty of Portsmouth which was signed in September. The terms of the Treaty caused outrage in Japan; anti-American riots and demonstrations tore the country for several weeks. Ever sensitive to western racism, the Japanese felt betrayed, just when their arms had triumphed and established them as a rising world power. The residual mistrust from this episode formed an essential piece of the background to the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor 35 years later, as explicitly mentioned in Japan's 1941 note declaring war. For the moment, however, the Japanese swallowed their pride, becoming exemplary hosts when the Great White Fleet visited their ports 3 years later on a good-will trip partly intended to impress the island nation with America's overwhelming naval might, only 10 years after the U.S. had become a neighbor by taking over the Philippines and Guam. The Japanese carefully looked over the American ships and remained privately unimpressed.
 In Russia, the Throne was rocked by a widespread worker's revolt sparked by the hardships and deaths caused by the War, and starting in many cases within the Navy. The Tsar remained in power only by agreeing to become a constitutional monarch, ruling in concert with an elected legislature, the Duma -- in effect, by agreeing to "be less autocratic." A forward-looking government headed by the Tsar's western-educated minister, Sergius Witte, was put in place, and the nation pitched in to repair the damage done in the war. In the new constitutional order, the Tsar would govern with the consent of an elected legislature, the Duma. Old habits die hard, however. The Russians had little experience of democracy on which to draw. The ink was barely dry on the October Declarations when a delegation of Duma deputites visiting Britain to observe parliamentary procedure, were surprised by the news that the Tsar had dissolved the Duma. The Tsar and Tsarina soon reverted to their old ways, becoming ever more imperious, even though their reign had been weakened by war and unrest. Eight years later, in 1914, the Russian Empire had reverted to autocratic monarchy with only a window-dressing of representative democracy. Such was the state which lurched into the disaster of World War I, stepping blindly into the trap set by Austria-Hungary and Germany. Confronted by strains its corrupt and outdated structure could not bear, the Romanov dynasty foundered in a vast social upheaval, pulling down with it the entire autocratic order of Central Europe.
Meanwhile, Teddy Roosevelt received the Nobel Peace Prize for brokering the 1905 peace (at left, TR with the emissaries from Russia and Japan). And in East Asia, Japan was recognized as the leading Power, with an empire including Korea (annexed 1910), Taiwan, the southern half of Sakhalin, and a foothold in Manchuria -- surrounding the great naval base it had captured at Port Arthur, which they called Ryojun (the Japanese pronunciation of Lüshunkou, written with the same Chinese characters). Japan had upset the white-supremacist theories underlying 19th-century imperialism, and bested a European Great Power at its own game. The shock waves of Japan's victory reverberated throughout the "civilised world," and the island empire began to command a grudging respect in the West. Port Arthur remained under Japanese rule until the end of WWII, when Stalin's troops barged in to take their surrender and loot all they could of the great industrial base Japan had built up in Manchuria since 1905.
Lüshun today is a much quieter place, having been outpaced by nearby Dalian (founded by the Russian Tsar as Dalny), now the chief port and provincial capital of Liaodong. But handsome European-style buildings constructed by the imperial powers still stand in Lüshun, and the city is attempting to build a tourist trade based on its spectacular scenery and fascinating history.
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