Japanese invasion of Sakhalin

Invasion of Sakhalin
	Part of the Russo-Japanese War
	; Japanese forces landing on Sakhalin
Date	7–31 July 1905
Location	Sakhalin Island
Result	Japanese victory
Belligerents
Empire of Japan	Russian Empire
Commanders and leaders
Haraguchi Kensai ; Kataoka Shichirō	Mikhail Nikolaevich Lyapunov
Strength
14,000	7,280 men
Casualties and losses
Minimal	181 dead and 3,270 prisoners

Last updated May 28, 2024

The invasion of Sakhalin was the last land battle of the Russo-Japanese War, and took place from 7 July to 31 July 1905.

Background

The invasion and occupation of the island of Sakhalin had been considered by the Japanese government from the early stages of the Russo-Japanese War, and the plan was actively promoted by General Nagaoka Gaishi, a senior member of the Imperial General Headquarters. However, the plan was vetoed, primarily due to opposition by the Imperial Japanese Navy.

On 7 June 1905, shortly after the Battle of Tsushima, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt met with Japanese diplomat Kaneko Kentarō and the issue was reconsidered. Roosevelt agreed with the Japanese assessment that the invasion and occupation of Sakhalin was now necessary, as only the threat of direct loss of Russian territory would bring Tsar Nicholas II to consider a negotiated settlement to the war.^[1]

Japan and Russia had previously shared ownership of Sakhalin; however, the Japanese relinquished their claims in the 1875 Treaty of Saint Petersburg in exchange for undisputed sovereignty over all of the Kuril Islands. By 1904, Sakhalin had an estimated 30,000 inhabitants, including around 4,000 Ainu.^[1] The island was used as a prison and a place of exile for political dissidents, and did not figure prominently in Russian strategic plans. The island was noted for its harsh climate, isolation, and the high level of corruption of its ruling bureaucrats, and consequently little investment was made in its defence.

The Imperial Russian Army had a garrison on Sakhalin with a nominal strength of 7,280 men. However, many of these men were conscripted farmers, hunters, or political prisoners with minimal training or equipment. Russian General Mikhail Nikolaevich Lyapunov had been a lawyer before the war, and had limited formal military training.

The Imperial Japanese Army invasion force consisted of 14,000 men of the newly formed IJA 13th Division under General Haraguchi Kensai, supported by a naval force led by Admiral Kataoka Shichirō, consisting of four armored cruisers (under Vice Admiral Dewa Shigetō), four protected cruisers (under Rear Admiral Tōgō Masamichi), four coastal defense ships, nine destroyers and twelve torpedo boats.

The battle

The Japanese force commenced landing operations on 7 July 1905, with the main force landing between Aniva and Korsakov without opposition, and a second landing party nearer to Korsakov itself, where it destroyed a battery of field artillery after short combat.^[1] The Japanese moved on to occupy Korsakov on 8 July, which was set on fire by the retreating Russian garrison after having been defended for 17 hours by 2,000 men led by Colonel Josef Arciszewski [ ru ]. The Japanese moved north, taking the village of Vladimirovka (present-day Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk) on 10 July, the same day that a new Japanese detachment landed at Cape Notoro.^[1] Colonel Arciszewski dug in to resist the Japanese, but was outflanked and forced to flee into the mountainous interior of the island. He surrendered with his remaining men on 16 July. About 200 Russians were captured while the Japanese suffered 18 dead and 58 wounded.

On 24 July, the Japanese landed in northern Sakhalin near Alexandrovsk-Sakhalinski. In northern Sakhalin, the Russians had about 5,000 troops under the direct command of General Lyapunov. Because of the numerical and material superiority of the Japanese, the Russians withdrew from the city and surrendered a few days later on 31 July 1905.

Results

The Japanese occupied Sakhalin with minimal effort and low losses. The Russians suffered 181 dead and had 3,270 taken prisoner. The reasons for the low Russian resistance lay in the low morale of the soldiers, who were mostly prisoners and deportees with little or no military training. Per the terms of the Treaty of Portsmouth ending the Russo-Japanese War, the southern half of Sakhalin was ceded to Japan, with the 50th parallel north as the boundary line, becoming Karafuto Prefecture.

Notes

1 2 3 4 Kowner 2006 , pp. 338–339.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Russo-Japanese War</span> 1904–1905 war for Manchuria and Korea

The Russo-Japanese War was fought between the Japanese Empire and the Russian Empire during 1904 and 1905 over rival imperial ambitions in Manchuria and the Korean Empire. The major theatres of military operations were in the Liaodong Peninsula and Mukden in Southern Manchuria, the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan.

The Treaty of Portsmouth is a treaty that formally ended the 1904–1905 Russo-Japanese War. It was signed on September 5, 1905, after negotiations from August 6 to August 30, at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, United States. U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt was instrumental in the negotiations and won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts, the first ever American recipient.

Karafuto Agency, from 1943 Karafuto Prefecture, commonly known as South Sakhalin, was a part of the Empire of Japan on Sakhalin, it was part of the gaichi from 1907 to 1943 and later a prefecture as part of the naichi until 1945.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Battle of Nanshan</span> 1904 battle in the Russo-Japanese War

The Battle of Nanshan, also known as the battle of Jinzhou or Chinchou, was one of many vicious land battles of the Russo-Japanese War. It took place on 24–26 May 1904 across a two-mile-wide defense line across the narrowest part of the Liáodōng Peninsula, covering the approaches to Port Arthur and on the 116-meter high Nanshan Hill, the present-day Jinzhou District, north of the city center of Dalian, Liaoning, China.

The naval Battle of Ulsan, also known as the Battle of the Japanese Sea or Battle of the Korean Strait, took place on 14 August 1904 between cruiser squadrons of the Imperial Russian Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy during the Russo-Japanese War, four days after the Battle of the Yellow Sea.

Stepan Osipovich Makarov was a Russian vice-admiral, commander in the Imperial Russian Navy, oceanographer, member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and author of several books. He was a pioneer of insubmersibility theory, and developer of a Cyrillic-based semaphore alphabet. A proponent of icebreaker use, he supervised the first ever polar icebreaker construction. Makarov also designed several ships.

Korsakov is a town and the administrative center of Korsakovsky District of Sakhalin Oblast, Russia. It is located 42 kilometers (26 mi) south from Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, at the southern end of Sakhalin Island, on the coast of the Salmon Cove in the Aniva Bay. The town has a population of 33,526 as of the 2010 census.

Wilhelm Withöft, more commonly known as Wilgelm Vitgeft, was a Russia-German admiral in the Imperial Russian Navy, noted for his service in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905.

Nikolai Ivanovich Nebogatov was a rear admiral in the Imperial Russian Navy, noted for his role in the final stages of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905.

Akitsushima (秋津洲) was a protected cruiser of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN), designed and built by the Yokosuka Naval Arsenal in Japan. The name Akitsushima comes from an archaic name for Japan, as used in the ancient chronicle Kojiki.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anatoly Stessel</span> Russian general

Anatoly Mikhaylovich Stessel was a Russian baron of German descent, military leader, and general.

Oskar Ferdinand Gripenberg was a Finnish-Swedish general of the Russian Second Manchurian Army during the Russo-Japanese War.

The 13th Division was an infantry division in the Imperial Japanese Army. Its tsūshōgō code name was the Mirror Division, and its military symbol was 13D. The 13th Division was one of four new infantry divisions raised by the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) in the closing stages of the Russo-Japanese War 1 April 1905, after it turned out what the entire IJA was committed to combat in Manchuria, leaving not a single division to guard the Japanese home islands from attack.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Battle of Korsakov</span> 1904 battle of the Russo-Japanese War

The Battle of Korsakov, a naval engagement of the Russo-Japanese War, was fought on 20 August 1904 off the southern coast of Sakhalin island. The battle foiled an attempt by the Imperial Russian Navy protected cruiser Novik at escaping Port Arthur to join the Russian cruiser squadron at Vladivostok, Russia, after the Russian Pacific Squadron was scattered in the Battle of the Yellow Sea.

The Russian cruiser Svetlana was a protected cruiser of the Imperial Russian Navy. She was the flagship of the Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Russian Navy and was used as an imperial yacht in peacetime. She was sunk in combat during Battle of Tsushima in the Russo-Japanese War.

<i>Hitachi Maru</i> Incident Maritime incident

The Hitachi Maru Incident was a maritime incident which occurred during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, in which three Japanese transports were sunk in a Russian commerce raiding sortie by a Vladivostok-based armored cruiser squadron of the Imperial Russian Navy.

Nikolai Illarionovich Skrydlov, was an admiral in the Imperial Russian Navy.

The Soviet invasion of South Sakhalin, also known as the Battle of Sakhalin, was the Soviet invasion of the Japanese portion of Sakhalin Island known as Karafuto Prefecture. The invasion was part of the Soviet–Japanese War, a minor campaign in the Asian Theatre during Second World War.

Haraguchi Kensai was an Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) general and, in his later life, a member of the House of Peers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mikhail Nikolaevich Lyapunov</span>

Mikhail Nikolaevich Lyapunov was Russian statesman and military leader and a participant in the Russo-Japanese War.

References

Connaughton, R. M. (1988). The War of the Rising Sun and the Tumbling Bear—A Military History of the Russo-Japanese War 1904–5. London. ISBN 0-415-00906-5.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
Kowner, Rotem (2006). Historical Dictionary of the Russo-Japanese War. The Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0-8108-4927-5.
Jukes, Geoffrey (2002). The Russo-Japanese War 1904–1905. Osprey Essential Histories. ISBN 978-1-84176-446-7.

46°45′00″N142°39′00″E / 46.75000°N 142.65000°E / 46.75000; 142.65000

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[Kowner-1] 1 2 3 4 Kowner 2006 , pp. 338–339.

[1]