What Was Japan Up To in Siberia?

Some of the 70,000 Troops Japan Sent to Siberia

By John D. Beatty and Lee A. Rochwerger

Introduction 

Beginning in January 1918, the largest and best-known Japanese WWI-related campaign, referred to as the Siberian Intervention (Shiberia Shuppei in Japanese), was the largest international conflict that Japan had ever entered into up to that time. Of the ten Allied powers that sent troops to Siberia, the Japanese sent the largest contingent, stayed the longest, and were the only ones with specific instructions from their government about their mission—to create a separate and independent Siberia as a buffer against whoever controlled the government in Moscow after the ongoing Russian Civil War. Those reasons, however, were poorly articulated to the Japanese public. After several atrocities, ballooning debts, and shortages traceable to the project—that in the Taisho period (1912–25) were not hidden as they would be later—public opinion turned against it. When logistical, public, economic, and international pressure became irresistible, the last Japanese forces were withdrawn in October 1922.

Japan in the Great War 

As an ally of Great Britain since 1902, Japan declared war on the Central Powers in August 1914, knowing that she could also pick up some German Pacific territories on the cheap—at least without major bloodshed. At this stage in Japan's industrialization and modernization, nothing was “cheap.” 

In November 1914, British diplomats asked for Japanese 15 divisions to the Western Front. Since that figure constituted more than half of the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) at the time and would have required some two million tons of shipping capacity, the effort was stillborn. On 17 February 1915, Japanese sailors trained as infantry went ashore with their French and Russian allies in Singapore to round up Indian mutineers from the British Army. Japanese naval forces escorted Allied convoys in the Mediterranean from April 1917 until the end of the war. In August 1917, the French enquired about deploying Japanese divisions to the Balkan front. For a number of reasons, including the imminent collapse of Russia, the Japanese demurred. In January 1915, Japan, trying to take advantage of Europe's distraction, issued their Twenty-One Demands to China that would have turned China into little more than a vassal. The United States, Britain, France, and Russia took great exception to the power grab. A watered-down version, known as the Thirteen Demands, was accepted by China in May. The Twenty-One/Thirteen Demands crisis caused great concern in Britain about the future of the alliance with Japan. It also angered Japanese militarists who were beginning to see foreign policy as their responsibility. 

When the Russian Revolution began in 1917, Japan became concerned about stability in Siberia. Lenin's Decree on Peace on 8 November 1917 seemed to indicate that the Reds were taking charge of Russia. By the end of 1917, after the collapse of the Italian front and troop withdrawals from Mesopotamia, Britain was asking for Japanese land troops anywhere. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on 3 March 1918 was greeted with alarm in Tokyo, as it was negotiated by the Bolsheviks.

The Decision to Intervene 

Between Lenin's Decree and the beginning of peace talks between Russia and Germany, IJA Vice Chief of Staff Tanaka Giichi formed a Siberia Planning Committee in February 1918. Their goal was to scratch out plans for detaching Siberia from Russia and whoever won the coming civil war over the levers of power in Moscow. Always frightened of a vengeful Russian state that would take away her hard-won gains in East Asia, the plan was made the more urgent by Japanese fear and hatred of communism. While General Uehara Yūsaku, Chief of the IJA General Staff, saw an expedition as an opportunity to rid Japan of an old enemy. Field Marshal Yamagata Aritomo of the Privy Council and Prime Minister Terauchi Masatake were more cautious, not wanting more disfavor in the West after the Twenty-One/Thirteen Demands crisis.

While the Japanese military planned, their allies dithered. While the Triple Alliance and the U.S. wanted to restart an eastern front against the Germans, they were indecisive about exactly how and lacked the manpower in any event. Already overextended in Europe, Allied manpower was a big problem for them. So were the tons of weapons, ammunition, and equipment intended for the Imperial Russian armies that were just sitting in warehouses in Russia. This material became another Allied goal for the intervention. Gradually they hit on a scheme to land at Murmansk, Archangel, and Vladivostok to secure the supplies and the connecting railways. Manpower would be supplied by the Czech Legion that was made up of some 50,000 ethnic Czech and Slovak soldiers, former members of Austro-Hungarian and German forces captured by the Russians. The Czech Legion was already fighting Russian Reds alongside the Whites.

But official Japanese action only followed the earlier direct action by Japanese officers. Japanese sailors went ashore in Vladivostok on 30 December 1917 to quell riots between workers' soviets and local authorities that threatened Japanese businesses. Two Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) battleships under Rear Admiral Kato Kanji arrived at Vladivostok on 12 January 1918, two days ahead of a British cruiser out of Hong Kong. In April 1918, Japanese sailors went ashore at Vladivostok again, this time to prevent supplies from falling into German hands. At the same time, IJA commanders in Manchuria were arming anyone willing to fight the Reds. These actions alarmed the West enough to finally act.

After Brest-Litovsk, the Czech Legion refused German demands to surrender and refused to obey several pleas and agreements to evacuate, suspecting treachery. They fought their way onto the Trans-Siberian Railway, managing to clear key points of the railway by the spring of 1918. This got the attention of hard-pressed Allied planners still bleeding from the German spring offensives. By the end of June 1918, the Czechs under Mikhail Diterikhs, a White Russian general, had cleared Vladivostok of the Reds. Despite the preemptive actions of the Japanese, the Whites and the Czechs, the United States and the Entente committed to up to 7,000 men each in Siberia, but few seemed to know exactly what for—to secure what supplies and to rescue whom? Even if the politicians were clear in their minds what they wanted their soldiers and sailors to do, the mission was not clearly articulated to any military force under any flag except the Japanese. The Japanese generals finally got government and imperial approval for a 12,000-man expedition in August 1918. This number could be expanded,  it was made clear, if the mission extended beyond Vladivostok.

Sometime after the Deployment, the Allies
Paraded in Vladivostok

Landing and Occupation 

The first Japanese troops of the official commitment, commanded by General Otani Kikuzo, landed at Vladivostok in July 1918. By marching quickly along the railway as far west as Chita just south and east of Lake Baikal, Otani could plead for more help to shore up his porous lines. Tokyo complied, and by the end of October, Otani had by most accounts (the number is still in dispute) 70,000 soldiers and sailors in Siberia. In addition, some 50,000 Japanese civilian settlers and businessmen were dispatched, scattering as far west as Lake Baikal and Buryatia. Otani wasted no time in claiming that he was the commander of all non-Russian forces in Russia, a claim that no other nation's forces acknowledged. 

Aftermath 

The Siberian Intervention would cost Japan some 5,000 casualties, mostly to typhus and diarrhea. It had also cost about ¥1 billion (half the total national budget for two years), spun inflation out of control, and left the military with little to no leverage to direct foreign and military policy during the so-called Taisho Democracy when liberal and democratic government almost took hold. 

It also earned the enmity of Moscow because of Japanese support for their opponents, delaying diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union until 1925. Diplomatically the whole event was a fiasco. So great was the number of American and British officers and officials who were alarmed by the brutality, disingenuousness, and caprice of the Japanese that many in both the United States and Great Britain came to regard a future war with Japan within a generation as inevitable. 

In future postings on Roads to the Great War, we will present Beatty & Rochwerger's further discussions of  the performance, crimes, and ultimate withdrawal of the Japanese forces in Siberia.  MH