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Japan's Obuchi and naval memories
April 28, 1999
By Edward Neilan
Special to World Tribune.com
TOKYO--Naval "actions" by Japan frame a century of great seagoing
engagements in the Pacific Ocean that are without parallel in history.
And did you know that in two yards in Kobe, Japan still can produce
four state-of-the-art submarines a year?
("There he goes again," my critics are already complaining, "waxing
nostalgic about Pacific War sea battles and hinting about a Japanese naval
resurgence.")
On May 27, 1905, Admiral Togo Heihachiro's fleet won a brilliant
engagement off Tsushima, the island lying between Korea and Japan.The
battle's outcome stunned the world. Togo's ships had trained well, both in
gunnery and in navigation. They responded nobly to Togo's epic signal to
the fleet, flown from the mast of his flagship, Mikasa: "The fate of the
empire lies in this one action. All hands, do your utmost."
In the event, he brought off the classic naval maneuver of "crossing
the T," in which a fleet masses all its firepower broadside against an
enemy advancing in single columns.
In his book "The Pacific Century (Scribners, New York ,1992) author
and old Japan hand Frank Gibney wrote: "The Russo-Japanese War was sign
and seal of the Meiji revolution's success. Japan had caught the fire of
Western learning and used the new science to beat a major Western power at
its own game."
To millions of the colonially weak and oppressed throughout Asia,
Togo's victorious guns came as a message of hope, wrote Gibney. Speaking
more than a half century later, Mochtar Lubis, the distinguished Indonesian
journalist, fairly summarized a reaction that transcended national
boundaries. "One of the factors which pushed our nationalist movement, was
the defeat of Russia by the Japanese. An Asian country, an Asian power had
been able to defeat a European power. That gave us more hope and courage in
our own struggle."
Of course, the buildup of the awesome Japanese fleet was for naught.
After the Tsushima strait battle and the textbook strike at Pearl Harbor in
1941, the Japanese navy was thoroughly annihilated by the Americans at the
great battles of Midway and the Coral Sea and others.
But wait, as the last chapter of 1999 is being written, Japan is
trumpeting its expanded tactical security activities--including operations
by Asia's best navy-- under the just-passed U.S.-Japan defense guidelines
which Tokyo's Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi will present to U.S. President
Bill Clinton at the White House May 3. You had better believe the
implications of this are being studied in Beijing, Pyongyang, Taipei,
Seoul, and Moscow.
And the fascinating newspaper item last month:
"Japan plans to provide US$40 million in aid to help Russia dismantle
about 50 aging nuclear submarines that were deployed in the Far East but
are now decommissioned, government sources said (March 24, 1999).
"The sources said the SSNs could pose a serious threat to the region's
environment unless they are dismantled as soon possible. The Japanese aid
money will be spent partly to expand the Zvezda dockyard--where the SSNs
are to be dismantled --near Vladivostok."
So Japan made "naval news" near the start of the century at Tsushima
and is making it again
with the submarine break-up at Vladivostok; a sure-sign that the Cold War
is over.
By the way, how many submarines are operational in Asia-Pacific waters
this morning? Japan has 16 "attack subs," run by the Maritime Self-Defense
Force (An oxymoron: attack subs for self-defense?).
North Korea has 26 attack submarines, South Korea has six. India has
17, Pakistan, 9. Indonesia has two; Australia, three; Taiwan, 4.
The People's Republic of China has one nuclear powered ballistic
missile submarine, five nuclear powered attack subs, and 54 conventional
powered attack submarines.
The U.S. Seventh Fleet currently deploys three attack submarines in the
Pacific, outside US. territorial waters. That's deceptive: the total U.S.
line-up worldwide is 18 ballistic missile submarines, 75 attack submarines
and 32 cruise missile submarines.
Edward Neilan (eneilan@crisscross.com) is a veteran journalist, based in Tokyo, who covers East Asia and writes weekly for World Tribune.com.
April 28, 1999
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