Imperial Japanese Navy in World War I

With the East Asia Squadron absent, the Imperial Japanese Navy mainly played a supporting role primarily by bombarding German and Austrian positions.

The bombs landed harmlessly in the mud but the aircraft were able to confirm that the SMS Emden was not present at Tsingtao, this intelligence was of major importance to Allied naval command.

However, by this time, Vice-Admiral von Spee had left the Marshall Islands and was heading for Tahiti to attack the French port facilities there as he made for Cape Horn.

[6] In late August 1914, with war declared the Japanese had wasted no time in deploying their powerful naval assets in support of allied efforts against German commerce raiders in the Asia-Pacific.

[7] Whilst the Chikuma stayed in the area patrolling unsuccessfully as far south as Ceylon, on September 18, the Ibuki was soon dispatched back eastwards to begin the task of escorting allied troop convoys carrying ANZAC contingents from Australia and New Zealand to the Middle East, from German raiders.

[8] After passing the Bonin Islands the South Seas squadron stopped at the Marianas but finding no sign of enemy ships pushed on rapidly as possible towards the Marshalls arriving at Eniwetok Atoll on September 29.

[10] In the west, Matsumura in Satsuma, escorted by two cruisers, sailed into the harbor at Yap much to the consternation to the Royal Australian Navy which had been on its way north to do so;[10] on 7 October, a landing party was put ashore at Koror in the Palaus; on the ninth Angaur and its German phosphate mines were in Japanese hands; and on the fourteenth, the battleship Katori dropped anchor in the roadstead off Garapan Town on Saipan.

[nb 1] Arriving in Malta during April at the height of the U-boat attacks, the small Japanese squadron immediately started escorting Allied troopships between Marseilles, Taranto, and ports in Egypt.

[1] The squadron quickly earned such a reputation for excellent seamanship, that the Royal Navy eventually turned over two of its destroyers to be manned by Japanese crews for the duration of the war.

[1] The destroyer Sakaki was, on June 11, torpedoed and lost fifty-nine officers and men including the captain but made it back to Malta and eventually rejoined the squadron.

[1] However, these important principles of the convoy system and the lessons of anti-submarine warfare, learned by a handful of Japanese officers and men on a distant station were quickly forgotten.