The secret dimensions of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 1900-1905

The Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 1902-1922

Volumn , Issue , 2003, Pages 82-98

  Chapman, John ^a  

^a Scottish Centre for War Studies   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 84906610338     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: 10.4324/9780203316672     Document Type: Chapter

References (15)

1. See the author's two essays on the 'Higher Realms of Intelligence' from 1900 to 1945 in I.T.M. Gow and Y Hirama (eds), Nichi-Ei Köryü-shi, 1600-2000, 3-Gun ji, Tokyo University Press, 2001, pp. 75-95 and 167-97.
2. This was published in English by Palgrave Macmillan in January 2003 in Vol. 3 of The History of Anglo-Japanese Relations, 1600-2000: The Military Dimension, pp. 71-87, 151-72.
3. Major-General Fukushima, former Japanese Military Attaché in Berlin, who had been observed at Yokosuka on 12 May 1902 by Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge, as one of the very few Japanese military officers who spoke English well was sent to London as chief military delegate at the Winchester House Conference on 7-8 July 1902. Selborne MSS, Vol. 19: Bodleian Library, Oxford (BLO).
4. Kurino tel. no. 31 of 14 January 1904 to Komura in response to Foreign Ministry enquiry: 'Mitteisha', File 5.2.7.3, GST.
5. Kurino tel. no. 17 of 19 February 1902 to Komura: 'Raiden 1902' (1902/0308), GST. This proposed a system of messengers in which he urged that the Army and Navy should participate. This method was seen by the Foreign Office in 1905 as the only reliable means of defeating Russian counter-intelligence, although both Britain and Japan employed the use of additives and substractors in their diplomatic cipher systems.
6. For further information on Utsunomiya's role in 1902-1903, see: 'Nichi-Ei ryokoku gunji kankei shorui', Bunko Miyazaki 31, BKST; and for his wartime role, see Inaba Chiharu in: O.K. Fält and A. Kujala (eds), Akashi Motojirö-Rakka ryusui, Helsinki: SHS, 1988, pp. 11-84.
7. Fisher Report of 2 June 1902, PRO: ADM1/7586. The deputy commander of the Chinese forces at Wei-hai-wei was a Scottish sea captain, Admiral John M'Clure, whose personal account confirms the Japanese use of torpedoes: see The Gallovidian vol. XI, no. 42 (Summer 1909), pp. 56-61. The Japanese fleet commander allowed the British China Fleet to send down divers at Wei-hai-wei. This confirmed that 'enormous holes' had been punched in Chinese vessels by Japanese torpedo-boats, a fact duly noted by Fisher when Controller of the Admiralty. The author of this report, Sir Robert Arbuthnot, was later appointed by Fisher as his flag captain when C-in-C at Portsmouth in 1903-1904.
8. See 'Meiji 35-nen ken-Ei kantai kankei shorui, hokoku 1': 10, ken-Ei ken-Bei. M-35-1, BKST. The author is grateful to Dr Inaba Chiharu for obtaining a copy of this material.
9. R.A. Arnold-Foster to his son, 27 March 1952, recalling his time as a torpedo officer on HMS Andromeda, Royal Navy Submarine Museum, Gosport (RNSMG).
10. 'Secret Service in the Event of a European War' was a memorandum held in the safe of the Military Intelligence Department in the War Office which was sent to the Foreign Office in May 1903. It was revised between March and September 1905 following most secret consultations with diplomats in neutral countries surrounding Germany.
11. See D.S. Macdiarmid, The Life of Sir J.M. Grierson, London: Constable, 1923. Grierson, the son of a Glasgow linen merchant, had compiled the first analysis of the Japanese armed forces in 1886 for General Brackenbury. The Esher Committee, including Sir John Fisher and Sir George Clarke, decided to get rid of Nicholson and imposed Grierson as DMO in February 1904. Nicholson had then served as chief British Army officer observing the operations in Manchuria.
12. Azuma to Yamagata report no. 33 of 13 June 1905 in: 'Zaigai bukan hokoku', no. 1, File 5.1.10.7, GST, supplied to the author by Dr Inaba Chiharu. Yamagata subsequently wrote a letter of thanks of 20 March 1906 to Kitchener for the favours he had shown to Azuma. PRO: 30/57/31, f. BB28.
13. See the author's 'British Use of "Dirty Tricks" in External Policy prior to 1914', War in History vol. 9, no. 1 (2002), pp. 65-6. The conclusion drawn by the Kyodo news agency in 2000 that the Admiralty was probably deciphering Russian naval communications is unlikely to have been correct, certainly at this date. The perception appears to be based on intercepted letters between St Petersburg and the Black Sea Fleet, but Japanese and British archives indicate that photographs of original letters were sold to Minister Makino at Vienna in June 1904 by a Polish informant and copies forwarded to the Admiralty. See File 5.2.2.13, pp. 86-7, GST; PRO: ADM1/7813, pp. 207-8.
14. See the memoirs of ex-Superintendent William Melville, who was recalled from retirement and served the Secret Service and M15 from 1903 to 1917, PRO: KV1/8.
15. See the author's study in Gow and Hirama (eds), Nichi-Ei Köryü-shi, 1600-2000, 3-Gunji, pp. 151-4. HMS Laurentic was reported in the spring of 1916 stopping and searching US and Japanese steamships for enemy aliens allegedly concerned 'in a plot for a revolution in India'. nAw: RG38, Entry 98, File C-10-b, no. 4746. It is clear, nevertheless, that initial concern rested in the loyalty of Muslim troops, Rajputs and Malays, and the connection with the Caliph, the Ottoman Sultan, the ally of Germany.