Togo Heihachiro
“Defeat is a common fate of a soldier and there is nothing to be ashamed of in it. The great point is whether we have performed our duty.”
- Admiral Togo, to a defeated enemy
Togo Heihachiro was born a samurai in Feudal Japan, learned swordsmanship, horseback riding, and archery as a young warrior, fought bravely against the forces of the Shogun during the Meiji Restoration, started two wars without the orders to do so, won the first major engagement between modern battleships in the 20th century, indirectly caused the Communist Revolution, is the reason why Japan was such a hardcore naval power during World War II, and was still so badass that when he died the U.S. and Great Britain sent warships to honor him in the naval parade commemorating his funeral.
He was a man who grew up with a katana on his hip yet oversaw one of the most one-sided crushing victories in the history of modern naval warfare, using techniques and strategies he invented himself and then added to the curriculum of the Tokyo Naval Academy — where they are still taught today. He was a national hero in Japan, advisor to the Emperor, made the cover of TIME Magazine (they referred to him as "the Nelson of the East"), was such a hardcore dude that Toshiro Mifune played him in the movie about his life, and his tactics and strategies were so inventive and successful that it laid the framework for the style of naval warfare that would become prevalent across both World Wars.
On the cover of TIME back in the 1920s before the invention of graphic designers.
Admiral Togo was born in the port village of Kagoshima, on the far southern tip of the Japanese islands, on January 27, 1848. He was born into the feudal Samurai class, where he was a trusted retainer of the prestigious Satsuma Clan of warrior daimyos. A few years after his birth, Japan was opened up to foreign trade after centuries of isolation, and Togo grew up like all samurai boys – by learning how to slice motherfuckers' heads off with a razor-sharp katana. It was a skill he was excellent at, although he still made a name for himself as one of the greatest and most successful military commanders in Japanese history even though he never swung one of those suckers in anger during his entire military career.
Shit got weird for Kagoshima in 1864, when a Satsuma samurai pissed off the Empire of Great Britain by hacking the head off of a rude English dude. Apparently, some Englishman named Richardson had been riding his horse around Kagoshima like an asshole being all disrespectful to the local samurai lord, so, naturally, one of those samurai whipped out a katana and slashed Richardson's face in half like a watermelon. England demanded that the Satsuma pay a fine for murdering one of their guys, and Satsuma of course told England to go fuck itself with a tire iron. The Royal Navy showed up off the coast of Kagoshima with a couple warships and opened fire on the city with a hailstorm of cannoballs. Togo Heihachiro was just 15 years old when this went down, but as a proud member of warrior caste, he had a duty to do. The young samurai ran immediately to his battlestation – manning a bigass anti-ship cannon at one of Kagoshima's forts — and started raining fire back at the bombarding warships. The English blew up several Japanese buildings, sunk a few ships in the harbor, and set the entire city of Kagoshima on fire, but they also had one of their ships run aground and it took heavy damage from the Japanese coastal defense forts, and the assaulting Brits suffered much heavier casualties than they were expecting when they rolled into harbor.
Japanese “Satsuma” cannons like the ones guarding Kagoshima harbor.
Having their city set on fire made it pretty fucking clear to the Satsuma Clan that it needed to build a Navy, and Togo Heihachiro was one of the first guys to volunteer for the position. He was made an officer and given command of a paddle-wheel steam ship, the Kosuga, and before long he got an opportunity to captain it in a war that had nothing less than the honor of the Japanese Emperor at stake.
In 1868 the Boshin War broke out, more or less in response to stuff like that bullshit that went down in Kagoshima harbor. This war is an entire article to itself, but the basic deal was that many samurai believed that the Shogun of Japan (the samurai lord who had overseen the country for the last 200+ years) – was weak, soft, and not willing to stand up to the European colonizers, and that the only way to Make Japan Great Again was to restore the Emperor as the supreme power in Japan and also to buy a shitload of battleships and trade your wakizashis in for belt-fed machine guns. War broke out between factions supporting the Emperor and factions supporting the Shogun, and Togo's clan was on the side of the Emperor. Most of the Boshin War took place on land, but at sea Togo led the warship Kosuga in several crucial battles that changed the course of the war — winning hard-fought naval engagements at Awa, Miyako, and Hakodate. In each of these battles Togo could be found in the center of the fighting, steaming head-on into enemy fire and ensuring that his ship was right in the middle of the action. He was commended for bravery on multiple occasions, led his ship and crews to victory repeatedly, and helped assert dominion over the seas for the forces of the Emperor. Thanks in part to his complete naval control over the theater of operations, the Emperor and his forces eventually defeated the Shogun and seized control of Japan, beginning a period known as the Meiji Restoration.
I do love the dichotomy of watching old-style samurai art depict badass modern-age naval artillery.
With the fighting over, Togo moved to the UK to study naval warfare from the dudes who blew his hometown up, because, hey, if you want to be the best you've got to train with the best, even if the best can be dicks sometimes and those assholes set your house on fire a few years ago. Togo spent seven years abroad, studying at the Naval Preparatory School and the Royal Naval College, he got to do cool shit like take gunnery training aboard HMS Victory, and voyage around Australia and the southern tip of Africa aboard the training ship HMS Hampshire. When Japan bought three state-of-the-art battleships from the Royal Naval Yards in Portsmouth, Togo personally went down there to oversee construction of the new ships… ships he’d later command during one of the most epic naval asskicking ever recorded.
While the training itself was immensely helpful to Togo and influential to his future military victories, his seven years abroad had another interesting consequence – it meant that Togo Heihachiro was not in Japan when his clan, the Setsuma, rebelled against the Emperor in 1871. The Setsuma had backed the Emperor against the Shogun, but when the Emperor decided to do away with the samurai class and the Japanese feudal system in the interests of modernization, Lord Setsuma lost his shit and raised a revolt. This is the conflict that The Last Samurai is based off – Lord Setsuma led a cavalry charge of mounted samurai against Gatling guns and bolt-action rifles, did surprisingly well for a bit, and then got his guys mowed down by machine gun fire and slaughtered almost to the last man. Togo Heihachiro's three brothers were all part of that rebellion – two of them were KIA, and one died of his wounds a few months after the fighting ceased. If Togo had been there, he may have been among the casualties..
Young Togo in his Japanese Navy uniform.
Togo returned to Japan in 1878, and was put in command of the heavy cruiser Naniwa, a super-modern British-built addition to the Japanese Navy equipped with a could badass 260mm main cannons. Togo was an observer during a war between France and China that raged from 1884-85, but eventually got sucked into combat when he kind of started a war while commanding the Naniwa. I guess China and Japan were at odds over whose turn it was to fuck up Korea, and one day Togo was abord Naniwa when he noticed a British-flagged troop transport sailing towards Korea carrying a couple thousand Chinese soldiers aboard. Togo fired on the British ship, sunk it, rescued all the English sailors, and then fired a couple rounds at the Chinese lifeboats before sailing off and leaving those guys to their fate. It would be the first of two wars Admiral Togo would start without prior authorization from the Emperor, which, honestly, is pretty baller. Some British court ruled that Togo was operating within the grounds of international law and exonerated him of possible war crimes charges, but the Chinese declared war anyway and Togo personally fucked them up at the Battle of Yalu River in 1894, sinking two Chinese battleships with Naniwa, crushing their fleet, and paving the way for a Japanese domination of Chinese forces in the ensuing fighting. The Chinese were defeated, Japan won the war, and the Chinese Emperor conceded large chunks of Korea and Manchuria to the Japanese.
The Japanese, understandably, were pretty psyched about this. Not only did they want to start building an epic colonial Empire of their own, but the Japanese islands didn't have a lot of ship-building resources — hence why they kept buying all the shit from England. Manchuria had tons of iron, though, and capturing it would allow Japan to start constructing their own Gundams and battleships and whatever the hell else they wanted. But, unfortunately for Japan, Europe kind of had a monopoly on Empire-building in the 1890s, and basically all of Europe got together and collectively told Japan to go fuck itself. Even though the Japanese conquered that shit fair and square, the combined forces of England, France, and Russia all got together and decided, nah, fuck you, we're giving that chunk of Manchuria to Russia instead, and if you don't like it we're all going to blast you out of existence.
Well, ok then. Japan gave up Manchuria, and Russia used that land it stole to set up its only warm-water naval base, constructing a large fleet at a place called Port Arthur.
The Japanese were humiliated. And pissed.
Togo, of course, started planning vengeance immediately.
Over the next five years Admiral Togo took command of the Japanese Combined Fleet, served as Commandant of Tokyo Naval College, aggressively trained new crews and gunners, and updated the entire Japanese navy with state-of-the-art equipment, training, and doctrine. All with his sights set on one thing – starting shit with Russia.
Now, on paper, starting shit with Russia in 1905 was a very bad idea. The Russians had the third biggest navy in the world, consisting of three powerful fleets, and their Pacific Squadron (that fleet operating out of Port Arthur) was, by itself, bigger than the entire Japanese navy. On land, the Russians could field 4.5 million men to Japan's 283,000. Plus, no Eastern army had defeated a Western army on the field of battle since like the days of Genghis Khan or some shit.
But Admiral Togo wasn't just some asshole with a rowboat – he was a badass military genius trained by the most hardcore seafaring nation on earth and equipped with a fleet of ultra-modern warships. And, of course, he was also pretty righteously pissed.
So, in February of 1904, Admiral Togo decided single-handedly to show the world that Japan was no longer a nation of angry sword-swinging dudes in pajamas hacking each others' limbs off with samurai swords – they were a badass empire of first-rate naval ass-stomping mayhem.
Togo’s flagship, the battleship Mikasa.
On the evening of February 8, 1904, Admiral Togo ordered several Japanese torpedo boats to slip into the bay surrounding Port Arthur and sneak attack the Russian fleet stationed there. He did this without explicit orders to start a war, though, in his defense, tensions were super high and there was a really good chance that war was going to start in the next few days, but you really have to like the balls on this guy either way. A couple Russian warships took heavy damage from Japanese torpedoes, and now the sleeping bear was awake — and fuckin' pissed. The next morning, however, the Russian Pacific Fleet woke to find fucking Admiral Togo's ships in Port Arthur Harbor, lobbing shells into the Russian formations and pounding Port Arthur's coastal defense guns with fire. The Russians got their shit together and Togo withdrew, but his point had been made – the Japanese fleet were here, and they were itchin’ for a fight.
But, even after news of this attack reached Moscow and St. Petersburg, all the Russians did was laugh. Who do hell did these assholes think they were, that they could stand up to the Tsar of Russia? This was at like the height of the Colonial Age, Russia had massively more people and resources than Japan, and everyone in Europe still thought of the Japanese as a bunch of Pacific Islanders who never advanced beyond the Middle Ages.
But the Russian boyars weren’t laughing when Togo's fleet asserted control over Port Arthur’s harbor, ferried four Corps of Japanese infantry into Manchuria, and began fighting their way towards Port Arthur using ultramodern new military technology that was just being used now for the first time in combat – brutal things like barbed wire, hand grenades, machine guns, bolt action rifles, and 11" howitzers capable of lobbing 500-pound shells at distances of nearly 6 miles. The fighting was hardcore, relentless, ugly, and very very bloody.
Still, the Russians brought in new blood to command the defense of Port Arthur – a guy named Admiral Makarov, who was competent, tough, and immediately whipped the Russian Pacific Fleet into shape. He drilled his men, reinforced his defenses, and got his fleet repaired and ready for combat. On the morning of April 13, just two months after the siege and blockage began, Makarov saw some of Togo's minelayer ships out in the harbor dropping mines into the water. Makarov personally led a daring attack towards these ships, firing at them and driving them off, and he boldly pursued them at the head of a squadron of deadly Russian battleships.
Unfortunately for him, Makrov ran right into Togo's trap. The entire Japanese Navy was sitting there waiting for Makarov in the harbor, concealed by fog and mist, and when they emerged they lit up the Russian fleet with a barrage of cannon fire. Makarov turned about, ordered his ships back to Port Arthur, and then struck a mine while crossing back through that minefield. His flagship sunk, and him with it, never to be seen again. Two months later the Russians tried a full-on attack to break out of the blockade in force by attacking with their entire Pacific Fleet, but Admiral Togo crossed the Russian T twice, sunk or damaged every battleship on the enemy force, and drove the Russians back to port.
Ok, so now Tsar Nicholas II of Russia was really fucking pissed. He issued two orders – the first was that large numbers of troops would be sent to Port Arthur via the Trans-Siberian Railroad, and the second was that most of the Russian Baltic Fleet would to sail out from St. Petersburg, around the southern tip of Africa, through Southeast Asia, and all the way out to Port Arthur, where they'd link with the Pacific Fleet and catch Togo in the middle. Russian reinforcements would break the siege of Port Arthur on land and sea, crushing the Japanese and their Imperial ambitions in one heroic attack.
Of course, none of this happened.
For starters, the Russian Baltic Fleet was run by a bunch of dipshits, and before these assholes even got out of the Baltic Sea they'd already fired torpedoes at Russian ships and almost accidentally started a war with England because they'd fucking launched 11-inch artillery shells through the hull of a British fishing boat, killing everyone aboard. When they got to the Atlantic, they fired torpedoes at Swedish and German civilian ships. In Africa they snapped a trans-continental telegraph cable and cut all communications off between Europe and Africa for almost a week. Then, when they put in port in Madagascar, their "reinforcements" of ammunition turned out to be a couple boxes of winter coats. Oh, and some idiot bought a venomous snake at a marketplace on the island and brought it back on the ship with him, where it bit a couple guys and almost killed them. Oh, right, and they also got news that they were too late, and that Port Arthur had already fallen, so the last five months of their life was basically a huge waste of time. Fantastic.
I get that this 1905 political cartoon probably has some problematic shit going on, but I’d argue that Togo looks really fuckin’ badass here, just waiting to club the Russians into oblivion. Which, of course, is exactly what happened.
Well, the Russian commander in charge of this Baltic Fleet and its numerous borderline-hilarious misadventures, Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky, decided, fuck it, we've come all this way anyways, and he made the call to press on to Vladivostok. Like, straight through. Through the Strait of Tsushima, which is that narrow waterway that separates Korea from Japan, where, of course, Admiral Togo was waiting for him.
Togo's force was smaller than the Russian Baltic Fleet, but he had a few things working to his advantage. For starters, he was fighting on his home turf, just off the coast of Japan. Second, he had radioes installed on his scout ships (a new invention for this time — its the first recorded uses of a radio in naval warfare), so he knew where the Russians were, how they were set up, and how many ships they had. Third, the Japanese warships were faster and of better quality, and their sailors weren't completely fucking miserable and demoralized by cruel and maliciously-incompetent leadership like the Russian sailors were. And, fourth, Togo's ships were painted battleship gray and the Russian warships were all painted black with bright canary yellow superstructures that made for excellent target practice even on a gray, cloudy, foggy morning.
Admiral Togo ambushed the Baltic Fleet through a dense fog on May 27, 1905, with the Admiral himself personally leading the charge from the bridge of his flagship, the Battleship Mikasa. The faster Japanese ships, with better tech, better morale, and better trained crews drove across the enemy formation, exchanging heavy fire with the Russian column. The Japanese got the better of the gunfight, then Togo once again crossed the Russian T, bringing super concentrated firepower on the lead Russian vessels, smashing and sinking several of them and injuring Admiral Rozhestvensky so badly that he was knocked unconscious and woke up two days later in a Japanese hospital. Then, just when it seemed it couldn’t get any more worse for the Russians, a second squadron of torpedo boats came in from the flank and launched a devastating attack at the Russian broadsides. When the Russians tried to reposition to face the torpedo boats, Togo altered course and crossed their T a second time.
The fighting was fierce, brutal, and relentless. The Russians were smashed, most of their ships caught fire or ran for it, but Togo didn't give up, and he pursued the broken, battered, and demoralized enemy fleet until they eventually surrendered their entire command. Despite being outnumbered and outgunned, Admiral Togo’s fleet sunk 6 enemy battleships, captured 2 more, and sent 4 cruisers and 7 destroyers to the bottom of Tsushima Strait. The Russians lost 127,000 tons of warship and 10,000 sailors dead or captured. Three badly-damaged Russian ships limping into Vladivostok harbor were all that remained of the Russian Baltic Fleet.
Admiral Togo lost three torpedo boats and less than a thousand men.
When he returned home, the entire city of Tokyo came out to celebrate his triumph.
The Russo-Japanese War was a humiliating defeat for the Russians, and it marked the emergence of Japan as a world naval power. Teddy Roosevelt negotiated a peace to end the war (and received the Nobel Peace Prize for it), and the Russian people were so pissed off that they revolted that same year – a revolt that included the mutiny of the Battleship Potemkin just a month after the battle of Tsushima. The Revolution of 1905 and the Naval Mutiny were both eventually put down by the forces of the Tsar, but those displays of civil unrest are believed to have been first important first steps towards the Communist Revolution that eventually overthrew the Tsar in 1917.
Togo returned home a hero – the first, and to this day still the greatest, naval hero in the history of Japan. They put his face on the cover of TIME Magazine, he became Lord Admiral of Japan, served on the Emperor's war council, and was the future Emperor Hirohito's personal tutor on military tactics and history for nearly ten years. He died in May of 1934 at the age of 86, and the naval parade commemorating his funeral was attended by warships from the United States, Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, Italy, and China.
Not Russia though.
Links:
Sources:
Davis, Paul K.. 100 Decisive Battles. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Great Military Battles. United States: Mankind Publishing Company, 1971.
Ground Warfare: An International Encyclopedia. United Kingdom: ABC-CLIO, 2002.
Macdonald, John. Great battlefields of the world. London: Michael Joseph, 1984.
Weir, William. 50 Military Leaders Who Changed the World. United States: New Page Books, 2006.