Murakami naval museum

Is it December already?

I recently visited Murakami Naval Museum in Shikoku, Japan, as part of my research on medieval navies.

Japan used to be subdivided by Samurai lords. If you are watching international news, you'd have noticed the recent accident in a motorway tunnel, in which the ceiling of a tunnel collapsed, killing at least 9. Japan is a mountainous country, so if you travel in japan, there are so many tunnels.

In the medieval period, when there was no technology to bore stable, usable tunnels, it was easy for local elite to maintain a degree of independence, rejecting interference from central government. As a result, there were many mini states ruled by local warrior lords who ran their own domains as if they had been proper states. As a matter of fact, the Japanese word for provinces is the same as state or country, even though, today, they are called prefectures.

Those who was in a position to dominate coastal waters built strong fleets to conduct business in sea transport and fishing. In time of domestic war, they would offer their fleets as fleet auxiliary to any warring factions. They could also act as pirates and land raiders, attacking their enemies.

Murakami is one of the strongest such sea lords of Japan in the 16th century. They developed a naval force looking almost modern combat fleet, consisting of battleships, cruisers and smaller crafts for close in combat.

The museum sells romanticised image of Murakami. Some of the Murakami leaders were idolised as the Great Pirate Chief. Apparently, they called themselves pirates just to frighten sailors. They had to, as their business was to regulate waterways in their domain, charging fees to any ship wishing to use them. The cruisers were means to give chase to anyone who tried to run without paying.

I cannot help comparing their naval vessels with Greek and Roman triremes and galleys from the ancient and medieval periods I'm familiar with. Most of these Japanese ships are roughly of the size of the Athenian trireme. The trireme is supposed to be a fast ship, using its momentum as its chief weapon. No wonder the Murakami cruiser type is similar to the trireme, as they were supposed to catch up with toll-runners. Though the Japanese did not usually use ramming tactic. This is perhaps due to confined nature of Japanese coastal waters.

The Japanese would fight from the ship's decks, with arrows and other projectiles. In this sense, their style is closer to that of the Byzantines. It is interesting that when in the west, the Byzantine dromon was slowly giving way to the Venetian galley that would dominate naval warfare in the Mediterranean, there was corresponding development in East Asia too. Naval cannon was also introduced in the 14th century in China; in the west, too, soon the Venetian galley with a cannon mounted at the bow of the ship, instead of Greek fire as on the dromon, would become the standard combat ship type in the Mediterranean too.

In the West, development of naval technology began to accelerate in the 16th century, when the Venetians were duelling with the Ottoman Turks. Soon, ocean going sailing ships would revolutionise naval warfare and maritime commerce. In East Asia, unfortunately, peace descended in Japan and naval warfare and piracy became a thing of the past. This era of naval holiday would end with the ending of the little ice age and the coming of European navies ...

Chinese sea power

So what's up with China? Alarmists all over the media are talking about China's ambition at sea and the danger of sparking off an accidental war as a result. If, a US ally gets involved, a Sino-US war might not be unthinkable. Since they both possess nuclear weapons, this is worrying indeed.

But what is it China really wants? Looking at maps showing what they are after, one overwhelming feeling is that they are dreaming of restoration of the ancient world.

Many people are keen on pointing out China's maritime ambitions to dominate the seas around China itself and even to extend its naval presence into the Indian Ocean and beyond. One such example, a map showing the supposed Chinese ambition is like this:-

But to historians, this map looks familiar. This is exactly what the maritime trade routes have always been like, since the middle of the first millennium BC. By the time of the rise of the Roman Empire and Han China, this was a well-established route traversed by Arab, Jewish and Greek sailors in the western half and the Chinese and the Indians in the eastern half. The typical pattern of trade was that the Chinese merchants and their Greco-Roman-Arab counterparts met up in the middle, in India or Sri Lanka, to exchange goods. The Romans were after Chinese silk and Indian steel; the Chinese got Egyptian glassware; the Indians got Roman coins (as far as archaeological finds can confirm.) It is believed that Emperor Marcus Aurelius sent a letter addressed to the Emperor of China, possibly handed over to a Chinese agent in India and delivered to the Chinese capital.

These maritime trade routes are still important in this age of air travel and shifting focus of economic activities to the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. Massive volume of goods are still being carried by numerous ships in the Indian Ocean. Many countries in East Asia rely on this trade to obtain raw materials, especially oil.

For any US ally, security of this maritime route is a matter of cooperation with the US. The biggest naval power in the region is still the US 5th fleet. Yet, attested by the case of the Somali situation, its safety cannot be assured nowadays with a presence of conventional naval forces. With the Cold War over, we are facing low level threats of pirates and terrorists in rubber boats and disguised by commercial vessels, which cannot be eradicated easily. Regional naval powers are also proliferating, adding another dimension to the security question.  

So, if you are not even an US ally, naturally, you seek to increase your own naval presence to ensure supplies of raw materials brought in by cargo ships. Yet it's not like China is seeking to provoke conflict by butting in in the Indian Ocean with warships. With their larger naval fleet, China seeks to get noticed as a naval power; at the same time, they mount diplomatic offensive to increase ties with countries in Asia and Africa.

Indeed, they tried this maritime strategy before. In the first half of the 15th century, Ming China sent a massive armed merchantmen fleet down in the Indian Ocean. It was to demonstrate power of China; and to establish good diplomatic and commercial relations with kingdoms in the region. It was not gunboat diplomacy either; they thought that the sheer scale of the fleet was enough to impress locals. But soon afterwards, China's naval power in the Indian Ocean collapsed. Although it maintained some naval presence closer home, and managed to hold off incursions by western colonial powers, gradually its ability to control the sea trade routes was lost. When the western navies finally got an upper hand, China's final demise started, and in the 19th century, the Opium Wars and the Sino-Japanese wars totally destroyed Chinese naval power. Only after WW2, during which, the Chinese navy wasn't even a factor for Japanese military planning, under the communist rule, the Chinese navy was revived.

Any Chinese who remember these would wish to re-establish naval presence in the China Sea and the Indian Ocean. In the Roman times, the two empires were so far away from each other, there was no hostility between them. China could let Rome look after the western half of the trade routes, and vice versa. Now, as they say, the world has got smaller; and global politics makes things vastly more complicated. China has no intention of letting the US dominate the Indian Ocean, let alone the China Sea, when Sino-US friendship is tenuous at best. Chinese behaviour might look as if provoking unnecessary rivalry at sea, but at least there is certain logic behind it.

Is the talk of war exaggerated? My answer would be a qualified yes, but, there are some worrying aspects too. I think it was the UK Economist magazine that pointed out that, if anything, it is China that is behaving more like militarist Japan of the 1930s. That is ironic when the Chinese often protest against the supposed militarism in Japan today.

There are similarities. Japan suddenly became the third biggest military power in the 1920s, in the wake of WW1. China has just become the third biggest economic power, in the aftermaths of the Cold War and War on Terror.

But Japan would soon suffer from economic downturn, compounded by a massive earthquake in Tokyo. The gap between the rich and the poor widened; while Japan looked strong on paper, social disturbances, riots and political assassinations threatened to destabilise the country. Today, despite all its achievements, it is reported that Chinese society is in turmoil, with the majority of population not benefitting from the recent economic boom. The rich got super rich, but the poor remained as poor as ever. Prospects for young people are grim. The recent anti-Japanese riots got much airtime, but, many more riots have been taking place, in protest of corruption by state officials, pollution by corporate plants and poverty. Perhaps this war against Japan! talk was pretty much an expression of anxiety and sense of vulnerability on the part of the Chinese populace.

Back in 1924, California passed a law limiting immigration from Japan. The Japanese went berserk, shouting war with America! all over newspapers. Worn down by own their economic and social problems, the Japanese were rather touchy, unable to take the slightest perceived insult from the US. Are the Chinese showing the same symptom of economic growth fatigue? Social stresses resulting from a rapid rise in state power can make people rather irrational and sentimental.

Now, the most worrying parallel is that Japan actually went to war with America 17 years after their war rhetoric was their popular pastime. So, as it so happens in international relations, things can go horribly wrong, even leading to war. In all likelihood however, China is just claiming its rightful place justified by history of the last two millennia, not two centuries.

But I found the whole situation ironic. We've seen this before: a rising great power getting so assertive and repeating mistakes of great powers in the past.

As great powers always reshape the world; their very emergence changes the world so old assumptions will no longer be valid once their rules have been established. The Roman Empire discovered this at a steep cost. As Roman civilization made Europe, Africa and Asia, peoples in these regions developed more sophisticated, civilized state systems and could no longer tolerate being bossed around by the big bro of Rome. Western Europe left the Empire and so did Egypt and Syria. The Empire tried to recover these regions again and again, but, this was not like conquering some barbarians. They were up against more confident and developed states. And they’ve got only themselves to blame. Romans saw themselves as civilizer of the world, but they should have realised that once their mission was accomplished, newly civilized peoples wanted to be treated as equals. Rome’s decline is not really its own decline. It is a story of the world surrounding Rome growing. Rome disappeared when it no longer required civilizing by Rome. Not realising this cost them a lot.

The Chinese often attack Japan for not acknowledging its responsibility to start WW2 in the Pacific, let alone for the Sino-Japanese wars in the 30s. But exactly why they think did Japan do what it did? One of the main factors is that the Japanese, like the Romans, did not realise how the world was changing in the early 20th century. The age of colonialism and imperialism abruptly ended in 1918, but they failed to appreciate that old colonial behaviour could no longer be tolerated. (They still don't get it, I suppose – that’s why their view of world history is so skewed.) Most other colonial powers stopped their designs for China, leaving Japan the sole colonial power seeking to grab lands and resources. They just saw this as an opportunity as western powers were more concerned with economic recovery, disarmament and maintaining of status quo. In 1931, the Japanese army orchestrated an ‘incident’ in Manchuria to set up a colony there. The methods employed are learnt from the British; indeed, South Africa was a colony created by similar tactic. They did not even imagine that this would be perceived as undeclared war on China at all. It was a mere colonial enterprise. Such was the worldview learnt during pre-WW1 years; yet by the 30s, such action was taken as an act of aggression and even a threat to world peace. They should have known better.

So it is sad to see that the Chinese are behaving a bit like the Japanese in the 30s. Their methods are of course shrewder; they refrain from actually using force in face of opposition – at least this part is reassuring. They maintain that borders drawn in the 20th century as nothing but unjust and unfair; but justification for these claims is based on strategic vision out of ancient chronicles. Restoration from their point of view, yes, but this could also destabilise the modern world as it is, which is teemed with new players that have come into play since the time of Arabs, Mongols and the Ming China. Their more pragmatic rationale might be China's maritime security and territorial integrity, but, by trying to force other nations to accept changes in favour of China can only heighten tensions between nations with potential for an arms race. Their actions are at best self-defeating unless they have some cunning plan up in their sleeves.

Perhaps the Chinese are thinking that they are just making sure there will be no going back to the time when other major powers were humiliating them by grabbing their territories. After all, national boundaries today were determined by brutal power game in the 19th and the 20th centuries (Japan conquered Okinawa, together with the Senkakus in question, which used to be an independent kingdom called Ryuku, when China’s naval power was at its low ebb in the 19th century).

Also they seem so confident of their growing power, capable of intimidating smaller neighbours and even of challenging the greatest military power. Here again, they are behaving like the Japanese in the past. Their aggressive expansionism was originally a defensive strategy, in order to deal with threat of imperialism in the 19th century. Then, having become the third greatest naval power in 1918, Japan thought that it could just get whatever it wanted by intimidation. As Britain and the US were busy in Europe (the US and Britain had 10:3 naval superiority to Japan, but the US fleet was split between the Atlantic and the Pacific and the most of the British fleet was in the European theatre of war; and the Anglo-American naval forces were divided between the Pacific and the Indian Ocean, giving the Japanese a local superiority in the western Pacific), the Japanese nationalists believed that they could even take on the greatest naval powers of the day. Look what this led to.

Talking about the Japanese nationalists, the very person who precipitated this territorial dispute between China and Japan, Mr. Ishihara, must be laughing, saying, it is so easy to provoke China. Now that furious protests by China's 'ordinary people', aggressive utterances of the Chinese government officials and the perceived threat of containment by China, Taiwan and Korea, are all over the Japanese media (while he keeps a low profile), alarmist talks in Japan will grow. Then, quite possibly, Japan’s pacifist foreign policy principles could come under pressure from those with more extreme views. The trend of weakening US-Japan military ties (due to, among other things, disputes over US bases on Japanese soil) might be reversed. Even though the Japanese public keeps their cool head over the issue (and is busy with their own economic problems), at least, that China could threaten Japan's territorial integrity unless they do something has been firmly imprinted in Japanese minds. So, China has turned out to be the best friend of the Japanese right. 

Mr. Abe, considered as ultra-right by the Koreans and others, has just been elected as the leader of the opposition. Was he aided by this crisis? And, are the Chinese, on their part, trying to pre-empt domestic critics as they are commissioning a big, expensive ex-Soviet aircraft carrier? In any case, my feeling is that ordinary people mobilised for protests will be the ultimate losers getting absolutely nothing out of all this ....

Riot!

Well, the Chinese and the Japanese are at it again. A dispute over totally insignificant, uninhabited, worthless islands in the middle of nowhere getting totally out of control. The whole dispute was sparked off by actions of some Japanese nationalists, notably the governor of Tokyo, Ishihara, who announced that he would like to buy the islands from their private owners who are Japanese; and then the Japanese government, ostensibly in order to avoid diplomatic row with China, decided to buy these islands instead. Alas, this didn't stop the Chinese from taking to streets at all. Mostly young (so far as I cd see from Western and Japanese media) Chinese were soon on the rampage, smashing Japanese cars, Japanese run restaurants, shops, factories and convenience marts. They threw PET bottles filled with dyes and paints at the Japanese Embassy. Then, all of a sudden, these disturbances stopped as the Chinese government appealed to the public to protest more rationally.

The question of the Senkaku, as the Japanese called these islands, had been practically forgotten until Ishihara made it a frontline news. To most Japanese, who had absolutely nothing to do with these islands, it is difficult to understand why the Chinese were so hot-tempered over the issue. So the news media tends to emphasise that the area around the islands is resource rich. It is suspected that the sea bed in the area is full of oil and other useful minerals, including precious metals. The sea is a rich fishing ground (hence the name - Senkaku means thousands of catches; the Chinese name for the islands also means roughly the same thing) too, attracting many Japanese and Okinawan fishermen.

So it might look as if this was a crisis caused by cynical, territorial greed on the part of the Chinese who are now behaving like a 19th century colonial power. China is in similar disputes in the (also oil-rich) South China Sea with other Asian nations, including the Philippines, a US ally, and Vietnam. In the 90s, the expansion of Chinese naval power was a main concern for us security analysts, until the Al Qaeda question overshadowed everything in Asia-Pacific. But this does not mean security questions in Asia went away.

So, is this Sino-Japanese row just anther round of territorial disputes in Asia-Pacific? But between China and Japan, problems are a little more complicated, not least because of the question of the war time past. WW2 cost the Chinese at least ten million lives (estimates vary but now somewhere around sixteen million seems to be the most accepted figure nowadays), mostly inflicted on them by the Japanese army. The younger generations of the Japanese are utterly oblivious of this fact. If anything, they think they are the victims, as they were bombed by the US Air Force and two atom bombs were dropped on two of their cities. So whenever there is a dispute between China and Japan, the Chinese tend to get rather shrill - they are like, 'it's them again!' and go totally berserk.

And of course, developments in the post-WW2 years did not help. We in the west tend to think that  some sort of healing process has been progressing since 1945, but, China first had to go through their own civil war, killing millions more. The Communists won, which made China one of the major enemies of the US. Then they had to go through the so-called Cultural Revolution at a cost of another millions. In the meantime, Japan and America decided that the Senkaku islands should belong to Japan, without letting the Chinese have their say on the territorial issues whatsoever. I think this is another important factor to understand the Chinese reaction to the Japanese government buying up the islands. China is a country with more than 120 million people and it is now the world's No.2 economy and yet Japan and America dare ignore it!

The stand-off is still ongoing; Japanese and Chinese coast guard ships are staring at each other just off the Senkaku islands. The Chinese are threatening to overwhelm the Japanese by sending 1,000 fishing vessels to the area simultaneously. Possibly the Chinese government is calculating that they could teach Japan (and the US) not to ignore it  - on the surface, the Senkaku question looks like a minor issue, but, no matter how insignificant it might look, Japan and her allies ignore China's wishes at their peril: acting without having diplomatic consultations first cannot be tolerated. They are trying to send such message by turning this into a major crisis out of all proportions (smashing off Japanese properties in China is costing millions of dollars already - plus long-term damages to tourists industries, exports, fisheries, etc. could amount to more millions of dollars).

[A Chinese frigate, which looks like a copy of the French La Fayette class stealth frigate, off the Senkaku islands.]

Is it wise? For us level headed ordinary citizens of a free country, this is most worrying. The Japanese now fear that, if they visit China, they might be physically attacked even if they are not hostile to China at all or are even opposed to Ishihara's brand of Japanese nationalism and the government's policy regarding the Senkaku islands. Already Japanese businessmen are having second thoughts about staying on in China. By making this dispute such a divisive issue between China and Japan, they are merely helping extremists in both countries. History also teaches us that this sort of brinkmanship can easily lead to some miscalculation that causes unnecessary war. WW1 is a good example, as systems of alliances among European powers designed to deter war among them actually led to a major war. If China is testing America's resolve, there is a danger of sparking off a war with the US no one wants. Or, if this is China's ploy to undermine the alliance between Japan and the US, that would only help Japanese extremists who are willing to bring Japan back to militarism, which, in turn, could lead to another futile Sino-Japanese war.

Elsewhere, the Muslims are also at it, incensed by anti-Islamic Youtube film made in the US. I was sharing a flat with several Muslim students when the Salmon Rushdie affair brew up years ago. One thing I learnt is that they did not believe that western governments were not behind Salmon Rushdie - to me, they sounded like paranoid conspiracy theorists, but this time round, the Muslims all over Islamic countries seem to be reacting in the same way again. They cannot believe that some private citizens who happened to live in the US would just make an anti-Islamic movie to express their personal, not official, views. The Muslim violence appears to be more spontaneous than the Chinese one, but they are overreacting just the same. However, for us non-Muslims, these riots should help us understand their fragile psychological state, which is caused by poverty, injustice and insecurity in their respective countries. The same thing can be said about China. The irony is that their grievances partially come from lack of democratic rights, whilst they seem to miss the point that in a free, democratic society, people do say things you might not like. Even more ironical is that more people are now watching the film in question! (I haven't yet, by the way.)

Or simply they are rioting because their lives are hard and the issues in question are just excuses? At least in London last year, the rioters were more honest about why they were doing what they were doing ....

Vienna in summer

<<Museum visit>>

I took a day off to visit the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum, Wien in early August. The rise, decline and the fall of the Habsburg Empire are all there; from the Ottoman invasions of Austria to the wars of the 19th century, fought as the Empire was slowly but steadily heading for its final extinction.

This is a museum anyone interested in military history should visit. And better allow at least two days. It took me half day just to go through the Ottoman period quickly - if you wish to examine all contemporary engravings, drawings and war reports, you might need much more time.

Yes, the Austrians had a navy. They always maintained a riverine navy on the Danube; and at the heyday of the empire, they had access to the Adriatic too.

And this is the car that started the war to end all wars.

Now, in front of the museum, a bunch of re-enacters were demonstrating their art of artillery.

Air power!

Lest we forget...

75 years ago, a new era in warfare began.

On July 7th, 1937, a clash between the Chinese and the Japanese forces at the Marco Polo Bridge, in north of the Chinese capital, Beijing, sparked off an all-out war between China and Japan. The Japanese, one of the winners of WW1, had built a new colony in northern China, by setting up a puppet regime nominally headed by the last emperor of the Manchurian dynasty. 

The Japanese were not seeking a head-on war with the Chinese. For their worst enemy was international communism. Japan itself had been threatened by a possible socialist disturbance - Japan's colonisation of northern China was meant to be a solution to provide place to settle to the jobless masses in Japan.

When a war broke out with the Chinese in 1937, they were thinking in terms of 'punitive expedition' to punish the Chinese wrongdoers, which reflects their self-belief that they were the leader of East Asia. The Chinese had other ideas, and refused to give in. This led to an all-out assault on China proper in August and eventually, later in the same year, to the attack on Shanghai and Nanking, the then Chinese capital.

This should have been a typical colonial warfare - only that the Japanese picked a nation more advanced compared with other countries in Asia and Africa colonised by leading European powers in the previous century. Asia was about to bounce back, and the Japanese, the latecomer to the imperial game, missed the sign of a Chinese recovery.

Frustrated Japanese resorted to something new in warfare: aerial bombing. Of course this was not their invention.

Only ten years after the airplane was invented by the Wright brothers, WW1 broke out. Naturally, all warring nations used this new invention. Initially for reconnaissance. Then they mounted a machine gun on a plane so opposing planes cd shoot at each other. Some big planes were built, for the purpose of dropping bombs. Still, this was technology in infancy and no one was sure how warfare might be changed because of the introduction of air power.

When the Iraqis revolted against the British in 1926, the British bombed some Iraqi civilians, to the consternation of the public. Yet, military people all over the world already believed that this was the face of future warfare: terror bombing to attack enemy at home front psychologically.

So, fast forward to 1937. In April, the German air force conducted a historical experiment in Spain, during its civil war. Supporting the fascist general, Franco, the German Luftwaffe bombed a Basque town of Guernica in a deliberate attempt to terrorise its inhabitants. It is believed that more than 1,500 people were killed in one day's bombing. Thanks to Pablo Picaso's famed painting depicting this new terror from above, this one's got much publicity.

The Japanese, too, from the summer of 1937, progressively entangled in an endless war in China, bombed Chinese cities indiscriminately, in a desperate attempt to break Chinese resistance. Bombings in Shanghai, Nanking and Chongqing shocked the world.

The fact was, most people simply assumed that this would be how wars would be fought in the years following the end of WW1, and did not think much about what it would be like to be at the receiving end of bombing. The Chinese themselves bombed the Japanese forces in Shanghai; the Japanese were relentless attacking Chinese civilians. When WW2 broke out two years later, it only became clear that the US and Britain were also preparing for this form of warfare, building big bombers such as the Lancaster bomber and the B-17. They would simply out-bomb the Axis powers, building larger bombers in larger numbers. WW2 was indeed a war of bombing aimed at destroying enemy's industrial capacity to wage wars and both military and civilian morale, in which both sides were guilty parties.

One lesson learnt is that you cannot destroy enemy's morale by dropping bombs. The Chinese proved that in 1937-38; so did the Germans in 1943-45. The Japanese public did not go out begging the government to end war in 1945 either, even after two atom bombs were used. It was the emperor who decided that he could not tolerate to lose more people to this form of warfare.

After the Cold War mercifully failed to produce a single casualty to nuclear bombing, we still live in an uncertain world. More has been learnt about the use of air power and now air power is used in more measured ways. Yet, as the Iraqi wars in 1990/1 and 2003ff attest, the use of air power inevitably produce civilian victims. Plus, looking at civil wars fought in many countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, the idea of air power as a terror weapon is still alive and well, and this is the world that began 75 years ago.

The fall of the Roman Empire.. again

The year 2012 has turned out to be quite eventful for anyone studying history of the Roman Empire. Its major provinces are in serious trouble. Especially Egypt and Syria, the most important and prosperous provinces are in turmoil. What is so striking is that they were in the same sort of turmoil in the late antique and byzantine periods of the Roman Empire.

Egypt was renowned for its violent politics. The city of Alexandria was a scene of violent confrontations between various social, ethnic and religious groupings, in search of ultimate power and control. The native Egyptians, who were often recognised as heretic Christians (and they would become Coptic Christians) against the 'pagans', i.e., Greco-Macedon ruling elite. And Romano-Byzantine state church, or, orthodoxy trying to suppress heretic Christians, including these Egyptian churches, who saw Jesus simply as God. Plus the Jews and other minorities were hardly silent witnesses to these volatile scenes, participating in violent attacks on rival groups with zest.

[Tahir Square]

Now, Egypt is again divided between various sections and they found religious expressions. Moderate Muslims; Fundamentalist Muslims; Coptic minorities, etc. Like the Romano-Byzantine rulers, the military somehow keeps tabs on these elements, but not always.

[A street clash in Cairo ... But this could easily be a street fight in Alexandria in Byzantine times!]

In any case, both in ancient and modern times, Egypt's geographical position has something to do with it. In the context of the Roman world, Egypt was a hub of trade connecting Africa and Asia; also maritime trade routes of the Indian Ocean (via the Red Sea) and the Mediterranean. As such, Greeks and Jews were always keen on making Egypt their bases of operation. For the Romans, too, Egypt was a source of grain and money, as it were. The ruling elite represented the more international and commercial elements in the ancient world; whilst in the countryside, the descendants of those who had built the pyramids were seething with resentment to those 'upstarts'. Consequently, though they accepted Christianity, they developed their own ideas of Jesus' divinity, giving birth to their own version of the religion. This caused so much trouble. 

Today, too, the modern nation-state of Egypt has been shaped by European colonial empires, especially Britain and France, who were eager to take over the Indian Ocean-Mediterranean trade routes. Though their influence waned by the disaster of the Suez Crisis in 1956, just by looking at the uniform of the Egyptian military, you can tell how Britain, for example, influenced how the state of Egypt was built.

Now Syria. Syria was the point of contact with the rival Persian Empire, which encompassed Irak and Iran. As such, it was not only a frontline province in wartime but also a great emporium for the ancient world economy. Cities like Antioch was a major trading centre and counted as one of the most populous cities of the ancient world. Naturally, inhabitants of Syria, especially those who lived much closer to the border regions, had conflicting loyalties for obvious reason of self-preservation. Simply because you've got either the Roman or Persian overlord now, that does not mean you will next year.

Amazingly, Syrian loyalties are as sharply divided as in Roman times even today. Unlike in Egypt, where the military acted opportunistically as the mood of the populace changed, Syrians were either clearly pro-Assad or anti.

Now Syria is officially in a civil war. Fourteen centuries after Egypt and Syria dropped out of Roman polity and became incorporated in the newly created Arab Caliphate, we are still seeing the same sort of political scenes there.

Names change, but geopolitics remains constant.

War Memorial Maritime Museum, Kobe, Japan (visit)

In the course of my research on the obscure history of Japanese merchant marines during WW2, I visited War Memorial Maritime Museum in Kobe in May.

Kobe is one of the greatest port cities in Japan, perhaps next only to Yokohama. The city had been hit by a major earthquake in 1995, which destroyed half the historic waterfront district with trade houses, warehouses and offices. I saw that the whole area had been beautifully restored and re-developed. The museum is housed in the Kansai district headquarters, Japanese Seamen's Union.

The museum is about forgotten sailors who made ultimate sacrifices during WW2. They were probably the least responsible for the outbreak of war and yet paid much higher prices than the rest of Japanese population. (The militarist army officers, who were perhaps most responsible, were often recruited out of farming communities. And of course, very few seamen and fishermen became politicians...) Figures vary, but the safe estimate is that roughly half the seamen who participated in war lost their lives. Considering that even the suicidal Japanese army lost only 20% or so, this is an amazingly high figure. (Sure, in isolated defensive positions such as Iwo Jima, the Army suffered a virtually 100% loss rate; yet the main bulk of the Japanese Army in China, numbering more than a million, were safe and sound until the Soviets attacked them. Even then, it was only a small number of die-hards who fought to the last man. Many chose to flee; many were captured alive either by the Soviets or Communist Chinese.) To add insult to injury, the Japanese government and the military did not even acknowledge their sacrifices.

This museum was opened only in August, 2000. When I visited there, hoping to use documents and books, I was greeted by an old man whom I first mistook for a visitor. He explained that several retired seamen look after the museum. But he had no personal experience of war: all seamen who actually fought WW2 and survived are now simply too old. Some journalists are trying to get their stories, but they can no longer speak coherently or remember details from 70 years ago. The war is fading from people's memory now.

I got as-a-matter-of-fact records of what ships were lost during the war. Stats are rather confused, and I kept encountering different figures for the numbers of lost ships and seamen. There was even a set of data including ships and men lost due to mines laid during the war even after the cessation of hostilities, inflating these figures a lot. But safe to say that at least 3,500 ships were sunk and more than 60,000 seamen who did not belong to the army or the navy lost their lives; plus more than 170,000 'passengers', that is, both civilian and military personnel on board civilian ships, died at sea.

On the other hand, among the book collections, there were several collections of personal accounts, which are full of emotional, in your face type of telling of experience of war. They do not describe particulars of their last voyages - I felt a bit helpless, as I could not get much information on their dates, course of the ships or losses suffered in American attacks. It does not matter - to them, the story was simple: they sailed out, headed for some south Pacific island, knowing that it was infested with Americans, and then suddenly, the ship would explode with or without warning. The sailor would find himself in the water, and, if he was lucky enough, he'd be plucked out of water by an escort ship. He'd feel even sorry for surviving, as very few were lucky to be rescued; some cursed the escorting warship, who turned tail and bailed ('too dangerous to linger'). Most stories follow this line. The rest is their personal thoughts and what song they sang with their shipmates, etc. etc. Not very helpful for fact finding research mission of mine, but, their emotional responses to the impossible situation from which they could not extricate themselves is a very important part of this sorry story in itself.

The Japanese are often very self-absorbed, self-gratiating type of people; during the war, they considered themselves as warrior heroes that you might encounter in epic novels and movies depicting the world before writing was invented. So, they looked down on people - friend and foe alike - who were not 'warriors'. The idea of protecting civilians was unthinkable. To us moderns, fortified with theories of war, this is utterly astonishing. The whole point of fighting war is to protect your women and children; the rationale for navy is to protect merchant shipping so that your nation's commercial and economic health would not suffer in war. Both the British Royal Navy and the US Navy were built for the purpose of commerce protection at sea, and went on to become greatest navies in history as their nations' economy expanded. Yet the Japanese totally missed or just ignored this. To them, the modern armed forces were some sort of prestigious, luxury items to acquire as their country got richer and more powerful. As if buying a Mercedes Benz or something. They did not think much about exactly what they were trying to accomplish with such expensive purchases. Winning a battle for the sake of winning is the only thing, and to that end, they were even willing to use civilians as human shields (as witnessed in Okinawa) so that the 'warriors' could get their satisfaction of killing more enemy.

Given this culture, it is not so surprising that the Japanese navy failed to provide protection with merchant ships and transports; the army men treated these Japanese sailors worse than they do dogs. The old man at the museum told me that the sailors in wartime were in fact told that their lives came after those of warhorses and carrier pigeons.

Unlike the Allies, the Japanese failed to develop an effective and efficient auxiliary fleet. Plus intense rivalries between the army and the navy meant that there was little coordination between them for sea transport operations and even amphibious assaults. (One destroyer captain effectively said, he didn't want to die uselessly while his destroyer squadron, which was supposed to sink American warships with their torpedoes, accompanied slow and cumbersome army transports!) It is only because the Allied powers had little defence in their colonies that the Japanese succeeded during the opening months of the war. Even then, the counter-attacking US and British fighter planes had field days, sinking transport ships in droves. So, when the Allies gained an upper-hand from the late 1942, what the Japanese seamen had to go through was nothing but sheer hell.

Reading accounts by these sailors, what strikes me is that they hated the Japanese leaders as well as the enemy. They naturally hated American bombers and submarines for sinking them with impunity; whenever they managed to down an American plane, they would feel that some justice was finally done. But these sailors resented the Japanese military guys almost equally, who did not bother even to give them any weapon to fight back and treated them as being expendable. Some big transport ships got some AA guns, and often they made an air raid painful for the Americans. Yet, so many Japanese ships were without any anti-air or anti-submarine weapons. Once attacking American warplanes realised that, they would lesuirely strafe from top mast level.  Japanese sailors could even see faces of the pilots clearly. They felt it is not just their ship that was being destroyed but their dignity and pride too.

After the war, their effort and sacrifice were forgotten. The media does not give much attention to these sailors either. Even History Channel and National Geographic, running documentary programmes about many different aspects of WW2, failed to cover the Japanese merchant seamen (as far as I know; though I must admit I don't watch every single episode of History or National Geographic TV!), even though the Battle of the Atlantic got a lot of airtime.

This new museum in Kobe was dedicated to the memories of these forgotten seamen, but, there hasn't been any high-profile campaign to raise public awareness even in Japan. The old sailors do not seem to think worthwhile, when the younger generations of the Japanese don't know about even the atomic bombing of Japanese cities and don't care, or, perhaps because it is just too late for changing their lives with better public recognition. But they are trying to preserve the memory in a quiet, very Japanese way. One historian has been building model ships of passenger liners, fishing boats and cargo ships that were sunk during the war, by the request of the relatives of seamen lost onboard. There are nearly a hundred now.

In the museum, the main display shows hundreds of pictures of the lost ships.

Sadly, very few people seem to be visiting this place. Just after the opening of it in 2000, some school visits were organised, but, soon, the museum has been forgotten. The day I paid my visit, there were only three other visitors. (But then, it was just after the May holiday weekend ended...)

The website is:
www.jsu.or.jp/siryo/
Unfortunately it is all in Japanese, but you get pictures of Japanese ships being sunk from the US National Archives on this site.

Waterloo

Recently I visited Waterloo, Belgium. Given its significance in modern European history, it is a bit sup rising that it is a quiet, unassuming place. To get there was simple enough: just 20 minute train ride from Brussels. The train station of Waterloo displays nothing to indicate that this was a place of historical significance, so it is easy to miss it. Probably because my French is so elementary, but I saw no sign saying, the battlefield this way or anything like that.

And I saw very few visitors too. I guess unless you're a history buff, there is no other attractions to entice you to visit this place, since the town has not really developed as a tourist town. Apart from Tourist Information that dominates the main crossroad of the town, there is no major landmark here. On the opposite side is Wellington Museum, which was Duke of Wellington's Headquarters during the battle.

To get to the site of battle, you have to take bus route W. The bus driver didn't speak English, so make sure you get directions at Tourist Information. The bus stop isn't even marked as the Waterloo battlefield; they'd tell you that when you will see Esso petrol station on the right, signal for stop. On the other side of Esso was a Japanese restaurant too (as of early April, 2012).

The battlefield is basically a farmland with some villages dotted around. I took a battlefield tour, on a dusty converted lorry. I don't recommend this to anyone except die-hard military buffs, really. It is bumpy, dusty and uncomfortable; views are obscured by transparent plastic sheets and all you see is, well, just a farmland anyway. You can see some key farm estates during the battle, such as La Haie Sainte, but, unless pointed out by commentary, it is not easy to tell which is which.

Perhaps it might be worthwhile to take a tour around the battlefield, if you are interested in military tactic. You can see why Wellington chose this spot and how the terrain was against the French. From the British position, it is easier to survey the whole ground, whereas for the French, what is going on on the British side was not at all clear. The famous, final charge of the Old Guard was stopped by the British suddenly rising up and letting loose volley after volley of rifle fire. They were utterly surprised by this, and you can see how that was the case. (Assuming the terrain hasn't change a lot since 1815.)

A day in Yokosuka Naval Base

I must admit I love warships. They look pretty (according to some, battleships are sexier and prettier than beautiful young women!); they sort of symbolise technological and industrial prowess of your nation, especially when those warships are actually manned and operated.

Back in the 1990s, proliferation of nimble warships in smaller nations was talked about. When, for example, Thailand became the first Asian nation to possess an aircraft carrier after WW2, that came as a surprise. But do we hear anything about a Thai naval task force, with a dozen fighter airplane, dominating seas of Southeast Asia? China’s growing naval power is a worry, especially when she acquired an ex-Soviet aircraft carrier. But it is absolutely no threat to US naval forces at the moment; if anything, the American navy is more worried about land-based anti-aircraft carrier missile China is reputedly developing. So, if you possess a real, functioning navy, that means you should be proud of your country!

But, recently, working on naval strategy in the Pacific, I realised that one thing that has been totally ignored or at best underappreciated is the Japanese merchant marine. Their sacrifice was immense. While Japan’s armed forces got something like 20% of their personnel killed, the Japanese merchant marine lost staggering 80%(ish). The Japanese were obsessed with set-piece naval combat with big warships back then and so protection of merchant ships and tankers in wartime was not even an issue. But the US navy ruthlessly attacked these types of ships to strangulate Japan.

It is rather strange that, while it did occur to the Japanese to target the weakest point of the US, i.e., the public that was unwilling to fight a savage war across the Pacific unless the US mainland itself was under threat (Japan’s suicide attacks were partly designed to frighten the US public), it did not occur to them that the Americans would surely do the same to Japan.

Japan’s weakest link is of course its geography. It is an island nation that is not self-sufficient, especially when it comes to running its wartime economy. It relied on imports for most materials, especially oil, without which, no matter how good your fighter planes or battleships are, they could be rendered useless.

(Source: US National Archives)

American submarines had a field day in 1944-45 (though they too suffered higher percentage of casualties themselves than other branches of the US navy), sinking Japanese ships in droves. Unlike German U-boats, they did not encounter any serious resistance. The Japanese failed to come up with any effective counter to submarine threats. By the end of the war, the Japanese merchant marine was completely wiped out. Any surviving ships were blockaded in ports.

And so sailors, who were forcibly conscripted by military, paid the price of incompetence of Japanese high command. They were resentful but powerless. As they see it, the ‘proper’ warriors were just sitting on their asses, waiting for the so-called decisive moment, to win the war in a single battle. That never came. The biggest battleship, the Yamato, was nicknamed the Yamato Hotel, partly because, as the flagship of the entire Japanese navy, it’s got luxurious staterooms for admirals and other VIPs, but also during the war, this monstrous ship was mostly just cowering in ports, entertaining admirals and governors. Ostensibly she was waiting for the right moment to use its massive 18-inch guns, but, in the eyes of common sailors, that’s totally nuts.

In the meantime, transport ships were sent to reinforce the front, only to be sunk by American air and sub forces. Many Japanese army divisions were literally sunk even before they got to the front. Almost no Allied soldiers suffered from such fate in the Pacific (though some Allied PoW were lost while being transported in Japanese ships, sunk by US submarines). Often they could not even hit back. Some ships were equipped with AA guns so they might shoot down a few attack planes. But against subs, they were utterly helpless, especially at night. They got escort ships, but only the most important and largest convoys got destroyer escort. Most escort ships were inadequate and small sloops and frigates, no better than coast guard patrol vessels. They had to be extremely lucky to counterattack US subs to sink them.

The voices of these helpless sailors were never heard. They often invoke the example of the British, who, in contrast to the Japanese, recognised the importance of protection of merchant ships in the Atlantic and went on to defeat the U-boats, in order to attack the then Japanese military leadership. But, apart from a handful of books written by merchant seamen who served and miraculously survived the war, not much is done to raise public awareness of this sad history.

So, back to peaceful Yokosuka, the naval base shared by the US and Japanese allies. It is full of warships, beautifully on display for the benefit of tourists. I was one of the tourists! But I see no memorial of war dead, let alone for those merchant seamen. It makes me wonder why we cannot appreciate their services – after all, in peacetime too, without them, our economy would ground to a halt. Security at sea is something we should be more concerned with. If you look at history, fall of empires often coincide with the demise of their sea commerce. That’s a lesson we should not forget.

100 years since ...

the sinking of the Titanic! It is amazing that we have a major sinking of a liner only three months short of the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic (15 April, 1912). [Incidentally, the Greek version of the previous post has been published by Historical Quest.]

I have no technical data, so I can only talk about personal impressions, but these ships look so top-heavy. 15 decks jam-packed with passengers who are heavy from over-eating with their 23kg suitcases each, plus numerous pieces of furniture, household equipment, computers, delivery wagons, TV screens, wiring etc etc. When I took my mother for one of those cruises, even she (with absolutely no knowledge of maritime affairs or marine technology) instinctively felt that there is something inherently unsafe. She kept asking if the ship is really, really safe. I foolishly kept answering it is OK, there must be a heavy enough ballast at the bottom so the ship is well balanced.

Guess I was totally wrong. I had no idea that a liner could capsize so easily!

Here is one of the Costa liners, which is similar to Costa Concordia that sunk:

Incidentally, I took this picture at Rhodes, where there is a medieval castle under archaeological excavation in the port.

Our own cruise liner, which is of the similar size, looked like this:

See how top-heavy these ships are. I thought they only looked that way, but maybe they are indeed of unstable design. Very worrying indeed.

So what is the morale? A hundred years ago, we learnt that a passenger liner must have sufficient number of life boats and some sort of early warning system for any obstacles ahead. Radar since became a standard item for big ships. This time, I suppose, we need to think of a system that would enable passengers to escape even if the ship is toppling over. Perhaps active sonar (with strong pings!) might be fitted for detection of underwater obstacles? But then, a fully automated and computerised system that can totally override a panicking captain and crew might improve marine safety dramatically!