The Port Arthur massacre () took place during the

First Sino-Japanese War The First Sino-Japanese War (25 July 189417 April 1895), or the First China–Japan War, was a conflict between the Qing dynasty of China and the Empire of Japan primarily over influence in Joseon, Korea. In Chinese it is commonly known as th ...

from 21 November 1894 for three days, in the Chinese coastal city of Port Arthur (now Lüshunkou District of

Dalian Dalian ( ) is a major sub-provincial port city in Liaoning province, People's Republic of China, and is Liaoning's second largest city (after the provincial capital Shenyang) and the third-most populous city of Northeast China (after Shenyang ...

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), when advance elements of the First Division of the Japanese Second Army under the command of General Yamaji Motoharu (1841–1897) killed somewhere between 2,600 civilians and 20,000 people including Chinese soldiers, although one eyewitness reporter estimated a total death toll of 60,000, including civilians, soldiers, and residents of the outlying rural district. Reports of a massacre were first published by the Canadian journalist James Creelman of the '' New York World'', whose account was widely circulated within the United States. In 1894, the

State Department The United States Department of State (DOS), or simply the State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs o ...

ordered its ambassador to Japan,

Edwin Dun Edwin Dun (June 19, 1848 – May 15, 1931) was a rancher from Ohio who was employed as an '' o-yatoi gaikokujin'' in Hokkaidō by the Hokkaidō Development Commission (''Kaitakushi'') and advised the Japanese government on modernizing agric ...

, to conduct an independent investigation of Creelman's reports. Lieutenant-General Yamaji leading the attack on Port Arthur

Background

As part of its wartime strategy during the First Sino-Japanese War, Japan had advanced through

Korea Korea is a peninsular region in East Asia consisting of the Korean Peninsula, Jeju Island, and smaller islands. Since the end of World War II in 1945, it has been politically Division of Korea, divided at or near the 38th parallel north, 3 ...

, engaging Chinese troops at Asan near

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and then

Pyongyang Pyongyang () is the Capital city, capital and largest city of North Korea, where it is sometimes labeled as the "Capital of the Revolution" (). Pyongyang is located on the Taedong River about upstream from its mouth on the Yellow Sea. Accordi ...

in September 1894, winning decisive victories on both occasions. Following the victory at Pyongyang the Japanese Second Army under Marshal

Ōyama Iwao was a Japanese Field Marshal (Japan), field marshal, and one of the founders of the Imperial Japanese Army. He was representative of the outstanding military commanders of the late modern period. Biography Early life Ōyama was born in Kag ...

(1842–1916) moved northward towards

Manchuria Manchuria is a historical region in northeast Asia encompassing the entirety of present-day northeast China and parts of the modern-day Russian Far East south of the Uda (Khabarovsk Krai), Uda River and the Tukuringra-Dzhagdy Ranges. The exact ...

, the plan being to seize Port Arthur, headquarters to China's

Beiyang Fleet The Beiyang Fleet (Pei-yang Fleet; , alternatively Northern Seas Fleet) was one of the Imperial Chinese Navy#Fleets, four modernized Chinese navies in the late Qing dynasty. Among the four, the Beiyang Fleet was particularly sponsored by Li Hong ...

and a highly fortified city that dominated the sea passage from Korea to northeast China. In September the Japanese Navy heavily damaged the Beiyang Fleet at the Battle of the Yalu River, though the Chinese troopships were successful in landing their troops not far from the Sino-Korean border. With the Beiyang Fleet defeated, the Japanese Navy began a siege of Port Arthur while the Japanese Second Army advanced on the city through Manchuria and the Japanese First Army crossed the Yalu River to form another advance by land. After a series of battles on the

Liaodong Peninsula The Liaodong or Liaotung Peninsula ( zh, s=辽东半岛, t=遼東半島, p=Liáodōng Bàndǎo) is a peninsula in southern Liaoning province in Northeast China, and makes up the southwestern coastal half of the Liaodong region. It is located ...

the First Division of the Second Army, led by General Yamaji, drew up around Port Arthur in late November. On 18 November 1894, the Japanese movement down the peninsula was temporarily frustrated and the army returned to find that their abandoned wounded troops had been severely mutilated, with hands and feet cut off. Others had been burned alive. The city was evacuated with residents fleeing westward by land or sea into China.Barry, R. ''Port Arthur: A Monster Heroism''. p. 209 The Qing government placed bounties on prisoners of war, or their heads or other body parts; during the Sino-Japanese War the bounty was 50

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at the

massacre A massacre is an event of killing people who are not engaged in hostilities or are defenseless. It is generally used to describe a targeted killing of civilians Glossary of French words and expressions in English#En masse, en masse by an armed ...

of the remaining inhabitants of Port Arthur by the Japanese troops.

Massacre

Japanese troops entered Port Arthur at about 2:00 p.m. Upon seeing the mutilated remains of their fallen comrades, they took to killing those who remained in the town. Several accounts of the events were recorded by members of the Japanese forces, such as the following by a member of the 1st Division: The massacre lasted the next few days, and was witnessed by several Western observers, including Frederic Villiers, James Creelman who wrote for the ''New York World'' and Thomas Cowan, correspondent for ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...

''. Cowan described what he saw:

Death toll

The scale and nature of the killing continues to be debated. Estimates range from 2,600 to 60,000 dead. Japanese participants reported mountains of corpses, yet the number of dead was never officially calculated. Cowan, who was a witness, reported that the "bodies of men strewed the streets in hundreds, perhaps thousands, for we could not count" and that there were "more in the water." Creelman, also a witness, asserted that up to 60,000 were killed, with only 36 spared. According to a scouting report sent to Viceroy Li Hongzhang by the local official Liu Hanfang (劉含芳) soon after the massacre, 2,600~2,700 civilians were killed within the city. However, many more were slaughtered in the hills surrounding the city and for these they had no reliable count, and soldiers were not included in this count. In 1948, the

Chinese Communist Party The Communist Party of China (CPC), also translated into English as Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is the founding and One-party state, sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Founded in 1921, the CCP emerged victorious in the ...

built the cemetery "万忠墓" ("Wanzhong Tomb") and marked the total deaths to be 20,000, which included soldiers killed in action and fleeing soldiers disguised as civilians. The 20,000 figure became the orthodox figure in Chinese communist sources. Some late-20th century Japanese sources repeat the death toll of 60,000 given by Creelman, but Stewart Lone, writing in 1994, one hundred years after the fact, attempted to discredit Creelman's claim, stating "

hat A hat is a Headgear, head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorpor ...

the entire city population was not massacred, however, is suggested by the speed with which Port Arthur's streets again filled after the Japanese occupation: had the civilian population been literally decimated or destroyed, it is unlikely that others would have ventured to trade and work under Japanese occupation."

Aftermath

The string of Japanese victories at Pyongyang and then at the Battle of the Yalu River had increased what had until then been only lukewarm Western interest in the war. By the time of the assault on Port Arthur, a number of Western reporters were attached to the Japanese Second Army. Western reporting on the massacre was controversial. Most correspondents such as the

Canadian Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...

reporter James Creelman, writing for the '' New York World'', and Frederic Villiers, a writer and illustrator for the ''London Black and White'', described a wide scale and cold-blooded massacre, while Amédée Baillot de Guerville alleged in the pages of the '' New York Herald'' that no such massacre had occurred. Writing a decade later, de Guerville amended this view, claiming that though some 120 civilians were killed it still had not been a massacre. Foreign reporters had to wait until they had left the area before they could file their stories, which the Japanese censors would otherwise have suppressed. At first, the incident garnered little attention: a one-sentence report in ''

'' on 26 November stated: "Great slaughter is reported to have taken place." James Creelman was the first to report on the massacre in a front-page article that declared: Other newspapers soon followed with detailed reports. The reports hurt Japan's international image and threatened the progress of negotiations with the United States to bring an end to the

unequal treaties The unequal treaties were a series of agreements made between Asian countries—most notably Qing China, Tokugawa Japan and Joseon Korea—and Western countries—most notably the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, the Unit ...

Japan had been made to sign in the 1850s. Japanese foreign minister

Mutsu Munemitsu Count was a Japanese diplomat and politician. He became Minister for Foreign Affairs (Japan), Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1890 and worked to revise unequal treaties. He served as plenipotentiary at the Treaty of Shimonoseki, peace conference ...

announced an investigation, publishing these intentions in the ''New York World'', and promised not to interfere with foreign correspondents. On 16 December, the Foreign Ministry released a statement to the press, asserting the atrocities were exaggerations: The Japanese press generally avoided reporting on the massacre, or dismissed it, as when the called allegations "an invidious desire to detract from the glory of the Japanese Army". The accused Westerners of exaggerating the extent of the atrocities, and of hypocrisy in light of the atrocities they had committed throughout the East, stating that "the history of savage nations that have come in contact with Christian Occidentals is all but written in blood". Some questioned Creelman's reliability, and a rumour spread that he left for Shanghai after the fall of Port Arthur to work for the Chinese government. '' The Japan Weekly Mail'', on the other hand, castigated the Japanese army in several articles. Attempts to launch an inquiry met resistance from those who wanted it covered up. The inquiry resulted in no punishments given out. Domestic instability kept the Chinese government under pressure to conceal the defeat, rather than castigate the Japanese for the atrocities. The '' China Gazette'' reported on the attempted cover-up: "Telegraphic notices have been sent ... all over the empire by the officials saying that a wicked report has been set on foot by the enemy that they have captured Port Arthur, but it was utterly untrue, the place being garrisoned by 30,000 brave Chinese soldiers who would never give it up to the Japanese." As late as a month later, the ''China Gazette'' reported the defeat remained unknown even to many government officials. The pro-Japanese '' North-China Herald'' attempted to defend the perpetrators of the massacre by proposing "The circumstances were such as might have taxed the control of any invading force." The incident strained the delicate foreign relations Japan had been dealing with. The war itself hurt Japan's relations with Britain, and threatened to hurt Japan's renegotiation of treaties with the United States. The incident coloured Western perceptions of Japan as barbarians under a thin veil of civilization. These perceptions contributed to anti-Japanese sentiment in North America in the early 20th century, which would continue through World War II. In the aftermath of the incident,

Imperial Russia Imperial is that which relates to an empire, emperor/empress, or imperialism. Imperial or The Imperial may also refer to: Places United States * Imperial, California * Imperial, Missouri * Imperial, Nebraska * Imperial, Pennsylvania * ...

established a colonial and naval presence in Port Arthur. The Russian naval base was a focus of Japanese attacks in the

Russo-Japanese War The Russo-Japanese War (8 February 1904 – 5 September 1905) was fought between the Russian Empire and the Empire of Japan over rival imperial ambitions in Manchuria and the Korean Empire. The major land battles of the war were fought on the ...

a decade later.Walder, David (1974): ''The Short Victorious War: The Russo-Japanese Conflict, 1904-5''; New York: Harper & Row; ISBN 0060145161. Tikowara, Hesibo (1907): ''Before Port Arthur in a Destroyer; The Personal Diary of a Japanese Naval Officer''; translated by Robert Grant; London: J. Murray.

Notes

Works cited

* * * {{Refend

Further sources

* Allan, James
''Under the Dragon Flag''
London: William Heinemann, 1898. (This purports to be a true account of the massacre by a young Englishman who had been trapped in the city at the time of its fall.) * Creelman, James
''On the Great Highway, the Wanderings and Adventures of a Special Correspondent''
Boston:Lothrop Publishing, 1901. * De Guerville, A. B. "In Defense of Japan. The Alleged Atrocities at Port Arthur Denied", ''Leslie’s Weekly'' (3 January 1895). * De Guerville, A. B. ''Au Japon''. Paris: Alphonse Lemerre, 1904. * Dorwart, Jeffrey M. "James Creelman, the New York World and the Port Arthur Massacre", ''Journalism Quarterly'', 50 (4) (1973):697–701. * Hardin, Thomas L. “American Press and Public Opinion in the First Sino-Japanese War", ''Journalism Quarterly'', 50 (1) (1973):53–59. * Kane, Daniel C. "Each of Us in His Own Way: Factors Behind Conflicting Accounts of the Massacre at Port Arthur," ''Journalism History'', vol. 31 (1) (Spring 2005):23–33. * Villiers, Frederic
''The Truth about Port Arthur''
''The North American Review'', vol. 160, no. 460 (March 1895):325–331. 1894 in China 1894 in Japan 1894 murders in China 19th-century mass murder in China 19th-century prisoner of war massacres Anti-Chinese sentiment in Japan Massacres of Chinese people Conflicts in 1894 First Sino-Japanese War History of Dalian Japanese war crimes in China Lüshunkou Massacres committed by Japan Massacres in 1894 Massacres in China November 1894