Tracing the history of Japan's naval might

By Edward Neilan

TOKYO (JP): Naval "actions" by Japan frame a century of great seagoing engagements in the Pacific Ocean that are without parallel in history.

And did you know that in two yards in Kobe, Japan still can produce four state-of-the-art submarines a year?

("There he goes again," my critics are already complaining, "waxing nostalgic about Pacific War sea battles and hinting about a Japanese naval resurgence.")

On May 27, 1905, Admiral Togo Heihachiro's fleet won a brilliant engagement off Tsushima, the island lying between Korea and Japan. The battle's outcome stunned the world. Togo's ships had trained well, both in gunnery and in navigation. They responded nobly to Togo's epic signal to the fleet, flown from the mast of his flagship, Mikasa: "The fate of the empire lies in this one action. All hands, do your utmost."

In the event, he brought off the classic naval maneuver of "crossing the T," in which a fleet masses all its firepower broadside against an enemy advancing in single columns.

In his book The Pacific Century (Scribners, New York ,1992) author and old Japan hand Frank Gibney wrote: "The Russo-Japanese War was sign and seal of the Meiji revolution's success. Japan had caught the fire of Western learning and used the new science to beat a major Western power at its own game."

To millions of the colonially weak and oppressed throughout Asia, Togo's victorious guns came as a message of hope, wrote Gibney. Speaking more than a half century later, Mochtar Lubis, the distinguished Indonesian journalist, fairly summarized a reaction that transcended national boundaries. "One of the factors which pushed our nationalist movement, was the defeat of Russia by the Japanese. An Asian country, an Asian power had been able to defeat a European power. That gave us more hope and courage in our own struggle."

Of course, the buildup of the awesome Japanese fleet was for naught. After the Tsushima strait battle and the textbook strike at Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Japanese navy was thoroughly annihilated by the Americans at the great battles of Midway and the Coral Sea and others.

But wait, as the last chapter of 1999 is being written, Japan is trumpeting its expanded tactical security activities -- including operations by Asia's best navy -- under the just-passed U.S.-Japan defense guidelines which Tokyo's Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi will present to U.S. President Bill Clinton at the White House May 3. You had better believe the implications of this are being studied in Beijing, Pyongyang, Taipei, Seoul, and Moscow.

And the fascinating newspaper item last month:

"Japan plans to provide US$40 million in aid to help Russia dismantle about 50 aging nuclear submarines that were deployed in the Far East but are now decommissioned", government sources said (March 24, 1999).

"The sources said the SSNs could pose a serious threat to the region's environment unless they are dismantled as soon possible. The Japanese aid money will be spent partly to expand the Zvezda dockyard -- where the SSNs are to be dismantled -- near Vladivostok."

So Japan made "naval news" near the start of the century at Tsushima and is making it again with the submarine break-up at Vladivostok; a sure-sign that the Cold War is over.

By the way, how many submarines are operational in Asia- Pacific waters this morning? Japan has 16 "attack subs," run by the Maritime Self-Defense Force (An oxymoron: attack subs for self-defense?).

North Korea has 26 attack submarines, South Korea 6, India 17, Pakistan, 9. Indonesia 2, Australia 3; Taiwan 4.

The People's Republic of China has one nuclear powered ballistic missile submarine, five nuclear powered attack subs, and 54 conventional powered attack submarines.

The U.S. Seventh Fleet currently deploys three attack submarines in the Pacific, outside U.S. territorial waters. That's deceptive: the total U.S. line-up worldwide is 18 ballistic missile submarines, 75 attack submarines and 32 cruise missile submarines.

Edward Neilan is a Tokyo-based veteran analyst of Northeast Asian affairs and a media fellow at Hoover Institution, Stanford University.