Lüshun Massacre
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The LvShun massacre (Port Arthur massacre) purportedly occurred during the First Sino-Japanese War on 21 November 1894, when advanced elements of the First Division of the Japanese Second Army under command of the one-eyed General Yamaji Motoharu (1841-1897) massacred Chinese civilians, including women and children, in the Chinese coastal city of Lüshunkou, historically known in the West as Port Arthur.
As part of its wartime strategy during the First Sino-Japanese War, Japan had advanced through Korea, engaging Chinese troops at Asan near Seoul and then Pyongyang in September 1894, winning decisive victories on both occasions. Following the victory at Pyongyang the Japanese Second Army under Marshal Oyama Iwao (1842-1916) moved northward towards Manchuria, the plan being to seize the fortified city of Port Arthur, headquarters to China's Beiyang Fleet and a highly fortified city that dominated the sea passage from Korea to northeast China. In September the Japanese navy scored a decisive defeat over 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-Korea border. With the Beiyang Fleet eliminated 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 was landed for in North Korea to form another advance by land. After a series of battle on the Liaodong Peninsula the First Division of the Second Army led by General Yamaji drew up around Port Arthur in late November. With preparations in place, an artillery bombardment was commenced on the night of November 20, 1894 with an armed assault beginning the following morning. A good part of the city had already evacuated and fled westward by land or sea into China. After only token resistance the city fell to Japanese troops late on the morning of November 21.
The string of Japanese victories at Pyeongyang and then at the sea battle of the Yalu had warmed up 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 "embedded" in the Japanese Second Army. Western reporting on the massacre was controversial. While such correspondents as the American James Creelman, writing for The New York World, and Frederic Villiers a writer and illustrator for the London Black and White, described a widescale and cold-blooded massacre, Amedee Baillot de Guerville alleged in the pages of the New York Herald that no such massacre occurred. The dichotomy of the accounts is illustrative not simply of how American rivalries to sell newspapers boiled over into reporting, but of divergent Western views of the period regarding Japan. While some viewed Japan as the "Civilizer of Asia" or "Britain of the East", others saw in her the "Yellow Peril" that threatened to overrun Asia. The fact that at the time of the war Japan was in the process of renegotiating the unequal treaties forced upon her by Western powers in the 1850s and 1860s lent further impetus to attempts to both elevate and denigrate her in the foreign press.
References
- Allan, James. Under the Dragon Flag [link]. 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, though it is quite likely specious)
- Creelman, James. On the Great Highway, the Wanderings and Adventures of a Special Correspondent [link]. Boston:Lothrop Publishing, 1901.
- De Guerville, A.B. Au Japon. Paris: Alphonse Lemerre, 1904.
- De Guerville, A.B. “In Defense of Japan. The Alleged Atrocities at Port Arthur Denied,” Leslie’s Weekly (3 January 1895).
- 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.
- Lone, Stewart. Japan’s First Modern War. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994.
- Paine, S.C.M. The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895: Perception, Power, and Primacy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
- Villiers, Frederic, "The Truth about Port Arthur," [link] The North American Review, vol. 160, no. 460 (March 1895):325-331.
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