Imperial troops burst through bamboo to attack Chinese soldiers in this circa 1895 Japanese print from a two-panel woodcut (Library of Congress).
In his 1901 memoir, On the Great Highway: The Wanderings and Adventures of a Special Correspondent, American journalist James Creelman recounted the First Sino-Japanese War. Though the conflict lasted only nine months, from August 1894 to April 1895, Japan's victory over China marked its emergence as a world power.
A thrill of expectant fear ran through the army as the great guns of Jokasan were turned upon the advancing Japanese regiment on the left of our line. For two hours the hills shook with the shock of the battery.
In this excerpt, Creelman, on assignment for Joseph Pulitzer's New York World, describes Japan's invasion of Manchuria in October and November of 1894. He traveled with a force that crossed the Yellow Sea and landed on what is now the Liao-dong Peninsula. The Japanese seized the ancient walled city of Kinchow (present-day Jinzhou) and the seven massive forts that guarded nearby Talien-Wan (Dalian Bay) on the eastern shore of the peninsula that today is home to the port city of Dalian. Not long after, the Japanese advanced on the strategic port city of Port Arthur (present-day Lüshun), a few miles south on the very tip of the peninsula, where the troops won an easy victory—then massacred thousands of Chinese civilians and soldiers, a story that Creelman reported to the shock of the world.
The steamer that carried General [Yoshimichi] Hasegawa and his brigade of Kumomoto troops to join the army of invasion on the Manchurian coast afforded endless entertainment to Frederic Villiers and me. The queer war dances and singing processions of the Japanese soldiers kept the British war artist busy at his sketchbook. Yet there was an inexpressible sense of order and neatness in all parts of the crowded troopship, a feeling of law and obedience that surpassed anything I have seen on an American or European transport.
American reporter James Creelman was wounded covering the Japanese invasion (Library of Congress).
When we reached the coast of Manchuria, a bleak stretch of uninteresting shore, backed by treeless hills and dotted here and there with tile-roofed farmhouses, the whole Japanese force—men, horses, ammunition, food, and cannons—was carried to the land in little flat skiffs. It was a marvelous feat.
But the most extraordinary thing about our landing was the appearance of hundreds of smiling, tall Manchurians, who waded out in the shallow sea and helped to pull the boats of the invaders ashore. It was not fear that induced the pigtailed giants to assist in the invasion of their soil, but a mere absence of national sentiment. We saw abundant signs of this spirit of indifference afterward, and that day the Japanese laughed heartily at the lack of patriotism in Manchuria, and predicted the swift collapse of China.
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