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Japan participated in World War I from 1914 to 1918 as a member of the Allies/Entente and played an important role against the Imperial German Navy.Politically, the Japanese Empire seized the opportunity to expand its sphere of influence in China, and to gain recognition as a great power in postwar geopolitics.
Because of the treaty that Japan had signed with Great Britain in 1902, Japan was one of the Allies during the war. With British assistance, Japanese forces attacked Germany's territories in Shandong, China, including the East Asian coaling base of the Imperial German Navy. The German forces were defeated and surrendered to Japan in November 1914.
The onset of the First World War in Europe eventually showed how far German–Japanese relations had truly deteriorated. On 7 August 1914, only three days after Britain declared war on the German Empire, the Japanese government received an official request from the British government for assistance in destroying the German raiders of the Kaiserliche Marine in and around Chinese waters.
The Allies compensated Japan with a four-power pact, giving Japan the right of unlimited land armaments without restrictions and protection against Western intervention in East Asia. Kato's program strictly followed the Washington accords, which meant a guarantee of unrestrained Japanese action in the East at the expense of a relatively ...
After that on Oct. 5, Japan would occupy Kosrae. The Japanese then proceeded to occupy the other islands as the United Kingdom didn't react. Ponape in the Caroline's was captured on Oct. 7, although the territory’s surrender was delayed a few days due to a small local defence force that hid in the island’s interior to mount a resistance.
One of the first land offensives in the Pacific theatre was the invasion of German Samoa on 29–30 August 1914 by New Zealand forces. The campaign to take Samoa ended without bloodshed after over 1,000 New Zealanders landed on the German colony, supported by an Australian and French naval squadron.
Between the 1890s and 1940s, the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) built a series of battleships as it expanded its fleet. Previously, the Empire of Japan had acquired a few ironclad warships from foreign builders, although it had adopted the Jeune École naval doctrine which emphasized cheap torpedo boats and commerce raiding to offset expensive, heavily armored ships.
Japan was in a strong position during the course of the war as the Allies were in a stalemate with their rivals, the Central Powers. Britain and Japan had a military alliance since 1902, and in 1914 London had asked Tokyo to enter the war. Beijing published the secret demands and it had angered those in Washington and London. They were ...