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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.
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.
During World War I, conflict on the Asian continent and the islands of the Pacific included naval battles, the Allied conquest of German colonial possessions in the Pacific Ocean and China, the anti-Russian Central Asian revolt of 1916 in Russian Turkestan and the Ottoman-supported Kelantan rebellion in British Malaya.
The Allies or the Entente was an international military coalition of countries led by France, the United Kingdom, Russia, the United States, Italy, and Japan against the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria in World War I (1914–1918).
The alliance's provisions for mutual defence required Japan to enter the First World War on the British side. The Treaty made possible the Japanese seizure of German possessions in the Pacific north of the equator during the War. Japan attacked the German base at Qingdao in 1914 and forced the Germans to surrender (see Siege of Tsingtao).
The German dead were buried at Qingdao, while the remaining soldiers were transported to prisoner of war camps in Japan. During the march to Qingdao and the subsequent siege, Japanese forces killed 98 Chinese civilians and wounded 30; there were also countless incidents of war rape against Chinese women committed by Japanese soldiers.
Japan declared war on Germany on August 23, 1914. Japanese and allied British Empire forces soon moved to occupy Tsingtao fortress, the German East Asia Squadron base, German-leased territories in China's Shandong Province as well as the Marianas, Caroline, and Marshall Islands in the Pacific, which were part of German New Guinea.
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.