Kamio Mitsuomi
神尾 光臣
“It would shame me more to surrender Tsingtao to the Japanese than Berlin to the Russians” - Kaiser Wilhelm II
The general who would lead the Imperial Japanese Army to victory over the Germans at Tsingtao in the Great War was born in the city of Okaya in 1856, the son of a samurai in the Shinano Province of Japan during the reigh of the Tokugawa Shogunate. The Shogunate would fall when he was twelve years old, after a period of decline, and was replaced by the reasserted Emperor in what would be known as the Meiji Restoration, leaving the young Mitsuomi to grow up and attend an Imperial Japanese Army academy. After a short period of service in the Satsuma Rebellion, which would see the final victory of the Imperial forces over the Samurai.
Japanese guns in position during the Siege of Port Arthur during the Russo-Japanese War
He would spend subsequent years serving in China as an attache, eventually attaining the rank of major in that post, being reassigned to travel Europe in 1899, thus avoiding the chaos that would envelope Japanese and other foreign legations in China in the 1900 Boxer Rebellion. He would return in mid 1900 to take a position as Chief of Staff for the Imperial Japanese Army’s 1st Division for a period before another transfer, ending up promoted to Major General by 1902. He would, by 1905, serve as a divisional commander during the Russo-Japanese War, serving with several different divisions but never in any actual combat posts.
General Kamio with staff officers and foreign observers at his headquarters near Tsingtao
General Kamio would take command of the IJA’s 18th Division in 1912, a post he would still hold in 1914 as the Great War broke out. With the situation deteriorating worldwide, on August 15, 1914 General Kamio was ordered to mobilize his division to take the German Concession at Tsingtao, China, following an ultimatum from Tokyo to Berlin demanding the Kaiser withdraw from China immediately. With the lack of response, war was declared on August 23, the Imperial Japanese Navy sent ships to blockade the port, although by this time the Kaiserlich Marine’s East Asia Squadron had long since sortied out. This by no means meant that the port was undefended, however, with the German garrison entrenched behind defensive works built after the Boxer Rebellion.
Troops of the German garrison parade through Tsingtao
Three hills outside the city had been fortified, with Fort Moltke and Fort Bismarck representing the strongest positions, with three defensive lines prepared to withstand a long siege by the Chinese should that eventuality come to pass. Minefields and coastal defense batteries further secured the harbor from attack by sea. When the Japanese fleet arrived at Tsingtao they were soon reinforced by ships of the Royal Navy’s pre-dreadnaught battleship HMS Triumph. These ships mostly stayed out of range of the German batteries, containing them while Kamio’s troops were brought into position.
Japanese troops in a trench line at Tsingtao
The Japanese began to land on September 2, moving up from their beachhead at Lungkow and advanced, with additional support from a small British force landed primarily to allay fears of the Japanese operating unchecked by their allies. The Germans, who had bolstered the small German marine garrison by enlisting both German and Austro-Hungarian sailors to fight as infantry, pulled back from their first two lines and consolidated on the innermost line, as Kamio’s men set into laying siege.
General Kamio moved his headquarters to the town of Kiautschou, which was fortified as the weather began to turn. The same action had cut the rail connections between Tsingtao and neutral China, effectively isolating the Germans. As the weeks drew on the Japanese emplaced siege weapons to augment the naval guns in the harbor, and assaults began on the fortified hills, ending in tragedy as the Germans hit them with naval fire from the few ships left in the harbor as well as the machine guns on the hills themselves.
Japanese troops with a knocked out German gun near Tsingtao - German Federal Archives
As the siege dragged on, the Japanese adopted the same tactics used during the Siege of Port Arthur during the Russo-Japanese War a decade earlier, with heavy artillery covering a slow, methodical advance by Kamio’s troops as they squeezed Tsingtao. A massive attack was launched against the German line on November 6, 1914, the day after finally reducing the guns of Forts Bismarck and Moltke, and soon overwhelmed them. As the Germans broke, their only aircraft was sent out to China with the last messages of the garrison, and the commander, naval Captain Alfred Waldeck, surrendered Tsingtao to General Kamio on November 7.
The Fall of Tsingtao won Kamio the respect of both his men and his enemies, who lined the streets as he led a victory parade into Tsingtao with his troops. The Germans turned their backs when the British force followed. Promoted to full General, Kamio would take command of the Japanese Tsingtao Garrison, and would later be named a Baron for his leadership in what would be the only major battle of the war for the Japanese.
General Kamio would enter the IJA Reserves in 1917, where he would remain through the end of the war. He fully retired from the military in 1925, dying two years later in Tokyo, where he was buried with traditional military honors.
