War in the Pacific

1914 Europe - reserve

1914 Aug. 23 - Japan declared war on Germany, and prepared to attack the German lease on the Shantung peninsula, including the naval base at the port of Tsingtao. Admiral von Spee moved the German East Asiatic Squadron from Tsingtao to the harbor of Pagan in the German Marianas. Ships from this squadron would go to the Indian Ocean, and to South America for the battles of Coronel and Falklands.

Aug. 30 - New Zealand force occupied German Samoa.

Sep. 2 - Japan began to land force of 23,000 on Shantung to attack the 3000 German troops at Tsingtao.

Sep. 11 - Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force landed at Rabaul, the capital of German New Guinea that had been colonized by the German New Guinea Company since 1884. The Australians fought a battle to take the wireless station at Bitapaka near Rabaul, and the small German force surrendered Sep. 17. The 11 Australian casualties were the first of the war. Australia and Japan occupied the former German colonies in the Pacific including the Bismarck Archipelago and the German Solomons and Marshalls and Marianne Island and Palau and Nauru during the war. After 1921 it governed New Guinea as a League of Nations mandate.

Oct. 31 - Japan began bombardment of Tsingtao, and the Germans surrendered Nov. 7.

Sources:

• Maps from USMA
• Tsingtao Campaign by Colin Denis
• Kirby, William C. Germany and Republican China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1984.
• Schrecker, John E. Imperialism and Chinese Nationalism; Germany in Shantung. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971.

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