Sarah Paine

That would be the Second Sino-Japanese War from 1931 to 1945 that morphs into World War II that ruins the Japanese, but it's a different topic.

First sign of Japanese war to let you know what happened in it.

It's comprised of two pairs of key battles.

There are other battles as well, but this is a good way to understand it.

The first battle is at Pyongyang.

The Japanese defeat the Chinese army, which takes off and retreats all the way over the border river, which is the Yalu, back into Chinese territory.

So Japan has actually achieved its war objective, which was to remove Korea from the Chinese sphere of influence.

Battle number one, they've already done it.

And the second battle occurs within the week, the same week in mid-September, 1894.

It's the Battle of the Yalu, where the Japanese Navy trounces the Chinese Navy, which, believe it or not, in this day, both countries had state-of-the-art navies.

And Japan trounces it and gets command of the sea.

That's terribly important for Japan.

For Japan to reach the theater here, it's got to cross the sea.

If there's a hostile Navy out and about, it can sink troop transport supplies and other things.

So it's very important to get rid of hostile Navy.

Well, the reason it gets command of the sea is because Chinese decide they're never gonna engage with the Japanese Navy ever again, and they duck into port.

And the Japanese are going to solve that problem for them.

There are a second pair of battles which are fought over the winter of 1894-95.

China only has one naval refitting station where you can actually fix large ships.

That's at Port Arthur.