ation as one of Japan's war idols was established when his
squadron had defeated three Russian warships, the _Rurik_, _Gromoboi_
and _Rossia_, off the east coast of Korea. Later his squadron had
taken a commanding part in the great battle in the Japan Sea, which
put an end to Russia's naval power in the East. Admiral Kamimura was
sixty-five years old, and had spent the greater part of his life in
naval service. After the final Russian defeat he was rewarded with the
title of Baron and invested with the Grand Cordon of the Rising Sun
and the first-class of the Golden Kite.

On September 23, 1914, the Japanese were joined by a British force of
1,369 men under command of Lieutenant Colonel Nathaniel Walter
Barnardiston, commander of the British forces in North China,
including Wei-hai-wei. Although the British did not arrive until a
month after the forces sailed from Japan, the distance that separated
Laoshan Bay, where the former made their landing on the original
leased territory and thus avoided the breach of neutrality against
China committed by the Japanese, was so much shorter and the landing
place presented so much less difficulty than the Japanese encountered
in their preliminary advance, that the British really arrived on the
scene of actual operations just as the Japanese were finishing their
first engagements in force, on September 28, 1914.

Colonel Barnardiston's command consisted of 910 noncommissioned
officers and men of the Second Battalion South Wales Borderers, and
450 noncommissioned officers and men of the Thirty-sixth Sikhs,
besides nine staff officers.

The bombardment of the Tsing-tau forts began on August 26, 1914, and
on September 1, 1914, the Japanese bluejackets seized several small
islands in Kiao-chau Bay, which the Germans were unable to defend
except by long range fire from their shore batteries, and by mines
with which the harbor had been thickly sown. Mine sweeping therefore
occupied the first activities of the fleet. This operation was
signalized by one of the many acts of patriotism and bravery that
characterized the siege on both sides. One hundred Japanese women who
made their living by diving for pearls in these waters offered to
enter the water and release the mines from their moorings so that they
would be carried away by the tides. Their courageous offer was
declined, not because the Japanese admiral believed it could not be
carried out, but because the Japanese law expressly pro