JAPAN ARMING

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 5 October 1907, Page 3

JAPAN ARMING

50,000 MEN EMPLOYED. "GREAT ARMY AND NAVY." If Japan has peace and her crops average well she will, writes the special correspondent of the New York Herald in a recent despatch, to be to pull herself out of the financial hole in which she is. If she gets into war or her crops fail, or some great natural cataclysm descends upon her, she will be bankrupt, and at the mercy of her creditors. Yet with this possibility—a bare possibility, if you will—staring her in the face, Japan is driving ahead day and night in the perfecting and enlarging of her great army and navy. It is difficult to learn much about Japan in a naval and military way. She is more secretive, perhaps, than any other nation in the world. She hides these things from all but the small circle of men about the throne who organise and direct them. Attaches of the Towers get little information at Tokio. There is a conspiracy of silence. Pleasant words, genial smiles, open gestures, and nothing worth setting down as facts arc the rule. FIFTY THOUSAND WORKMEN BUSY. Some few things arc known. Japan has two military arsenals, and employs approximately fifty thousand workmen. The empire operates four shipyards and naval arsenals. In two of these battleships have been built and are now building. Aside from this are Government steel works for the production of armor plates and material for big guns, a Government powder factory, and two auxiliary private shipyards and dry docks capable of being used for war purposes within 24 hours. This is the potential war equipment of Japan. Throughout all of the works there is at present not one foreigner, either instructor or workman. The gates are closed for every Japanese who is not in the employment of the Government.

The navy yards at Kure, on the inland sea, are largest and best equipped in Japan. There are between 85,000 and 90,000 machinists, artisans, and laborers living there. At Kure there are foundry docks, capable of receiving a battleship of the first-class, a complete shipbuilding plant, and a naval arsenal for the manufacture of big guns. The dry docks are of the latest pattern, equipped with pumps of the largest capacity, and cement lined throughout. It is here that several of the captured Russian ships, which were raised at Port Arthur, have been completely reconstructed and placed in commission. NOT DEPENDENT ON FOREIGNERS. The Kure shipbuilding plant is fitted almost entirely with English machinery. The keel of a battleship can be laid down at Kure, anil the whole vessel built with no importation, either of machinery or of armament. Up to a recent time the Kure yards had been supplied with armor plates from English and American mills. Recently, with the erection of the Imperial Steel Works, ten miles outside of Moji, on the west coast of the island of Kioushiu, and of an armor plate plant at Kure, the Japanese shipbuilders have not had to rely on foreign-made armor plate, hut import only the unfinished steel, and make their own forgings. Since the signing of the treaty with Great Britain, the steel for Japanese battleships has been bought almost entirely in English markets.

At the present time a sister ship of the battleship Satsuma, recently launched at the Yokosuka naval yards, which is larger than the Dreadnought, is under course of construction in the Kure shipyards. While the vessel is under way her armament is being forged in the gun factory adjacent. The Kure naval arsenal, employing more than three thousand workmen, makes puns of all sizes, from three inches to 12. The guns are of the English pattern, and the machinery for their production is English. Besides big guns for the navy, the Kure arsenals will soon lie ready to turn out heavy rifles and disappearing guns for land fortifications. A special plant, installed within the last year, has already been at work on fortification artillery of lower calibres. All the guns of this type already mounted on the Japanese coast batteries have been of English manufacture. Yokosuka naval yards, next in size, are situated on Yokohama Bay, about 15 miles from the city of Yokohama. The Yokosuka yards comprise a shipbuilding plant, three dry dock", machine and repairing shops, and a torpedo factory, the only one in Japan. The whole yards cover about 150 acres and about 7500 men are employed in the various departments. BUILDING NAVY AT HOME. The naval engineers at Tokio arc preparing, absolutely unaided, all the plans and specifications for the forthcoming home-built navy. The torpedo factory connected with the Yokosuka navy yard manufactures all the torpedoes used on the ships and by engineers for the protaction of harbors. The dirigible torpedo for use on torpedo-boats or battleships is of the English type, but charged according to the secret formula of the Japanese.

There are two smaller naval stations, one at Maidzuru, on the west coast of the main island of Hondo, about fifty miles from Shimonoseki, and the other at Sasebo, on the west coast of the lower island of Kiushu, above Nagasaki. The naval programme announced from Tokio recently purposes making of Maidzuru an arsenal second only to that of Kure. A torpedo plant is being installed' here, and the manufacture of shells for naval batteries will be undertaken as soon a3 the expensive plant already ordered can be put in operation. The largest military arsenal in Japan is at Tokio. Here there is a complete plant for the manufacture of small arms field artillery, cavalry equipment, \\ in u Lie .lew system of two years' service with the colors is fully "Introduced the army will aggregate 280,000 men.