It is believed that chemical weapons were first used on a large scale during the First World War. However, even during the siege of Port Arthur at the end of 1904, the Russian defenders of the fortress first felt the effects of an attack with poisonous substances. At the same time, the Japanese who used gas, in the absence of gas masks, dressed in diving suits.
The machine gunners were suffocating on the spot
In November 1904, during the fourth assault on the fortifications of Port Arthur, the besiegers punched holes in the Russian caponiers and began to inject poisonous gas there. Orientalist Boris Tageev, who served as a liaison officer in Port Arthur during the Russo-Japanese War, wrote about the consequences of this chemical attack. According to him, the Japanese have achieved a positive result for themselves. There were dead among the Russian soldiers.
"The poisoned machine gunners and riflemen either choked on the spot, or managed to get out of the caponier in a semi-conscious state," Tageev described what had happened. The defenders of the fortifications, breathing in the poisonous gas, complained of vomiting and dizziness.
Polish historian of the defense of Port Arthur, Jozef Discant, speaks of another attempt at using poisonous substances. On December 15, the Japanese in the part of the second fort occupied by them set fire to a pile of felt soaked in a toxic composition. In response, the soldiers of the Russian 26th Infantry Regiment, under the leadership of the boatswain Kornienko, threw grenades at the enemy, forcing him to retreat. At the same time, the besieged arranged a kind of "airing" of the forts, trying to reduce the concentration of harmful substances in the air as quickly as possible.
Since gas masks had not yet been invented, the Japanese protected themselves from the gases by wearing diving suits. It is not known exactly what kind of poisonous substance was used in Port Arthur. Tageev mentions "picric acid gas" - perhaps this refers to the smoke from the combustion of shimosa, a common Japanese-made explosive. It is possible that its suffocating effect was due to the fact that the Japanese experimented with additives (it is known that when picric acid is distilled with bleach, chloropicrin is obtained - a common poison gas of the First World War).
Sources also mention attempts to use laughing gas (nitrous oxide). What were the consequences in such cases, one can only guess. For laughing gas to cause respiratory arrest, it must be delivered at a very high concentration. It is possible that the Japanese sought inappropriate behavior of the Russians - under the influence of nitrous oxide, people cannot help laughing and go into hysterics.
Note that all these actions of the Japanese were illegal - chemical weapons were prohibited by the Hague Convention of 1899. However, no one blamed the Land of the Rising Sun for a war crime. It is not known whether the chemical attack influenced the plans of the Russian command, but just 5 days after the last episode, General Stoessel announced the start of negotiations on the surrender of Port Arthur.
War of the Future
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There is evidence that the Japanese professor of chemistry Joji Sakurai, a professor at the University of Tokyo and one of the founding fathers of chemical science in the Empire of Japan, proposed the use of poisonous gases for military purposes.
According to Boris Tageev, who spoke with Sakurai in 1918, the scientist did not deny Japan's priority in the practice of the military use of chemicals. At that time, the Tokyo professor considered all such episodes to be just limited-scale "experiments" and argued that the gas war is a "war of the future."
Serious stocks of chemical warfare agents in Japan were really accumulated only by the Second World War. Mustard gas, phosgene and lewisite were actively used by the Japanese during the war in China - historians count from 530 to 2000 such cases. Up to 10% of the irrecoverable losses of the Chinese army are associated with chemical attacks. However, against the Russians in 1945, the generals of the Kwantung Army did not dare to use toxic substances or did not have time, although the Red Army soldiers who occupied Manchuria found several large warehouses with chemical shells.
Timur Sagdiev