Here is the fifth part of the battles that I have been sent.
HAKATA BAY
November 1274 and June–August 1281
Forces Engaged
Japanese: Unknown. Commander: Hojo Tokimune.
Mongol: 50,000 in first invasion; possibly 140,000 in the second. Commander: Kubilai Khan; field commanders unknown.

Importance
The destruction of the Mongol fleets guaranteed Japanese independence, yet created a power struggle in the Japanese military government that led to the military’s dominance over the emperor.
Historical Setting
In 1259, Kubilai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, established himself as the first monarch of the Yüan dynasty in China. As he was in the process of imposing Mongol rule over all of China, only the crumbling Sung dynasty in southern China remained as yet unconquered. With Mongol hegemony in place over Korea, Kubilai looked at the island nation of Japan as his next target. In 1268, he sent envoys to the Japanese government, demanding recognition of his suzerainty over Japan. The alternative, Kubilai was clear in pointing out, was war.
The Japanese leadership at the time was in the hands of an 18-year-old, Hojo Tokimune. He was head of the bakufu, the military administration that ruled in the name of the emperor. The threat could not be treated as anything but genuine; Japanese contacts in Korea and ship captains from the Sung ports assured the bakufu of the aggressive Mongol nature. Not wanting to directly provoke the Great Khan, the bakufu decided to send no response to the demand and spend the interval before Mongol invasion in preparing a defense of the country.
In the capital city of Kamakura, Hojo ordered his vassals in the western provinces to call out their retainers and prepare for invasion. Those lords with lands on the western coast were to have their forces stand guard along the beaches, and those forces would be replaced by periodic rotations of armies from inland fiefs. From the time of the expulsion of the Mongol envoys to Kubilai’s invasion was 5 years; keeping his samurai warriors at a constant state of readiness was a major accomplishment of Hojo. He was aided, however, by religious leaders in Japan, notably a Buddhist priest named Nichiren. He loudly criticized Hojo for following the teachings of the Zen Buddhist priest Bukkô, an exile from the Mongol regime in China. Nichiren claimed the need for a Japan united in one faith, his Lotus Sutra, or the gods would punish the country. Such rivalry among religious orders kept the population focused on the threat of foreign invasion.
In 1274, Kubilai began to amass ships in Korean ports, possibly 900 ships being collected to transport as many as 40,000 soldiers, primarily Mongol, but with Korean and Chinese auxiliaries. Whether this was an actual invasion or merely a reconnaissance-in-force is difficult to determine. Its first actions were certainly sufficient to argue for invasion: the fleet set sail for the island of Tsushima, roughly halfway between the southern Korean coast and the western shore of the Japanese island of Kyushu. The Mongols landed on the island, quickly wiped out its small defense force, and then proceeded to the smaller island of Iki, a mere 12 miles from Kyushu. The smaller defense force there put up even less resistance, although Japanese legend has it that the stubborn bravery of the samurai provoked rage in the Mongols rather than admiration.
The Battle
On 18 November 1274, the fleet appeared off Kyushu’s Hakata Bay, and the following day the Mongols landed men ashore. They quickly captured the town of Hakata and were soon engaged by the samurai force on duty. Rather than awaiting reinforcements that had been dispatched, the warriors at the site threw themselves at the Mongols and found themselves hopelessly outnumbered and outmatched. The standard practice of Japanese warfare involved individual combat, in which the mettle and skill of a warrior with a sword could be displayed. The Mongols, true to their steppe heritage, fought on horseback, launching clouds of arrows at a distance into the enemy mass. The Mongols also employed some sort of catapult that threw metal balls that exploded on contact, although probably more firecracker than bomb. Still, the noise and burns they created certainly dismayed the Japanese as well as caused a number of casualties. Even the invading infantry did not fight in Japanese style, instead operating in a phalanx-type formation whose spears kept Japanese attacks at bay.
In spite of their lack of success, the Japanese did inflict a significant number of casualties on the Mongols. How many is unknown, but, when the samurai force abandoned the field and withdrew into the earthworks and fortifications of Dazaifu, a few miles inland, the Mongols did not pursue. The massive number of arrows that they had let fly during the battle, the unfamiliarity with the terrain, the expectancy of reinforcement for the defenders, as well as the number of men killed and wounded, convinced the Mongols to spend the night aboard ship, rearming and regrouping. It proved a fateful mistake because that night a gale blew up and caused many of the ships to sink, which brought about the loss of perhaps one-third of the invasion force. The lack of naval experience for the Mongols certainly argued against their staying on ship in hostile waters, and it can be assumed that the Korean captains pressed such a point home as well. Thus, the remaining ships returned to Korea.
The bakufu, in analyzing the performance of their troops during the invasion, realized that it was nature rather than force of arms that had saved their country. Hojo rightly assumed that Kubilai would not take such a defeat lightly and would send another army against the islands, so Hojo ordered a redoubling of the nation’s defense efforts. Although all of southern Honshu, the largest island of Japan, and the western coast of Kyushu were potential targets, Hakata Bay seemed the most likely location for a return match. Thus, Hojo ordered a wall to be constructed along the entire length of the shoreline. To motivate the population, Hojo ordered that anyone who performed well in fighting the Mongols, whether or not in the service of a feudal lord, could find himself rewarded by the government. Just as a similar promise of reward and advancement had motivated the population of Europe to join the Crusades less than a century before, so the population of Japan responded to the call.
In the meantime, Kubilai was indeed angered by the failure of his invasion force, but he was so involved in crushing the last remnants of the Sung in southern China that he had to postpone his retribution. He immediately sent more envoys to Japan, making the same demands that his first emissaries had made. Rather than send them away without a response, Hojo began beheading them instead. This continued until 1279, when Kubilai finally stopped sending them.
In Japan, the bakufu decided not only to beef up the defenses along the coastline but also to begin construction of a navy of their own. They would need all the assistance they could muster because, when Kubilai once again turned his attention to the Japanese, he had at his disposal not only the Korean navy but also the ships and sailors of the recently defeated Sung. Thus, he began amassing two invasion fleets and armies. In Korea, once again some 900 ships were gathered, crewed by 17,000 sailors, transporting 10,000 Korean soldiers and another 15,000 Mongols and Chinese. This collection of military might was named the Eastern Route Army. The Southern Route Army, organized south of the Yangtze River, was reportedly 100,000 men and was to be transported on as many as 3,500 ships. The two were supposed to combine forces at Tsushima and sail for Kyushu.
The Eastern Route Army departed Korea on 22 May 1281 and landed men ashore at Tsushima on 9 June. Although the Japanese defense force had been enlarged since the previous assault, these later defenders were again outnumbered and annihilated. A similar fate once again befell Iki on 14 June. The Mongols quickly sailed on to Hakata Bay, where they arrived on 21 June. The Southern Route Army had not yet completely organized itself and was thus well behind schedule. Rather than wait for
them, the Eastern Route Army proceeded with the invasion. The first squadron of ships sailed past Hakata Bay toward the main island of Honshu, but that was merely a diversion, which the Japanese did not follow up.
The primary Mongol force sailed into Hakata Bay and landed men along the Shiga peninsula, which blocks half the mouth of the bay from the north. The shoreline wall had not been extended so far, so the Mongols were in a position to flank the Japanese defenses. Rather than allow that to happen, Japanese warriors blocked the route with waves of attackers, a foretaste of the banzai charge of World War II. It worked, and the Mongols were unable to break out of their beachhead. The limited beach space available to the Mongols because of the wall kept them from mounting a major assault, so the Japanese were able to engage in some offense of their own. At night, the small boats that the Japanese had been constructing since the last invasion were sent out among the invasion fleet. Containing only a handful of samurai on each, the craft crept alongside the larger Korean ships in the darkness. In silence, the samurai would swarm aboard, kill as many sleeping Mongols as they could, reboard their boats, and escape. This harassing tactic proved so effective that the Mongols withdrew their navy to Tsushima. There they awaited the arrival of the Southern Route Army, but in the meantime the close quarters and summer heat created an epidemic that killed some 3,000 men. The first ships of the Southern force sailed into view on 16 July; by 12 August, the two fleets were completely merged and the invasion was on.
Faced with overwhelming force, the Japanese population did what men and women have always done in times of extreme emergency: they prayed to their gods for deliverance. It is said that a nation in prayer can work miracles, and one appeared on 15 August 1281. According to Japanese accounts, a small cloud appeared on the horizon and grew into a massive storm. The tempest that struck the Tsushima Straits blew for 2 days and destroyed most of the combined Mongol navy. Mongol sources do not give numbers, but the contemporary Japanese accounts claim that no more than 200 ships survived being sunk at sea or blown ashore; 80 percent of the troops were either drowned or killed by Japanese troops on the beaches.
Results
Kubilai Khan began to make plans for a third invasion, but abandoned them in 1284 when he began to have problems in Southeast Asia. The war seemed to have done minimal damage to the Mongol empire. The Chinese contingent of the Mongol army bore the brunt of the loss; 12,000 Chinese were made slaves by the Japanese. The Mongols lost their share of men and ships, but little else. Mongol pride was hurt, in that Japan now held the distinction of being the only state in the Orient that did not pay tribute to them.
Oddly, the Japanese victory did more harm than good to the Hojo rulers. When the Mongols first arrived, the government appealed to Heaven for help. Throughout the empire, prayers were offered, liturgies were chanted, and incense was burned in the temples. The priesthood took credit for the Japanese victory over the Mongol invaders, even claiming that they were responsible for the timely storm that saved the nation. Many of the priests expected and were given huge rewards for their help in the campaign. That brought resentment among the soldiers who fought so hard for victory and whose payment for services was very small in comparison. The victory over the Mongols brought no wealth to the victors, since the invading forces had left no land as spoils of war to be divided among the bakufu, the military leaders who were the major landowners. This lowered their prestige. Because the bakufu had little trust in the Mongols, they did not relax their precautions for another invasion for another two decades. This put a great financial burden on the Japanese government and further demoralized the warriors who continued to look for their reward. All of that eventually led to the downfall of the Hojo family.
The inability of the Mongols to establish a foreign regime in Japan meant that the islands could remain isolated from outside influence. When Europeans began arriving in the sixteenth century, the perceived threat to the stability of Japanese society convinced the government to reject almost all foreign visitors and trade. Not until the middle of the nineteenth century was Japan opened to the outside world when a U.S. fleet under the command of Commodore Matthew Perry forced the acceptance of a U.S. ambassador. Other western embassies followed, and the Japanese, realizing the drastic technological gap between themselves and the rest of the world, began to accepted foreign trade. The centuries of isolation, and the conservatism of the culture that had been created, kept the Japanese suspicious of foreign ways and leery of foreign, especially European, motives.
To Japan, the avenging hurricane that de-stroyed the Mongols came to be termed kamikaze, Divine Wind. The legend grew over the centuries, to be revived in the 1940s. Hoping to create a Divine Wind to save their empire, Japanese pilots used suicide tactics during the U.S. invasion of the Philippines in October 1944 and continued them until the final surrender almost a year later.
References:
Cook, Theodore. “Mongol Invasion,” Military History Quarterly 11(2), Winter 1998; Kwanten, Luc. Imperial Nomads. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979; Mason, R. H. P., and Caiger, J. G. History of Japan. New York: Free Press, 1972; Sansom, George. A History of Japan, 1334–1615. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1961; Turnbull, Stephen. The Samurai: A Military History. New York: Macmillan, 1977