Wooden dolls honor those who died in the Russo-Japanese War

The British had an alliance with Japan before and during the First World War. Japan’s Imperial Navy was modeled on Britain’s Royal Navy and Britain supplied its first iron and steel hulled warships. Japan’s naval officers also studied at Britain’s naval colleges and later used their tactics successfully against the Russians in 1904. The IJN’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in WW2 was copied from the Royal Navy’s successful attack on the Italian fleet anchored at Taranto in 1940 by torpedo carrying Swordfish biplanes.

Japan had a technological alliance with Germany in WW2 and received some flak gun laying radar and aircraft engine technology by submarine. In February 1945, off the coast of Norway, the German U-boat U864 carrying jet aircraft engines to Japan on such a secret mission was torpedoed and sunk by the British submarine HMS Venturer while both vessels were submerged – the only time such an event has occurred in the history of naval warfare.

The Imperial Navy’s and the ‘sailor suit’ uniforms worn by Japanese schoolgirls were fashioned on the uniforms of Britain’s Royal Navy.