Expeditionary· East Asia Operations
Boshin War / Meiji Restoration
The American protective response during Japan's civil war and the fall of the shogunate.
In 1868 the long struggle between the Tokugawa shogunate and the partisans of the emperor came to a head in the Boshin War, and as fighting reached the newly opened ports, the American squadron acted to safeguard its nationals. When the shogun's forces were defeated and had to abandon Osaka, Americans were taken off and received aboard the gunboat USS Iroquois, which carried them to the safety of Hiogo. Marines aboard furnished the guard for these protective movements. No fighting fell to the Americans and no casualties resulted; their role was the evacuation and protection of their own people amid a Japanese conflict in which they took no side. The episode marks the Corps' small part in the dramatic events of the Meiji Restoration, the watchful presence of the treaty-port guard during the birth of modern Japan.
Record no. 468