In a style that would be repeated at Pearl Harbor thirty-seven years later, Japan carried out a lightning preemptive strike on Port Arthur and put it under siege. It fought a stream of battles with Russia, which surrendered in September 1905 with a peace agreement brokered by the United States and for which President Theodore Roosevelt won the Nobel Peace Prize. Japan’s decisive defeat of a European country stunned the international defense community and catapulted Japan from a regional to a world power.
