This is always a tricky question, normally the answer would be "stick with the language/ecosystem your team and company are more familiar with". However, your team can work with both, so this is "extra tricky" or simply a "luxury".
Java with Spring (e.g. Spring Boot for API development) or Java with a JAX-RS framework (e.g: Jersey, Resteasy) for API development (plus Spring for other things, e.g.: database management, etc.) are very popular... actually JVM is very strong for web services (backend APIs) development, so this may be something to consider as a strong point for Java.
PHP seems to be used (most of the times) for complete web application development (including views), but several people also use for API only too. Facebook uses a lot of PHP, apparently Java too, it seems to work for basically any "server-side" development.
I personally am more inclined and experienced on JVM and java API development, it is very easy to develop java-based APIs nowadays. A java-based solution gives you a lot of possibilities in terms of frameworks and also languages you can eventually use (other JVM-based languages), etc., and it is very performant! However, I have little experience with PHP, so maybe there are some incredible points on PHP that make it very attractive...
Performance wise there are some comparisons (Java seems to be more performant, but most people seem to agree PHP is "easier to develop"):
HTH