Japan's fatal mistake

Not heeding Yamamoto

During the Indian wars of the 19th century, American military commanders took pains to persuade Indian leaders to visit Washington. They secured invitations to the chiefs from the Great Father in the capital, casting the invitations as a high honor. What they really wanted was for the chiefs to see how many white people there were in America, how vastly they outnumbered the Indians, and accordingly what little chance the Indians had to prevail against them. The strategy almost always worked. The chiefs went home to their tribes and conveyed the message that resistance was futile.

Isoroku Yamamoto experienced his own awakening to American power as a Japanese student at Harvard after World War I and again as a naval attache in Washington. America’s geographic magnitude impressed him, as did its bounteous natural resources, thrumming factories and energetic population. Yamamoto remained a Japanese patriot but one chastened by exposure to the actuality of Japan’s Pacific rival.

His insight made him odious to the ultranationalists who controlled Japan’s army during the 1930s. Despite attaining high rank in the navy, Yamamoto feared for his life. Indeed he was promoted to commander of the navy in part to keep him at sea and out of the reach of assassins.

The jingo generals had been itching for a fight against the United States since Theodore Roosevelt brokered an end to the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. The terms of the deal were realistic, but Japanese expectations had been unrealistic, and the jingoes blamed America.

They were further miffed when the United States refused to recognize Japan’s seizure of Manchuria from China in the early 1930s. The generals wanted nothing more for Japan and East Asia than the United States enjoyed in the Americas, they said, calling for a Japanese version of the Monroe Doctrine.

Tensions escalated after Japan invaded China proper in 1937. Franklin Roosevelt ordered sanctions against Japan, eventually including embargoes on oil and steel.

The generals understood this as a death sentence on their expansionist dreams. Refusing to go quietly, they plotted a thrust into the Dutch East Indies, as Indonesia was then called. The archipelago had oil and iron, and it afforded a launching pad to the Middle East, which had even more oil.

The generals understood that such a move might provoke the United States to war. Their answer was to strike America first, paralyze its Pacific fleet, and entrench in the Indies before the Americans could recoup and launch a counteroffensive. By then Washington would conclude that the Indies weren’t worth the cost of their liberation. Hadn’t the United States and the other great powers come to terms with Japan’s seizure of Manchuria?

Yamamoto said the generals didn’t understand the American mind. “Should hostilities once break out between Japan and the United States,” he predicted, “it would not be enough that we take Guam and the Philippines”—American outposts in the western Pacific—“nor even Hawaii and San Francisco. To make victory certain, we would have to march into Washington and dictate the terms of peace in the White House. I wonder if our politicians have confidence as to the final outcome and are prepared to make the necessary sacrifices.”

Yamamoto’s warning was denounced as more of his defeatism. Planning proceeded for a campaign in the East Indies.

Yamamoto proposed to make the best of the bad situation. If there must be war with the Americans, Japan should strike the first blow. The American bases in the Philippines were likely targets. But precisely because they were likely, Yamamoto reasoned that they would be well defended. Better to attack the American base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. It was so far off the route to the Indies that the American forces there could be taken by surprise.

The attack went forward and the surprise was essentially complete. The heart of America’s Pacific battleship fleet was destroyed. By luck, the American aircraft carriers were on patrol and beyond the reach of the Japanese bombs and torpedoes.

Yamamoto reckoned that the successful attack had bought Japan time. But not much. “I shall run wild considerably for the first six months or a year,” he said, “but I have utterly no confidence for the second and third years.”

Six months was all he got. In June 1942, American ships and planes defeated their Japanese counterparts in the pivotal battle of Midway, reversing Japan’s momentum and throwing its navy on the defensive.

Japan never regained the initiative. The abundant resources Yamamoto had seen in the United States were mobilized and brought to bear against Japanese forces. Slowly at first, then faster, American forces drove the Japanese back toward the home islands. Massive bombing raids obliterated much of Tokyo and other cities. Finally, in the summer of 1945 American planes dropped two atom bombs, one on Hiroshima and the other on Nagasaki. Japan surrendered and the war ended.

Yamamoto didn’t live to see the outcome he had predicted. In April 1943, after American cryptanalysts cracked a message containing Yamamoto’s itinerary, American warplanes intercepted a bomber carrying the admiral over the Solomon Islands.

“To die for Emperor and Nation is the highest hope of a military man,” Yamamoto had said. What he thought about dying for a mistake he had warned against is unclear. At the fatal hour he didn’t have time for reflection. He was hit by the initial burst of gunfire from one of the American P-38s and died before his plane crashed into the ground.

Coming on May 12: American Patriarch: The Life of George Washington

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/777764/american-patriarch-by-h-w-brands/