The Reluctant Admiral: Yamamoto and the Imperial Navy - Softcover

Agawa, Hiroyuki

Softcover

ISBN 10: 4770025394 ISBN 13: 9784770025395

Publisher: Kodansha Amer Inc, 2000

Synopsis

This is a portrait both of an individual and of an organization. The individual is the Japanese admiral who, as architect of the Pearl Harbor raid and commander of the Combined Fleet throughout the first part of World War II, is one of the most widely known of Japanese wartime leaders. The organization is the Japanese Imperial Navy, whose "gentlemanly" traditions and outlook contrasted strongly with those of the Japanese army and whose failure to check the latter in its headstrong course makes one of the sadder episodes of recent history.

Here, for the first time, Yamamoto emerges as the complex, sympathetic, and in many ways contradictory character that he was. A realist who foresaw the future importance of the airplane for the navy long before his contemporaries and who believed that Japan would inevitably be defeated in any war with America and Britain, he was also an inveterate gambler with an odd streak of superstition. A tough leader, he had at the same time a vein of sentimentality that would allow him to burst into tears at the funeral of a young subordinate. In public the very epitome of the dignified national hero, in private he often showed a schoolboyish playfulness that was sometimes endearing and occasionally embarrassing. He was always ready to express his views with a frankness uncommon in his day, yet he revealed in the end the same readiness as most of his fellow countrymen to accept passively "the call of duty."

The author, refusing the temptation to indulge in speculation or "reconstruction," has gone straight to the original sources--accounts written by those who worked with Yamamoto; scores of interviews with men and women who knew him personally; above all, letters written by Yamamoto himself. The latter range from his more circumspect, semi-official communications to intimate letters addressed to his mistress or long-standing friends of both sexes, in which he bares his private doubts and pessimism. It is these personal documents and reminiscences that make the character so human and, ultimately, give such a moving quality to the account of his dramatic wartime death in the South Pacific.

An intimate portrait of the man who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor and died a dramatic death in the South Pacific.

About this title

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

On board the flagship Nagato in the anchorage at Hashirajima, the evening of December 7 found Yamamoto, as usual, playing shogi with staff officer Watanabe. These games between Yamamoto and Watanabe usually came to an end after Yamamoto had won four times in succession, but very occasionally Watanabe instead would win several games in a row. This invariably happened when a low-pressure front was approaching; possibly Yamamoto was the type that is allergic to changes in the weather. That particular evening, however, it was fine, and Yamamoto won. They finished playing rather earlier than usual, then Yamamoto and his staff officers bathed and retired temporarily to their own cabins.

Some of them slept for two or three hours, others could not sleep at all, but not long after midnight most of the staff officers were once again assembled in small groups in the operations room. The officer on duty was air "B" staff officer Sasaki Akira.

The four walls of the operations room were plastered with large maps of the entire Pacific area and charts of various zones of Southeast Asian waters. On the table were a large globe and still more charts, and on a smaller table files of operational orders and radio messages.

Yamamoto was sitting quite still, eyes shut, in a folding chair in front of the big table at the back.

News came in of the army's landing at Kota Bharu, then of the successful landing at Bataan in the Philippines. There followed a long and trying period of waiting. Time seemed to drag interminably. An uneasy silence prevailed in the operations room. No one spoke; the only sounds were the rustle of messages being flipped over in their files and the occasional scratching of a pencil.

Across the passage lay the radio room, from which a cord led to a receiver standing on the table in the operations room, so that those present could hear directly any messages that came in. Eventually, senior staff officer Kuroshima said in a quiet voice, "It should begin any moment now."

He glanced up at the clock on the bulkhead, and a stir ran through the room. At that moment, the radio operator came running in and shouted at the staff officer on duty: "Sir--the repeated to signal."

Sasaki turned to the commander in chief. "As you hear, sir," he reported. "The message was sent at 0319 hours."

Yamamoto opened his eyes wide and nodded. His mouth turned down grimly at the corners. "Did you get that message direct from the plane?" he asked the operator. The Nagato's radio room had, in fact, received the "to, to, to, to..." direct from the skies over Oahu.

"Direct reception?" said Ugaki. "Good work!" The young operator looked pleased, saluted, and rushed out of the room again.

There followed a succession of reports from the attacking units:

"Surprise attack successful."

"Enemy warships torpedoed; outstanding results."

"Hickam Field attacked; outstanding results."

At the same time, the radio in the operations room was picking up directly a great number of uncoded radio messages from the American side. From what Ugaki says in his Sensoroku, the messages tended to be broken and jerky: "SOS--attacked by Jap bombers here...." or "Oahu attacked by Jap dive-bombers from carrier...." When Yamamoto heard one of them--"Jap!--this is the real thing"--a brief grin seemed to pass over his face.

Exactly one hour after the first assault, the second attack force led by Lieutenant Commander Shimazaki Shigekazu, 170 planes in all, swept into the skies over Pearl Harbor and also achieved considerable results before withdrawing. By the time dawn broke over Hiroshima Bay, the number of messages being received in the operations room of the Nagato was dwindling steadily.

From any point of view, the raid had been an outstanding success, and the staff officers could not conceal their jubilation; Yamamoto alone, apparently, remained sunk in apparent depression.

Language Notes:

Text: English, Japanese (translation)

About this edition

• Publisher: Kodansha Amer Inc
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 4770025394
• ISBN 13: 9784770025395
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 408