Architect of the Attack on Pearl Harbor

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Japan’s greatest naval strategist, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, planned one of the most stunning strikes in the history of modern warfare. His humble origins as the son of a poor schoolmaster could hardly have predicted that Yamamoto would learn to speak fluent English, study briefly at Harvard University, and spend two years in the U.S. capital as a naval attaché. He argued for peace in the 1930s as Fascism overtook Europe and a militaristic faction in Tokyo pushed for expansionism in the Far East. So outspoken was he against war that a plot to kill him emerged in July 1939. His promotion to admiral and subsequent sea duty saved him.

 

Yamamoto admired the United States and understood it’s industrial strength and potential military power. “Japan cannot beat America,” Yamamoto told a group of school children in 1940. “To fight the United States is like fighting the whole world.”

 

But once the war was imminent, he saw that the only path for Japan to control of the Pacific was to demolish the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor. The destruction of the Italian Fleet at Taranto in November 1940 by the British Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm formed Yamamoto’s blueprint for the attack on Hawaii. Another inspiration was The Great Pacific War, by Hector C. Bywater, a naval correspondent for the London Daily Telegraph.

 

Yamamoto began planning the Pearl Harbor assault in early 1940 but had his doubts about its success:  “If you tell me that it is necessary that we fight,” he told Tokyo’s high command, “then in the first six months to a year of war against the United States and England, I will run wild, and I will show you an uninterrupted succession of victories; but I must tell you that, should the war be prolonged for two or three years, I have no confidence in our ultimate victory.”

 

The mission dealt the U.S. Pacific Fleet a terrific blow, but three U.S. carriers—Lexington, Saratoga, and Enterprise—were at sea on maneuvers, sparing them. Furthermore, the Japanese overlooked vital targets, such as Pearl Harbor’s oil tank farm, repair workshops, and submarine pens. News of the attack sent Yamamoto’s reputation soaring in Japan.

 

For several months thereafter, Japanese naval formations supported thrusts against British and American bases in Hong Kong, Singapore, Guam, Wake Island, Midway, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, the Solomon Islands, the Philippines, and New Guinea. But the raid on Japan in April 1942 led by American Lt. Col. James H. Doolittle shook Japan’s confidence and humiliated its military establishment. And the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942 proved the Americans’ ability to thwart Japan’s advances in the South Pacific.

 

After the Doolittle raid, Yamamoto sought to attack the American base on tiny Midway atoll, 1,110 miles northwest of Pearl Harbor. The complicated and risky scheme called for the deployment of several task forces ranging from the Central Pacific to the Aleutian Islands. The Navy General Staff initially rejected it. But Yamamoto wanted to lure the Americans to fight on his terms. He planned to follow Midway’s capture with a landing in Hawaii. Although Yamamoto’s fleet had more ships and aircraft in the fight, U.S. codebreakers at Pearl Harbor were reading Japanese naval communications and knew about the strike beforehand.

 

At Midway in June 1942, a smaller American force outmaneuvered the Japanese fleet, which had to withdraw. In the four-day battle, the Americans lost valuable ships, 150 planes, and 307 men. But Yamamoto lost his four aircraft carriers, 275 planes, and more than 4,000 men, including 100 experienced pilots who could not be replaced. Midway, America’s revenge for Pearl Harbor, was the turning point in the Pacific War and assured the final Allied victory in that theater.

 

For Yamamoto, Midway was the tragic climax of a long career and a devastating blow. Too stunned to speak, he could only groan as he read the battle reports. Japan was forced into a defensive posture, unable to mount major offensives. Yamamoto kept his reputation, however, and fought on, drawn into a war of attrition as he struggled to prevent the Allies from seizing the Solomons and eroding Japan’s position in the South Pacific. Directing operations from super battleships, Yamamoto scored some successes against U.S. naval units around Guadalcanal, but his forces failed to prevent the Allies’ capturing it.

 

From August 1942 until his death the following spring, this struggle on the edge of the empire consumed Japan’s fleet and air strength. Yamamoto knew the battle was lost. While putting in at the big Combined Fleet base at Truk in the Caroline Islands on August 28, 1942, he wrote to a friend, “I sense that my life must be completed in the next 100 days.”

 

On April 3, 1943, he moved his headquarters from Truk to Rabaul in New Britain, and two weeks later flew out to inspect Japanese bases in the northern Solomons. Like the warrior he was, he did not hesitate to venture into a combat zone. But when America’s Admiral Chester Nimitz received intelligence on Yamamoto’s movements, he asked Washington if it would be in America’s best interests to eliminate the Japanese admiral. The answer was “Yes.”

 

Exactly one year after Doolittle’s Raid, on April 18, 1943, 16 Army Air Forces Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighters took off from Henderson Field at Guadalcanal, led by Colonel Thomas G. Lanphier Jr. They ambushed Yamamoto’s green-striped Mitsubishi G4M Betty bomber as it approached an airfield on Bougainville and shot it down. The burning plane crashed in dense jungle, killing all aboard. Yamamoto’s remains were recovered and sent to Japan.

 

Brave, urbane, and complex, Yamamoto had several love affairs with geishas but married a housemaid named Reiko in August 1918. They had four children. In America, he’d learned to play bridge and poker. He used poker to train staff officers in the arts of bluff and surprise, and it became a lifelong passion. Emperor Hirohito awarded Yamamoto the Grand Order of the Chrysanthemum, First Class, and promoted him posthumously to admiral of the fleet. Adolf Hitler awarded the Knight’s Cross with Swords to Yamamoto, the only foreign recipient of that honor.

 

The death of the great admiral was recorded as “an insupportable blow” to the Japanese people. Said his successor, Admiral Mineichi Koga, “There was only one Yamamoto, and no one can replace him.” A million people lined Tokyo’s streets for his funeral. As requested, Yamamoto’s grave marker was cut an inch shorter than his father’s.