![]() ![]() Should war be declared, the length and breadth of our southern operations would be exposed to serious threat on its flank.” Only when the commander in chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet threatened to resign and retire if his plan was not approved did the General Staff concede. Fleet … is a dagger pointed at our throat. When the Navy General Staff unanimously opposed his plan, Yamamoto declared, “The U.S. “Therefore, Japan should not fight America.” He played no part in the militarists’ decision for war, but, when the decision was made, he quickly summoned his strategic wisdom and was adamant on one point: the only course open to Japan in gaining control of the Pacific area was to destroy the U.S. ![]() ![]() “Japan cannot beat America,” Yamamoto told a group of school children in 1940. Having studied briefly at Harvard University and spent two years in Washington as a naval attaché, he admired America and was aware of its industrial strength and potential military power. Yamamoto’s Pearl Harbor Blueprints: Inspiration From the Battle of TarantoĪs war approached, he was initially uneasy and warned his countrymen of the likely consequences of provoking the West. Yet Yamamoto was a patriot to the bone, and when ordered to fight, he waged war with a vengeance. ![]() A solid and widely respected man, he argued passionately for peace in the 1930s while fascism spread in Europe and a fanatical militarist faction in Tokyo was calling for aggressive expansion in the Far East. Brave, urbane, and complex, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was Japan’s greatest naval strategist and the architect of one of the most stunning achievements in the history of modern warfare.įluent in English, he studied in the United States and claimed many American friends before he became one of their deadly enemies. ![]()
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