The Reluctant Admiral: Yamamoto and the Imperial Navy (review)

Reviews HiROYUKi Agawa, The Reluctant Admiral: Yamamoto and the Imperial Navy. Tokyo, New York, Kodansha International, 1979. 397 pp. $14.95. There still remain many unanswered questions on the Japanese decisions of the early nineteen forties, and this biography of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto provides many insights into these decisions, and into the greatest puzzle of all: why a man who knew America intimately , realized her industrial strength, should provide the decisive leadership in the two major naval attacks launched against the United States at Pearl Harbor and at Midway. Admiral Yamamoto, who was killed in active service in 1943, personifies the twentieth-century development of the Imperial Japanese Navy. His whole life, which is traced in this book, records the growth ofthat navy into a force which could challenge the United States Navy, and we are introduced to the factions and personalities which led it and to the major international naval conferences in which Yamamoto participated . Yamamoto was one of the pioneer leaders in the development of Japanese naval aviation. He was a flyer himself and was appointed head of the Navy's Aeronautics Department in 1935. He actively promoted the aircraft carrier, and was vehemently opposed to the building of the super battleships Yamato and Musashi, correctly forseeing the critical role of aviation in the future. Events marched inevitably towards a German alliance, with Yamamoto doing what he could to stem this tide. He did this at great personal risk, since he was marked as pro-American. However, when war reviews 371 became close he dedicated all his talents to the defeat of the United States. He realized the weakness of Japanese war planning, which was directed at a single enemy only and not at a combination of enemies, and he developed a strategy of a knockout blow to the American Pacific Fleet. This would make it possible for Japan to build a strong perimeter defense and to exploit the resources of Southeast Asia; the plan was not traditional for Japan, and it was urged on the Japanese Naval General Staff by Admiral Yamamoto. While a heavy blow was dealt at Pearl Harbor, the blow was not one of annihilation, which the author feels is a weakness in Japanese strategy. Since Yamamoto was, more than any other Japanese, personally responsible for the Pearl Harbor attack, his character becomes an important study. It is clear from the book that he was extremely skilled in games and gambling, and was even contemplating settling down to such a life on retirement. He had more than a sense of the odds, but also an intuitive sense that marks the great commanders. Another mark of the non-rational in his makeup was the use of a physiognomist in the selection of naval fliers, and his selections were far more accurate than the traditional selection system. One other story illustrates his character . When playing Japanese chess, he won his first game against a skilled opponent by tactics of a rapid onslaught. His second game he lost. How prophetic that was to be. After the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo in 1942, Yamamoto moved rapidly ahead with Japanese plans to extend the sea frontier in the Pacific by another two thousand miles. This led to the Midway operation, ending in a disastrous defeat for Japanese naval air power and dooming forever a possible Japanese strategy of active defense, using the Navy's aircraft carriers and the unsinkable aircraft carriers of the mandated islands to wage a war of attrition against the American Navy. This biography adds concretely to our understanding of the role of the Japanese Imperial Navy in the between-war years, and gives a vivid example of the role of an outstanding leader able to make his own history within the framework of long-range patterns. The author has brought this leader to us not only as a master at the staff conference table or on the flagship bridge, but as a human being, whose distinct characteristics helped mould the nature of the history he created. G. Raymond Nunn University of Hawaii ...