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Preface
- Indiana University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
preface This book on the pivotal naval battle of the Paci¤c War—and perhaps the most famous naval battle in American history—is the product of over ten years of research, much of it in Japan. I embarked on this project after concluding that none of the existing accounts on the Battle of Midway satisfactorily explained why the Japanese lost that battle; indeed, some presented scenarios that made sense only if it was assumed that the Japanese were grossly incompetent , or just plain stupid. Although it may seem odd to some that a law professor would be writing a book about a naval battle, I concluded that that was precisely what was needed. The subject has entered the realm of legend— even epic saga—and much of what has been written on the battle in America is jingoistic and condescending toward the Japanese. (Some accounts read more like hagiography than mere history.) What was now needed—over sixty years after the battle—I believed, was the kind of objective, detached analysis of the Japanese side of the battle that a crusty old law professor was peculiarly equipped to provide. When I say that the existing accounts of the battle do not satisfactorily explain why the Japanese lost, what I mean more speci¤cally is that there has been no satisfactory explanation for what I believe is the central mystery of the battle: why the Japanese could not get a carrier plane strike force launched against the American carriers before their own carriers were attacked and destroyed by American dive-bombers from Enterprise and Yorktown. Although that American dive-bomber attack had the appearance of an ambush, in fact the American carrier force had been discovered by a Japanese search plane nearly three hours before the fatal bombing. While it is well known that the Japanese were unable to launch an immediate attack because they were in the process of changing the armament on their viii preface torpedo planes from torpedoes to “land” bombs for a second strike on Midway, none of the published accounts of the battle give any good reason why the rearming operation could not have been reversed in time for an attack to be launched before the American dive-bombers arrived. (One recent book takes the position that the rearming operation had actually been reversed in time for such an attack to be launched, but that the Japanese carrier force commander —Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo—declined to spot the strike force on the ¶ight decks of his carriers because he wanted to keep those ¶ight decks clear for anticipated combat air patrol operations.)* In point of fact, the torpedoes did not get restored to the Japanese torpedo planes in time for a strike to be launched against the American carriers before the fatal bombing. I believe that I have solved the mystery of why they were not. My reconstruction of what actually happened on the Japanese carriers during those critical hours on the morning of the battle before the American dive-bombers arrived is based on my analysis of Japanese records (chie¶y, Nagumo ’s of¤cial report), on Japanese literature on the battle (much of which has not been translated into English), and on interviews with almost two dozen Japanese veterans from the carrier air groups at Midway. I freely admit, however, that I do not know exactly what really went on in Nagumo ’s headquarters: why—and even when—some of the decisions crucial to the outcome of the battle were made. Nor do I think anyone else alive knows. The record is inconsistent and in some cases vague. Deductions occasionally have to be made from fairly slender evidence; ambiguities have to be resolved by analysis of the record as a whole. It is very much lawyer’s work. In a few cases it even comes down to a matter of whether one chooses to give the Japanese commanders the bene¤t of the doubt that they acted intelligently under the circumstances. I think it is fairly easy to construct a scenario for why the Japanese lost the battle if one assumes that they were incompetent; it is more of a challenge when one assumes that they were generally competent and intelligent. I might be out on a limb, but I have made the assumption that the principal Japanese of¤cers in the ¶agship headquarters—Ryunosuke Kusaka, chief of staff, Minoru Genda, air of¤cer, and even the much criticized Chuichi Nagumo, were intelligent...