The admiral who planned Pearl Harbor believed Japan could not beat America
Isoroku Yamamoto studied at Harvard, spoke fluent English and toured American industry, and came away convinced Japan had little chance in a war with the United States. He opposed the alliance with Germany and Italy. Yet when war came, he designed the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
He was born Isoroku Takano in Nagaoka on April 4, 1884, son of a middle-ranking samurai. His given name means 56, his father's age at the time. In 1916 he was adopted into the Yamamoto family, another line of former Nagaoka samurai, a common arrangement that let families without sons pass on their name, rank and income.
Graduating 11th in his class from the naval academy in 1904, he served as a signalman on the cruiser Nisshin in the Russo-Japanese War. At Tsushima an explosion, apparently from the ship's own gun rather than enemy fire, tore away two fingers of his left hand and badly wounded his thigh. Study at Harvard from 1919 to 1921 and two postings as naval attaché in Washington taught him how much naval power rested on oil and industry, and that America had far more of both.
He was also an early prophet of air power. In 1924 he switched from gunnery to naval aviation, later commanding the carrier Akagi and heading the navy's aeronautics department. As navy vice minister from 1936 he opposed the invasion of China and the 1940 Tripartite Pact, and apologised to the US ambassador after the gunboat USS Panay was bombed in 1937. Militarists threatened to assassinate him.
Made commander of the Combined Fleet in 1939 and ordered to plan for war with America, he chose a surprise strike, delivered at Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Months of Japanese victories followed until Midway in June 1942, where four carriers went down. He then fought for the Solomon Islands during the Guadalcanal campaign without success. American codebreakers read his flight plans in April 1943, and US Army fighters shot down his plane over New Guinea; he died on April 18, 1943.
Source: Isoroku Yamamoto
