Pod Insights Dan Snow's History Hit Japan's WWII Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto About this episode Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was the mastermind of the “sneak attack” on Pearl Harbour that dragged the United States into the Second World War. His strategy stunned the Allies and allowed the Japanese military to make gains across the Pacific that took years of hard, bloody fighting to reverse. But Yamamoto was a commander who understood the folly of war with the United States and its allies, yet paradoxically did more than most to bring war about. The failure to finish the job at Pearl Harbour, his overconfident, flawed planning at Midway and his unwillingness to commit to a decisive battle at Guadalcanal ultimately meant the very tools he had perfected were turned back against Japan with ruinous consequences.
In the fourth episode of our Commanders series, we peel back the myth and propaganda to explore the enigmatic admiral at the very heart of the Pacific War. What can the real Yamamoto tell us about hubris, strategy, and the tragedy of inevitability? Joining us is the historian Mark Stille, who, after a nearly 40-year career in the intelligence community, is the author of numerous books on naval history in the Pacific theatre, including Pearl Harbour: Japan's Greatest Disasterand Midway: The Pacific War's Most Famous Battle.
Produced and edited by Dougal Patmore.
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Transcript 10,705 words · 6 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:32 Dan Snow? A Japanese army engineer, Lieutenant Yoshi Hamasuna, hacks his way through the steaming jungles of Bougainville in the South Pacific. His mission is an important one. He is searching for Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the Combined Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy and chief architect of Japan's naval strategy during World War II. As Lieutenant Hamasuna clears the foliage, he finds what he's been looking for.
2:10 Dan Snow? In front of him lies the still smoldering remains of Yamamoto's transport aircraft, shot down the day before by American fighter planes in an ambush the Americans codenamed Operation Vengeance. Hamasuna immediately recognizes Yamamoto. His body has been thrown clear of the wreckage. It is still strapped in his seat, and it rests in the shade of a nearby tree. His head is bowed as if in deep contemplation, his hands still gripping the hilt of his sword, his katana.
2:47 Dan Snow? In the Pacific theatre of the Second World War, few names inspired more fear and have been more misunderstood than Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto. To the Japanese, he was a totemic figure, and his death was a terrible blow to national morale. To many Americans at the time, he was the faceless villain of the Pacific, the man who orchestrated the humiliating sneak attack at Pearl Harbor and brought the United States into a brutal new kind of war. And yet Yamamoto had been one of the loudest voices inside Japan warning against war with the United States. A Harvard-educated anglophone who had seen American industrial might up close and knew
3:32 Dan Snow? his nation stood little chance in a prolonged war. Decades later, we're still trying to penetrate to get to the truth of the enigmatic Admiral Yamamoto.
3:49 Dan Snow? You're listening to Dan Snow's History at, and this is episode four in our commanders series, where we dig into the lives and decisions of five legendary World War II commanders. We're going to cut through the myth and examine what shaped their styles of command. Some of them were daring gamblers, others meticulous planners. We ask whether their victories were earned through brilliance, ruthless calculation, or was it all luck? In fact, we're going to ask whether their reputations hold up to scrutiny at all. We've got two more episodes in this series to come, so make sure you hit follow in your podcast player. In this episode, we're going to be joined by historian Mark Still, who, after a nearly 40-year career in the intelligence community, has published numerous books on the Pacific Theater. He is the author of Pearl Harbor: Japan's Greatest Disaster.
4:34 Dan Snow? Cards on the table there, folks. We'll explore how Yamamoto, a reluctant strategist, became the planner of Pearl Harbor, how his vision helped to reshape Japan's navy, and how his death over Bougainville turned him into both a martyr at home and a symbol of inevitable defeat abroad.
5:02 Dan Snow? Isoroku Tekano was born in Nagaoka, Nagata, Japan, in 1884, to a middle-ranking samurai family. His name, Isoroku, means 56, and it reflected his father's age when he was born. In 1916, he was adopted by the Yamamoto family, another samurai line from the same region. It was them that he took their name. The adoption was a tradition that helped to preserve heritage and rank when families lacked heirs. Yamamoto married Reiko Mihashi two years later, in 1918, and they raised four children, as he built a career that would make him one of Japan's most fascinating naval commanders.
5:47 Dan Snow? He'd entered the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy in 1901.
5:52 Speaker 02 Going into the military, be it the Imperial Army or the Imperial Navy, was a preferred way for these people who were in poverty to get out of poverty, and that's exactly what Yamamoto did. By all accounts, he was a very good and serious student. For one thing, he was a man who did not drink, so he had more time to study. He also was a guy who was known to read the Bible, though he never became a Christian. But he graduated really high in his class. There were more than 200 in his class, and he was number seven when he got out in November 1904.
6:25 Dan Snow? After graduating from the Naval Academy in 1904, Yamamoto was almost immediately thrust into the furnace of battle. Japan and the Russian Empire were at war, one caused by their competing imperial ambitions in Korea and Manchuria.
6:40 Dan Snow? Japan's modernised army and navy won a series of crushing, decisive victories on land and at sea. Most notably, the destruction of the Russian Baltic fleet that sailed all around the world to get there. At Tsushima, where Yamamoto fought aboard the armoured cruiser Nishin. It was the first time that a major European power had been defeated by an Asian state in the modern era. For Yamamoto, these early experiences of battle were seminal and shaped his strategic outlook in the years to come. But, as Mark explains, it came at a high physical cost.
7:15 Speaker 02 When he gets out of the naval academy, he is assigned to a cruiser, a cruiser named Nishin. And at this point, Japan is at war with Russia. So it's good timing for Yamamoto, I suppose, because he gets to go right into combat. In May 1905, there's the decisive Battle of Tsushima, fought between the Russian Baltic fleet and the Japanese Imperial Navy. And the Imperial Navy is much better trained and they win the battle. But Yamamoto pays a high personal price for this victory. His cruiser is placed right in the line of battle. It's in the centre of the action. And after a prolonged period of firing, one of the ship's gun barrels burst and it sprayed
8:00 Speaker 02 shrapnel all over the ship. And Yamamoto is, has a large wound in his thigh. He loses two fingers in his left hand. Had he lost one more finger, actually, he would have been manatorily discharged from the navy. But as it was, though, his bravery was noticed. He received commendations for his bravery because he refused to bend in post after he was wounded. And congratulations from the commander of the combined fleet. So right away, he's identified as a man with a future. He takes away several important lessons that he uses later in his naval career. First of all, that Russians and the Japanese were at war and the war began when the...
8:41 Speaker 02 Japanese Navy conducted a surprise attack in February 1904 against the Russian fleet at Port Arthur. So this is a lesson that Yamamoto took away and he used the same tactic, of course, 37 years later. And then, of course, there's the whole idea of this decisive battle. And that's exactly what Tsushima was. After the Battle of Tsushima Strait, the Japanese are able to negotiate a settlement favorable for them. So here's another lesson that Yamamoto learns is that you can beat a larger opponent in a decisive battle. And that'll lead to a favorable peace settlement.
9:23 Dan Snow? In the years following the Russo-Japanese War, Yamamoto continued to climb the ranks in the Imperial Japanese Navy. By 1914, he was Lieutenant Commander, and in 1919, he went to the United States to study at Harvard University.
9:37 Speaker 02 He ends up in the US. In fact, he's there twice. But the first one after the war, he goes to Harvard, actually, in May 1919. And he's enrolled there as quote unquote, "a special student in English." But this is kind of overplayed, though. He withdraws from Harvard in the spring term of 1920. So he's not in the US for very long. But he does, though, take the opportunity to tour the US. He goes down to Mexico as well to look at the oil fields. So he gets a feel for the industrial capacity of the US.
10:15 Dan Snow? Although his visit to the US may have been brief, it was certainly influential. He'd seen at firsthand the vast potential of the United States. He'd visited places like Detroit and the Texas oil fields. He saw levels of mass production the Japanese could only dream of. He realized very quickly that the US would be able to outbuild and out-supply Japan. And so to get into a prolonged war with them would be a grave error. His unique experience in America gave Yamamoto a perspective that differed from those he rubbed shoulders with in the upper echelons of Japan's military. As a result, he became known as a reformer. And a figure of huge controversy.
10:55 Speaker 02 He's an early air power advocate. He's recognized as an air power authority in the Imperial Navy very early on. So when he returns to Japan in 1921, he teaches at the Naval Staff College. So apparently, while in the US, and maybe even before he went to the US, he became enamored with aviation. So when he gets to Naval Staff College in 1921, his focus areas were oil, because at that time, of course, oil was the lifeblood of a modern navy and aviation. So at that point, he becomes an air power advocate, and a lot of his subsequent tours are associated with air power.
11:35 Dan Snow? He rises seemingly just pretty quick, and he's obviously got a remarkable ability. He's right about pretty much everything between the war. It seems like he doesn't want to fight the States. Seems like he doesn't want to invade northern China or the main body of China as the 1930s go on. He has a good head on his shoulders for strategy.
11:53 Speaker 02 He is not a radical, let's put it that way. I mean, he's right about naval aviation. He identifies that early on as the future. But even there, his reputation is perhaps a bit overblown. He's never a radical air power advocate. Yes, he does argue against the construction of these huge Yamamoto-class battleships, but he never dismisses the battleship as being totally worthless in the overall structure of the Imperial Navy. So he's not a radical in air power. He does identify the power of the US, and he does not want to go to war with the US. But then, of course, as I'm sure we're going to talk about, in the run-up to Pearl Harbor, he goes out of his way to expand the war against the US.
12:37 Speaker 02 He's also a member of, there were two different factions during this time in the Imperial Navy. One's the treaty faction, and these are the officers that wanted to adhere to the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty, which set this 5-5-3 ratio, which meant that Japan could only build up to 60%. Of the power of Royal Navy and the US Navy. So he's a member of the treaty faction because he wants to constrain any potential US naval growth because he knows that Japan can never build a fleet as large as the US. But then there's the fleet faction who wants to build up to 70% of the strength of the US and Royal Navy because they think only that's enough to guarantee the defense of Japan if any conflict should arise.
13:22 Speaker 02 So early on, the treaty faction is dominant. The 1930 London Naval Conference comes to an agreement on the 5-5-3 ratio. But in subsequent years, and in fact Yamamoto is sent to London for the second London Naval Conference. And here, the fleet faction has its way and the the interwar naval treaty system falls apart because Yamamoto is unable to get the US or the British to agree to naval parity for the Japanese. So he's kind of on the losing end of that battle. He's also on the losing end of the battle to keep the Japanese out of the tripartite pact when he is Vice Navy Minister.
14:07 Dan Snow? So Mark, help me understand. Here's a guy who is on the losing end of every single important Japanese interwar decision, whether it's war in China, whether it's tearing up the naval treaty that will hopefully provide some stability and parity between various fleets, whether it's seeking war with the US, whether it's aligning itself with Italy and Germany. And yet, he's promoted, he's given top jobs. Like, what's it say about the Japanese system? What's happening there?
14:35 Speaker 02 He's a man of many paradoxes, and this is one. So here's an officer who does not spend a lot of his time at sea. He does not have a lot of command tours, which would be the typical way that you rise to the position of ultimate authority in the Imperial Navy. He's seen as a political admiral. He does spend a lot of his time in political jobs. And therefore, he does not have a lot of sea time. But yet, when things come to a head and the Japanese cabinet falls in August of 1930. 1839 because of the shock of the Germans signing a non-aggression pact with Japan's enemy Russia. In the aftermath of that, the cabinet falls and Yamamoto loses his job.
15:19 Speaker 02 Now, he's seen as a brain officer, that's for sure, but he's an unlikely choice for the next job that he gets. And the next job that he gets is the commander of the entire combined fleet. And the combined fleet is the most important job in the Japanese Navy. It's all the ocean-going elements of the Imperial Navy. So it is the top job in the Imperial Navy. But he's given that job, we got him out of Tokyo because he's been arguing against going to war against the US. He's been arguing against the tripartite pact and therefore his life has been threatened in Tokyo by the radicals in the army and even in the Imperial Navy. There are some radicals there as well. So to get him out of Tokyo, he is given this job as commander of the combined fleet.
16:01 Dan Snow? What an extraordinary thing. And is he then ordered to strike at the US? Is that strategic decision taken out of his hand and that's why he has to focus on the sort of operational, how he's going to go about doing it? Has he lost the political battle and ironically, he's the fall guy. The guy who advised against it is the guy that has to push it through.
16:18 Speaker 02 Yeah, and here is the ultimate paradox in the Yamamoto saga. Now, people have portrayed him in the run-up to Pearl Harbor as a man of peace because he did, it is true to say that he warned against a war against the US because he knew it was a war that Japan could not win. But it wasn't as if he was against Japan going to war and Japan going to war to conduct wars of aggression. He was a traditional Japanese nationalist. He supported the imperial system, you know, and by all accounts and the sources that we have, he didn't really oppose the war in China. He certainly didn't oppose the march to war against the US in the aftermath of the US economic embargo.
17:02 Speaker 02 He just opposed a war that the Japanese couldn't win. And he thought that was the war against the US. But then he goes out of his way to plan an expanded war against the US. So he was not told to plan this war. The Imperial Navy had planned for 20 years. How they were going to fight the US Navy. They had the US Navy as their most likely opponent. And they had this elaborate scenario that they trained their navy for. They built their navy for. They're going to fight the US Navy as it approached Japan. Somewhere in the Central Pacific. And this is what they were prepared to do. But this was much too passive for Yamamoto. And in the run up to war, instead of executing that plan. He had a much more aggressive idea.
17:46 Speaker 02 And this was the Pearl Harbor attack. He was a central figure in the Pearl Harbor saga. It is fair to say without him, there would have been no Pearl Harbor attack. And he was trying to get the attack approved. Against almost universal opposition. But he stuck to his guns and eventually he got the attack approved.
18:08 Dan Snow? I've done enough work on the Japanese decision making World War Two to know that it's a sort of. Sometimes, as you say, paradoxical and impenetrable decision making process. But the decision was taken by the government to go to war against the US. They just didn't like Yamamoto's super aggressive surprise attack plan on Hawaii. Is that what we're saying?
18:27 Speaker 02 The government was bent on going to war. It clearly did not want to meet the US demands of giving up its gains in China and then Indochina. So that was a nonstarter. So the alternative is going to war, which Yamamoto was supportive of. The question was how to go to war. And they had to seize the resource areas in Southeast Asia to circumvent the American economic embargo. So that's a given. That's the primary Japanese strategic objective at the start of the war. But then the Navy, it was up to the Navy really how they were going to fight that war. And the Naval General Staff, not the combined fleet. The Naval General Staff was the body that was supposedly in charge of formulating Japanese naval strategy.
19:13 Speaker 02 But that's not how Yamamoto saw things as working. So he literally on his own decided to take a different course. He had it in his mind as early as December 1940, it's a year before the attack, that he was going to attack Pearl Harbor, and he admitted this after the attack to an admiral buddy of his. For two main reasons, one was to cripple the US Pacific Fleet, so the Japanese could carry out their conquest of Southeast Asia. So one objective of the attack at Pearl Harbor was to cripple the US fleet for six months, that would allow the Japanese to complete the conquest of Southeast Asia. The other reason was driven by Yamamoto.
19:53 Speaker 02 And this was a psychological aspect to the attack that is really kind of underplayed. And this comes from Yamamoto's mind. His objective psychologically is to cripple American morale at the start of the war. And he thinks he can do that by sinking as number of battleships, because at the time, of course, battleships were seen as the measure of naval power. So in his mind, he thinks that he can sink four US battleships, and that will cripple American morale at the start of the war. And since he's been in the US, he lived in the US twice, actually, as we mentioned, he's been given credit for this insight into America and Americans. And here he has this notion, which is totally ill-founded,
20:38 Speaker 02 that he can cripple American morale by sinking four battleships. So the Pearl Harbor attack comes from the fertile brain of Yamamoto and nobody else.
20:48 Dan Snow? On the morning of the 7th of December 1941, Yamamoto's plan to attack Pearl Harbor was launched. At 7:55 AM local time, the first Japanese aircraft appeared over the naval base. Two waves of Japanese torpedo bombers, dive bombers, and fighters filled the skies over Oahu, Hawaii, and proceeded to pummel the anchored warships and nearby airfields. They took aim at the American battleships, moored up on what was known as Battleship Row. In the frenzy of fire, a bomb detonated deep inside the battleship USS Arizona, causing a massive catastrophic explosion, and the mighty ship sunk soon after.
21:32 Dan Snow? The loss of this one ship caused nearly half of all the American deaths in the attack. Other battleships, including Oklahoma, California, Nevada, and West Virginia, were sunk or heavily damaged. Many smaller vessels were also struck. On airfields, the American aircraft had actually been parked closer together to help guard against possible sabotage. In practice, though, this made them easy targets for Japanese bombers and low-flying strafing aircraft. Hundreds of planes were destroyed on the ground or as they attempted to take off. It was catastrophic. In just under 90 minutes, nearly 2,500 US service personnel and civilians were killed. Dozens of ships were sunk or damaged, and hundreds of aircraft destroyed. The only saving grace for the Americans
22:17 Dan Snow? was that the three US Pacific Fleet aircraft carriers were out at sea, and they avoided the fate of the battleships in port. It was these carriers that would now go on to become the backbone of American naval power in the Pacific. Knowing that Japan could not prevail against the United States in a long war, Yamamoto believed that he could cripple the US Pacific Fleet, so that it wouldn't be able to interfere with Japan's planned expansion to Southeast Asia and the Dutch East Indies, by destroying the US vessels at Pearl Harbor, especially battleships, which everyone at the time saw as the ultimate symbol of naval power. He hoped that he would shatter US morale. So the attack, he believed,
23:02 Dan Snow? would give Japan 12 to 6 months to run wild across Asia, seizing territory, securing vital resources, and consolidating a defensible perimeter. And he hopes those rapid gains, together with the initial shock, would encourage the United States to come to the negotiating table rather than fight a long war. It was one of the greatest gambles in history. The attacks certainly stunned the United States. Japan's declaration of war came hours after Pearl Harbor, something that further enraged the American public. President Roosevelt called it "a date which will live in infamy."
23:42 Dan Snow? Yamamoto's plan achieved tactical surprise and did some damage to the American Pacific Fleet, but it was far from defeated, and the American nation was nowhere near throwing in the towel. As Mark explains, Yamamoto's terrible gamble, the attack on Pearl Harbor, rather than delivering victory for Japan, had instead sown the seeds of its own defeat. You know, Mark, I struggle with the twisted logic of this situation. Japan could not win a war against the USA, right? So Yamamoto was right about that.
24:22 Dan Snow? Therefore, was Pearl Harbor, was this hyper-aggressive surprise attack on their main naval base, irrespective of the fact it didn't have the impact they thought it might have to do with the carriers, the oil, the fuel dumps, but was this hyper-aggressive attack on Pearl, was it the best option, given the twisted logic of them assuming war was inevitable? Or was it a terrible idea anyway?
24:43 Speaker 02 The answer, in my view, is that it's a terrible idea. It's an utterly self-defeating idea, and the bottom line is that the attack did not achieve its stated objectives. So first of all, it was unnecessary from a strategic point of view. The US Navy didn't have the ability to interfere with Japanese aims to conquer Southeast Asia for logistical reasons and other reasons, but the US Navy was simply unable to interfere with the southern offensive. Therefore, the Pearl Harbor attack is unnecessary. It was also unlikely to achieve Yamamoto's aims. It didn't cripple the fleet. We will see, within months, the US Navy recovers from the attack.
25:27 Speaker 02 The attack was not that damaging, first of all. There were a number of ships sunk or damaged. There were 18 in total out of 100 there, but these were mainly old battleships, which were not the future face of naval warfare. If the war to come is going to be a battleship war, yes, Pearl Harbor would have been crippling, but it wasn't a battleship war. The Japanese just showed it was going to be a war dominated by air power. So the attack did not cripple the US Navy Pacific Fleet. And it had a strategic backfire aspect to it. In fact, it guaranteed, if you would, in my view, at least Japan's defeat. Japan goes to war with this vague notion how to achieve victory.
26:07 Speaker 02 And the vague notion revolves around the prospects of gaining a favorable negotiated settlement. So what could they do that would be the most likely thing to undermine the prospects of a negotiated settlement? How about a sneak surprise attack at the start of war on American sovereign territory, where they kill thousands of Americans? That undermines Japan's strategic objectives of a negotiated settlement. So it's a first-class strategic blunder by the Japanese.
26:40 Dan Snow? So not a great strategist in Mark's book. We're not chalking him up as one of the greats.
26:44 Speaker 02 No, he's not one of the greats. And he showed that at Pearl Harbor, even though the Japanese victory, quote unquote, and it was a tactical victory, to be sure. I'm not dismissing Pearl Harbor as as a non-event that didn't affect a lot of damage. It did, but it was merely a tactical victory. But the basis of Yamamoto as a great strategist myth is this Japanese victory at Pearl Harbor. And it wasn't a victory, except in a tactical sense.
27:10 Dan Snow? It's interesting to me. I mean, I always think Pearl Harbor is almost the worst of both worlds. It's a sort of raid in force that does all the things you've mentioned. It drives the Americans totally bananas, brings them into the war, guarantees Japan's defeat. Terrible loss of life, but it's a nuisance attack strategically. If they're going to do this crazy surprise sneak attack, they should have followed through and kept going, battered the place, destroy the the throw the wharves, the shore facilities, the intelligence units, the huts, the the fuel dumps, actually try and get the job done. But it does neither thing effectively.
27:43 Speaker 02 That is true, but there are a lot of myths about Pearl Harbor. One is that it was this great Japanese victory when it had limited effect, if any. Now, the notion though that they could have done a much better job of Pearl Harbor, aside from sinking naval targets, they could have neutralized the naval facilities there by bombing the Navy Yard and taking out the oil storage facilities is totally erroneous. Because they just didn't have the capability of doing so, they didn't have the time to do it on 7 December. There wasn't actually, if you do a timeline of what they could have done after the first two waves, there wasn't enough time for a third wave. And the losses were actually much heavier than is normally portrayed there. A lot of aircraft were damaged. The aircraft force for the next attack against the naval base
28:27 Speaker 02 would have been much less. But most importantly though, had they had this epiphany and had they decided to do a second attack, they wouldn't have targeted the naval base. That just wasn't in Japanese naval DNA. They were Mahanian trained naval strategists. This meant attacking the enemy fleet, not attacking the naval base. So it wouldn't have happened. So the Pearl Harbor attack was a raid. And a raid is not going to cripple a fleet in one event, nor is it gonna knock out a major area target like the naval base and all the fuel facilities there. It was unable to accomplish its objectives. Now, the Japanese notion, you know, this decisive battle, notion comes back into play here again. So the notion
29:09 Speaker 02 that you can beat a major industrial power and a major navy like the US Navy in one battle is not how modern wars are fought. It's impossible to do that. So you can wear down the US Navy or a modern large navy through a series of actions, but it's not gonna happen in one raid or one decisive battle. The Japanese just weren't good at contemplating and planning for modern war. And that's a problem that Yamamoto showed throughout the war until he was killed in 1943.
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33:16 Dan Snow? Pearl Harbor may not have been the knockout blow that Yamamoto had hoped for, but it had undoubtedly stunned the US Navy, its government, and people. It's also true that in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese Navy and Army did go on a tear across Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific. Japanese forces seized places like Hong Kong. They marched into Malaysia. There were a series of rapid, successful campaigns. The Japanese overran Guam and Wake Island. They eliminated these small but symbolic US outposts in the Central Pacific. In the Philippines, the US and Filipino forces were pushed back onto the Batan Peninsula and Corregidor, where they held out under siege before eventually surrendering in early 1942.
34:00 Dan Snow? Britain would suffer a humiliating defeat as Singapore fell in February 1942, the large garrison capitulating to the smaller Japanese force without much of a fight. Winston Churchill described the fall of Singapore as "the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history." Japan also drove south through the Dutch East Indies to secure desperately needed oil supplies, apparently strengthening its strategic position. At sea, the Allies were adapting to carrier warfare. In April 1942, US carriers launched bombers to strike Tokyo, the heart of the Japanese
34:44 Dan Snow? Empire, in the so-called "do little raiders revenge for Pearl Harbor." It was a daring and profoundly shocking operation, even if it did very little real damage to the Japanese capital. It did, however, sow seeds of doubt in the minds of the Japanese people and it demonstrated the threat posed by American aircraft carriers. Yamamoto traded on this threat to lobby for a further decisive strike on the American fleet. While Yamamoto went to battle in the corridors of power, far away off the coast of Papua New Guinea in the Coral Sea, a battle took place in May 1942. It was fought nearly entirely by carrier-based aircraft, and the Americans successfully halted
35:26 Dan Snow? a Japanese attempt to sail around the coast of Papua New Guinea, capture Port Moresby, and threaten Australia. It was a strategic setback for the Japanese, even though both sides lost a carrier in the battle. Meanwhile, back in Hawaii, US codebreakers were steadily cracking Japanese naval codes, gaining insight into future operations, something unknown to Yamamoto that would soon come to play a major part in unraveling all his carefully laid plans.
35:59 Dan Snow? By late spring 1942, Japan reached the high-water mark of its expansion. They controlled a vast area across the Pacific and Southeast Asia. But its resources were stretched thin. Yamamoto and the Japanese High Command wanted to hold on to the gains they'd made. To achieve this, they decided that they would precipitate a big decisive battle, one that had so far eluded them. This set the stage for the Battle of Midway in early June 1942.
36:33 Speaker 02 In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese did quite well. They take all their, what they call their first-phase objectives. But then after that, there's friction between the Naval General Staff and the combined fleet. Naval General Staff wants to head south into South Pacific to cut off the sea lines between the US and Australia. But Yamamoto has different ideas here. And once again, he wants to achieve this decisive victory against the US Pacific Fleet. And he thinks that that can only be done in the Central Pacific. So you pick somewhere that the US has to defend, and the US Navy shows up, and then you annihilate it. So they couldn't attack Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. They didn't have the means to do that.
37:17 Speaker 02 But they did have the means to attack Midway. So that's how we get to this battle in June 1942 at Midway. It's Yamamoto's idea to bring the US Navy to battle where he can defeat it decisively. But the plan that he comes up with is fatally flawed in every way possible, and it provides the foundation for the Japanese defeat.
37:42 Dan Snow? Yamamoto's Midway Plan aimed to seize the American base on Midway Atoll in the North Pacific. But he wasn't just interested in that scrap of coral. By attacking Midway, he wanted to draw out and annihilate the US Pacific Fleet's carriers, the ones that escaped at Pearl Harbor. He wanted to precipitate one massive decisive battle that might, might bring the war to a successful conclusion. Always the gamble of the underdog: risk all on a decisive battle.
38:16 Dan Snow? Yamamoto was planning to conceal the true size and disposition and intentions of his force. His main carrier strike group, under Vice Admiral Nagumo, would launch airstrikes to take out Midway's airfields and land-based defences. Then, they would be ready to deal with any American ships that appeared to respond to the attack on Midway. Once the defences on Midway had been destroyed, then the Atoll would be captured by an amphibious invasion force. Yamamoto kept his big, powerful battleships, including his own flagship, the enormous battleship Yamamoto, hundreds of miles behind the carriers, planning that they would steam in and finish
38:58 Dan Snow? off any surviving US forces after his carrier-based aircraft had done the initial damage. Confusingly, he also arranged a large, simultaneous diversionary attack on the Aleutian Islands. Now, interestingly, the Aleutians were part of the US territory of Alaska. It was the only military campaign of World War II fought on North American soil. And it was hoped that that campaign would draw American attention, and hopefully, American forces away from this great big battle around Midway. The Japanese were riding high on the successes of the previous months. They seemed to have a numerical advantage. It looked like the deck was stacked in Yamamoto's favour. But confidence in the plan, the expectation that it would deliver victory, was misplaced.
39:43 Speaker 02 It's astonishingly complicated, and that's just how the Japanese did things. They loved these intricate plans. A lot of deception was involved here. That's the Japanese way of war. But obviously, that can backfire. So, for example, here at Midway, they had a much larger force than the Americans in June 1942. Much larger force. However, this intricate plan they put together, and this is, again, it's Yamamoto's plan. Now, he is not the planner. He does not sit down and plan this out in detail. It's done by his staff. That's the Japanese way. The commander is really not involved in the actual planning.
40:23 Speaker 02 But, of course, Yamamoto, it's his overall arching guidance to his staff, and he approves the plan. So, in essence, it is Yamamoto's plan. But this plan that he approves... It arranges for a huge Japanese force and it's broken down into 12 different forces, splayed out over a huge chunk of the Northern Pacific Ocean. So these forces are too far apart from mutual support. And the bottom line to this was, and this shows how bad the plan was, even though the Japanese had this huge numerical advantage, at the point of contact off of Midway, where the Japanese carrier force comes into contact and fights the entire battle unsupported
41:06 Speaker 02 against the American carrier force and aircraft from Midway, the Japanese carrier force is outnumbered, both in terms of ships and much more so in aircraft. So that's just a small taste of how bad this plan was.
41:19 Dan Snow? The Battle of Midway was a disaster for Yamamoto and the Imperial Japanese Navy. From the beginning, it had been too hasty in planning. It was fantastically over elaborate. It was a multi-layered operation across a vast swathe of ocean. Yamamoto's forces were dispersed over hundreds of miles. Coordination was impossible. Rather than ambushing the American forces, Yamamoto was instead led into a deadly US ambush. The American cryptanalysis had broken the Japanese naval code. Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander of the US Pacific Fleet, had learned both the likely date of the Japanese attack,
42:01 Dan Snow? the strength of forces involved, and the all-important location. Like I said, Yamamoto's forces were spread out. They're able to support each other. He sent his carriers to attack Midway. And after they'd returned from one raid and the ship's decks were filled with aircraft that were rearming and refueling, the American carrier-based aircraft struck. The American aircraft carrier that had been lying in wait had achieved almost total surprise. Bombs from those US carrier-based aircraft penetrated the Japanese flight decks and caused utter devastation as aviation fuel ignited,
42:44 Dan Snow? stacked-up bombs and ammunition detonated in a chain of appalling explosions.
42:52 Dan Snow? In the space of just a few hours, Japan lost four frontline fleet aircraft carriers. Perhaps even more damaging was the loss of over 300 aircraft and around 3,000 veteran sailors and aircrew. These experienced aviators and deck crews were utterly irreplaceable. Their loss hollowed out the Imperial Navy's carrier arm. Never again would Japan's carrier forces reach the same level of skill or potency. The US did suffer losses. The carrier Yorktown absorbed so much punishment, but eventually went to the bottom alongside
43:36 Dan Snow? a destroyer and a few hundred US personnel were killed. But the Americans were able to make up these losses. Following Midway, Japan's naval strength was shattered, its capacity to wage an offensive war in the Pacific largely at an end. In a roundabout way, Yamamoto had secured a decisive battle. It just didn't have the result that he'd so confidently expected. Instead, he had handed the strategic initiative to the United States. How had things gone so wrong? Mark explains. He is miles away, he's on a big old battleship grinding through the North Pacific. At that moment, does he know it's over for him, it's over for the Japanese Navy, it's over for the Japanese Empire?
44:21 Speaker 02 That's a good question. I'm not privy to the thoughts running through his mind at the time, but I think we can surmise that he knew that the future of the Imperial Navy in Japan at this point was cloudy. He fully realized the strength of the US. So he's not involved in the action at Midway, he's on his flagship Yamamoto, this huge battleship, because of a series of bad assumptions. So, one assumption being that the Japanese would gain strategic and tactical surprise at Midway. And after that, then the Americans would wake up all of a sudden, they would sort either fleet from Pearl Harbor and they would sail to Midway where they would be annihilated by the mass strength of the Imperial fleet.
45:05 Speaker 02 But these assumptions were wrong and Japanese planning...
45:09 Speaker 02 They disregarded intelligence almost always, so they disregarded enemy capabilities. They never lost an opportunity to denigrate their opponents. And all these things were in play at Midway, and it resulted in a very major defeat. But it's fair to say, though, that Midway was not the decisive battle of the Pacific War. It was a major Japanese defeat, to be sure, but what it did, though, it blunted Japanese offensive power. It didn't mean the the end of the Imperial Navy. In fact, the Imperial Navy's carrier force was able to rebuild, and it beat the US Navy in a major carrier battle just a few months later. So Midway was not the decisive battle of the war, but I think Yamamoto
45:52 Speaker 02 knew at this point where things were headed.
45:56 Dan Snow? After Midway, does he have any agency anymore? So, for example, does he adjust his strategic thinking? And does his strategic thinking matter anymore?
46:04 Speaker 02 So what could the Japanese do at this point as the flow of American production arrived in the Pacific? Now, it's true, though, that after Midway, the Imperial Navy still outnumbered the US Navy in all major categories. So it's not like they didn't have options. But after Midway, the Japanese were kind of stunned. They didn't know what to do. They had plans to resume the offensive in the South Pacific. They didn't do this. In the meantime, the US Navy was very aggressive, and they seized the initiative. And they launched this counteroffensive at an unknown island in the southern Solomons called Guadalcanal. So this happens in August 1942, and this starts a six-month
46:48 Speaker 02 grinding battle of attrition led by Yamamoto. And the Japanese were never able to adjust their thinking here and recognize that here is the decisive battle that they had been seeking. This is a six-month battle of attrition, and the US Navy commits literally everything it has. And Yamamoto is like a spectator here. He's on his flagship, the battleship Yamamoto. And he's anchored in Truck Lagoon. Not uncomfortably, apparently by all the sources here. He lives a pretty comfortable life on the flagship. And he's never able to marshal the strength of the Imperial Navy to throw the Americans off of Guadalcanal.
47:29 Dan Snow? Is that because of this idea of a kind of imperial perimeter that could be defended by each of its constituent parts, but when Guadalcanal, that sort of unimportant just section of that imperial perimeter comes under attack, it seems perhaps odd to Yamamoto to choose that as the decisive battle and throw the entire strength of the Japanese fleet at it?
47:49 Speaker 02 Well, he didn't get to choose this battle. The Americans chose it for him, but he's slow to react and he does not recognize the battle as a potentially decisive one. So here is the first test of this Japanese notion for victory. They are going to seize all these things that they have to have to set up a viable war economy, and then they're going to hold on to these as the Americans beat their heads against this Japanese defensive perimeter. And the first time this is tested is at Guadalcanal. And this is why Guadalcanal, I would argue, is the most decisive battle of the Pacific War. So this six-month battle of attrition takes place. The Japanese Navy is badly bloodied, suffers heavy losses, so are the Americans.
48:31 Speaker 02 Actually, the Americans take more losses, but the Americans can replace their losses, the Japanese can't. And at the end of it all, the Japanese have to evacuate Guadalcanal. So here's a period when the Japanese have a numerical advantage over the Americans, and it doesn't matter, they are unable to stop the American offensive. And from that point, I think it's clear where things were headed. And even Yamamoto, in his brilliance as a strategist, is unable to stop the course of the American advance.
49:00 Dan Snow? Hindsight's one thing, but we now know Japan's only option here, I guess, to throw in all of their strength, to put all their chips in at that point. If he'd been a great strategist, or even a decent one, might he have done that?
49:11 Speaker 02 Well, certainly, if this is the Japanese notion for victory, you have to hold this defensive perimeter, and you have to attrit the American Navy. You can't defeat it in one battle, as we talked about, but you have to give it some serious blows when you're able to do so. But there comes a point in November during this campaign from Guadalcanal, and both sides have been at this for months now, and both sides are kind of at their end as far as strength goes, but the Americans throw in everything they have. For example, in these November battles, they throw in two modern battleships into torpedo-infested waters at night off of Guadalcanal. That's a very risky operation, but the Americans do it to turn back this last Japanese attempt
49:55 Speaker 02 to run a big convoy through the Guadalcanal. In the meantime... Yamamoto is up there on his prize puppy battleship and truck, and he's not off Guadalcanal. So he never does throw in the entirety of his strength to turn the tide of battle off of Guadalcanal. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I think the Japanese thinking of this was, it wasn't the traditional decisive battle that they had thought of and prepared for for so long. Uh, Guadalcanal cannot be that, so we're not gonna throw in our battle fleet here off of Guadalcanal.
50:33 Speaker 03 Listen to Dan Snow's History Hit. More utterly misguided use of air power coming up after this.
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52:13 Dan Snow? The Guadalcanal Campaign didn't just break Japan's grip on the southern Solomons, it broke the back of, well, many things, Yamamoto's grand strategy included. In the months-long struggle for the island, he had committed the combined fleet to a series of costly, inconclusive battles that had bled the Japanese navy white. And yet it never precipitated the kind of decisive showdown that he'd spent his career chasing. By early 1943, with Guadalcanal lost and the initiative having passed permanently to the Allies, Yamamoto was a commander trying to stave off defeat on the front line of an ever-shrinking empire. In April 1943, Yamamoto set off touring forward base in the Solomons to shore up morale after the Guadalcanal disaster. It was a fateful decision.
52:58 Dan Snow? Yamamoto's inspection itinerary had been read in advance by American code breakers, who had penetrated Japan's naval ciphers, as you remember. On the morning of April 18th, 1943, long-range P-38 fighters took off from Henderson Field on Guadalcanal, an airstrip Yamamoto had fought so desperately to destroy only a few months before. The mission was given the stark code name "Operation Vengeance", and the American pilots only knew their quarry was an important high office. In the skies over Bougainville, the P-38 sprang their trap, dueling with the escorting Zero fighters. First Lieutenant Rex T. Barber got onto the tail of one of the Mitsubishi G4M bombers
53:37 Dan Snow? acting as Yamamoto's transport aircraft and fired into it until it poured smoke. Yamamoto's aircraft crashed into the jungle, and he was killed.
53:49 Speaker 02 It kind of gets back to the Yamamoto myth. So, why does he have this aura about him as a great naval strategist? It's because of his great victory at Pearl Harbor. Well, in the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbor, the Americans were dissecting whether or not their battleships were going to be valuable in the near term. I mean, they knew they got their clock cleaned at Pearl Harbor. And it's much easier to process this if you make it the actions of a briny commander who inflicted this defeat on you. So, his aura was at its height at this point. He was riding high in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. And it was a great shock to the Imperial Navy and to the nation.
54:32 Speaker 02 There probably wasn't any Admiral Yamamoto or anybody else who could turn the tide of the war after Guadalcanal, after the rest of the Solomons' campaign. So going into 1944, there was nobody who could have turned the tide of battle against the Americans.
54:48 Dan Snow? The death of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was a terrible blow to Japan's wartime spirit. His staff cremated his remains in Papua New Guinea before returning his ashes to Tokyo aboard his final flagship, the mighty battleship Musashi. On June the 5th, 1943, Yamamoto was given a state funeral. He was posthumously promoted to Marshal Admiral and awarded Japan's highest decoration, the Order of the Chrysanthemum, along with Nazi Germany's Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords. His ashes were divided between Tokyo's Tama Cemetery and his family's temple in Nagaoka. How should we evaluate Yamamoto, both as a man and a strategist? Here's Mark again.
55:32 Speaker 02 He's a man of character and importance, to be sure, but a man of paradoxes also. It's true, he was highly intelligent. He possessed moral courage. He was capable of bold decisions. We saw that at Pearl Harbor. And he was occasionally insightful. For example, his early recognition that aviation would be an important, perhaps the most important aspect of naval warfare. He was also very sentimental. He would cry, openly weep, when one of his staff officers was killed in action during the war. He was also a man of undoubted charisma. He was adored by his staff. Every account you read about him, his staff adored him.
56:14 Speaker 02 And apparently, his concern for his men got through to all ranks. So he was a highly valued commander throughout the Imperial Fleet. But at the same time, though, he had a lot of not desirable qualities as well. He was an intellectual bully. And we saw that, how he got his Pearl Harbor attack plan approved and also his Midway Plan approved. Both times, he threatened to resign. So he was a bully to get his way. He was stubborn. He was self-confident to the extreme. And that's why he thought he knew better than the entire naval general staff. He was increasingly autocratic as the war goes on.
56:56 Speaker 02 And people are quite familiar probably with his affinity for games of chance. He was a gambler in his private life. And he was also a gambler when it came to his naval career and planning out naval operations. And on a personal level, it's fair to point out, he was a womanizer and a very neglectful husband and father. And as a strategist, he has a very mixed record at best. And I would submit, but every major operation he touched turned out badly for the Japanese.
57:28 Dan Snow? Mark, I'm not putting you down as a fan here. I'm not putting you down as a fan. And I guess ultimately, his legacy, which if we're going to talk about great strategists, his legacy was the utter and complete annihilation of the Japanese Navy and eventually the invasion and conquest of his homeland as well.
57:44 Speaker 02 Well, that's what happened. But fortunately for Yamamoto, if you want to call it fortunately, he's killed in April 1943. So this is a period of the war when both sides are relatively in balance still. So there's still this, perhaps this vague possibility the Japanese may yet achieve some sort of victory. Now, after that point in the war, it's a string of major Japanese defeats. There's the battle for, there's the Battle of Philippine Sea, Battle of the Gulf, and the Americans get closer and closer to the homeland. But this doesn't happen during Yamamoto's tenure as commander. So he kind of is not tainted by the specter of certain defeat.
58:27 Speaker 02 But as a strategist, though, he was just not effective. Pearl Harbor was, I would characterize it as his unhealthy obsession. But again, as we talked about, it's the basis for the Yamamoto is a great strategist myth. But we talked about how it had little impact on the American Pacific Fleet, both in the near term and the long term. And then after Pearl Harbor, he squanders the Japanese advantage. He conducts this ill-considered operation in the Coral Sea as a preface to the Midway operation, but in so doing, he Commits only a portion of his fleet. He allows the Americans to defeat a portion of his fleet piecemeal.
59:08 Speaker 02 And he jeopardizes his main operation off Midway, his intended decisive battle off Midway. By the success of this secondary operation at Coral Sea, which ends badly. And then Midway, how this plan was just on every level. There are several principles of war that both the Americans and Japanese used at the time. It was taught at their staff colleges. This Midway plan that Yamamoto comes up with violates every principle of war. And like I said, it's the foundation of the Japanese defeat. And then he presides over the Japanese debacle at Guadalcanal. And he's like a spectator. He never does seize control of the situation.
59:51 Speaker 02 So everything he touches pretty much ends up in disaster. And just one more thing to mention, his last major operation is conducted in April, just days before he's killed by this American interception. So here's another example of him not really being able to process and contemplate naval war, modern naval war. So he has just conducted a six-month campaign trying to neutralize the American airfield at Guadalcanal. He's unable to do that. And then in April, he tries just four pinprick raids at American positions under Guinea and also in Guadalcanal to neutralize American offensive power in the region.
1:00:36 Speaker 02 And he stops the operation after four raids, thinking it's a great success. Well, it's not a great success. And in fact, the airfield at Guadalcanal that he failed to neutralize is the airfield that the aircraft come from that shoot him down. So his last major operation is a debacle as well. In fact, everything he touches was a debacle for the Japanese.
1:00:58 Dan Snow? I think a wise man, I'm paraphrasing, once said, gather your strength, find the enemy's center of mass and kill it. And Yamamoto does the opposite at every opportunity.
1:01:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, he's unsuccessful in doing that. He tried in Pearl Harbor, unsuccessful. Tried again in Midway, obviously unsuccessful. And at Guadalcanal, he botched that opportunity as well.
1:01:20 Dan Snow? There's such a fascinating tension in the legacy of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto. It was he who pushed through those bold plans that enabled Japan's apparent success in the first few months of the Pacific War. But Yamamoto put those plans in place believing privately that this was a war Japan could never win, and thus did more than most to doom Japan to a ruinous defeat. During his career, he championed naval aviation. He pushed through the carrier-centred strike power that changed naval warfare and stunned the United States and Britain. He oversaw a lightning advance that in a few brief months made gains that took the Allies more than three years to reverse. Yet, the failure to destroy the US carriers at Pearl Harbor and do greater damage to
1:02:04 Dan Snow? the dockyard facilities, his terribly flawed planning, his overconfidence at Midway—well, all of that meant that the very tools he'd perfected were turned back against Japan with devastating effect. In Japan, he was venerated during his life. He was mourned with a state funeral and death. And perhaps his reputation benefited from that untimely death. He was killed before the consequences of his actions could be fully recognised and his reputation tarnished. Abroad, he was the mastermind of Pearl Harbor. He'd fired the starting gun on that savage war in the Pacific, and ultimately he'd faced the righteous vengeance of his enemies. Perhaps it's best to think about him as a loyal servant of a faulty strategy.
1:02:47 Dan Snow? He was a man who saw the folly of war with the United States, but once he was committed to it, he prosecuted it with total commitment in a way that he thought just might bring them success. But even then, his operational plans were fatally flawed. Ultimately, though, if you're going to go to war with the United States in the middle of the 20th century with the resources that both sides were able to command...
1:03:10 Dan Snow? You're gonna lose. And what Yamamoto feared most came to pass. Total defeat, occupation and upheaval. I want to thank my guest, Mark Stille. So brilliant, the insights in this episode. Thank you very much. If you would like to read more about some of the battles we've covered in the episode, please check out his books Pearl Harbor: Japan's Greatest Defeat and Midway: The Pacific War's Most Famous Battle. They're both available now. Join me next Monday for the next episode in this Commander series. We'll be returning to the European theatre to discuss the man who oversaw really the most massive military operations in the history of the world. His armies on the eastern front crushed the Wehrmacht in Titanic clashes and he ultimately
1:03:52 Dan Snow? oversaw the capture of the enemy capital, the capital of the Third Reich in 1945. That's right, we're going with marshal of the Soviet Union, Georgy Zhukov. But was Zhukov a brutal operator who overwhelmed his enemies with little care for the lives of his own men? Or was he a master tactician who first fought Nazi Germany to a standstill and then led the Red Army to a glorious turnaround victory? Tune in to find out.
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1:05:12 Speaker 01 This is a paid partnership with Apple Card. The coolest flex at brunch these days is not the Bloody Mary with the bottomless gold flake caviar topping. It's not whipping out your wallet to pay. It's not having a wallet at all. Jack's been an Apple Card user since 2019. That's the same year he tossed his wallet in the trash. Because Apple Card holders earn 2% daily cash back on purchases made using Apple Pay. It's the only credit card designed for the iPhone. I tap to pay with Apple Card at the grocery store, at the gas station, at restaurants. And yes, I use it at my second home, the farmer's market. Jack tapping to pay with his Apple Card with Apple Pay is his favorite thing to do. And the pleasant vibration and chime sound means I just got 2% daily cash back on my latest purchase. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval.
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