Showdown in the Pacific War: Nimitz and Yamamoto

By Ronald E. Martell

Showdown in the Pacific War: Nimitz and Yamamoto
This unique book combines a carefully researched history with an easy to read analysis of the war in a fictional meeting between staff officers close to Admirals Chester Nimitz and Isoroku Yamamoto. They trace the events leading to the Pacific War and the heroic struggles following the attack on Pearl Harbor to the eclipse of the Japanese war machine at Coral Sea, Midway, Guadalcanal, and beyond. Showdown reveals Yamamotos opposition to Japans waging a war it could not win along with his planning of her early successes and Admiral Nimitzs patient and careful reversal of the Empires offensives. Showdown presents an even-handed view of the nations that waged combat in the early stages of historys most famous naval war.
Ron Martell has given us a new and very interesting look at World War II in the Pacific. Instead of simply retelling history, he puts the reader in a fictitious yet plausible latter-day conference between two of the conflicts high-ranking adversaries, key staff officers of the American and Japanese navies.. . . Its a genuine page-turner for any fan of World War II history.
Ronald Russell, author of No Right to Win: A Continuing Dialogue with Veterans of the Battle of Midway.

Showdown in the Pacific is a thoroughly enjoyable read. . . . If someone asks me for a single book to read on how the Pacific War started and then was fought for the first 18 months, I will heartily recommend this one.
Thom Walla, Editor and Host of The Battle of Midway RoundTable.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 6, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503539716

Ronald E. Martell

Ronald E. Martell is a native Minnesotan and an honors graduate of the University of Minnesota Law School, whose distinguished career as one of the nation’s leading construction law practitioners, arbitrators, and mediators prepared him well to research and write Showdown.

Book preview

Copyright © 2015 by Ronald E. Martell.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 05/28/2015

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Contents

List of Photographs

Introduction

Prologue

Chapter 1:  Two Retired Naval Officers

Chapter 2:  Two Future Admirals

Chapter 3:  A Wedding in America

Chapter 4:  The Washington Naval Treaty

Chapter 5:  A Trip to London

Chapter 6:  A Bellicose Japan

Chapter 7:  If I Am Told to Fight

Chapter 8:  It May Prove Impossible to Avoid War

Chapter 9:  Seize the Only Source of Oil

Chapter 10:  Problems to Solve

Chapter 11:  Why Do the Waves Seethe?

Chapter 12:  A Matter of Principle

Chapter 13:  A Stunning Blow

Chapter 14:  Think Like a Japanese Admiral

Chapter 15:  Perhaps I Am Wrong

Chapter 16:  Self-Existence and Self-Defense

Chapter 17:  We Will Crush You

Chapter 18:  Climb Mount Niitaka

Chapter 19:  Sink What Is There

Chapter 20:  Are They Going to Hit Us?

Chapter 21:  Air Raid Pearl Harbor

Chapter 22:  All Men, Man Your Battle Stations!

Chapter 23:  Four Battleships Sunk

Chapter 24:  I Saw Hell on Earth

Chapter 25:  A Genius Who Cherished Himself

Chapter 26:  A Date That Shall Live in Infamy

Chapter 27:  A Strategic Imbecility

Chapter 28:  We Had Things Our Way

Chapter 29:  An Easter Sunday Raid

Chapter 30:  General Outline of War Policies

Chapter 31:  Tell Jimmy to Get on His Horse

Chapter 32:  The Target Is Tokyo

Chapter 33:  The Mythical Land of Shangri-La

Chapter 34:  He Was Quite a Sight

Chapter 35:  The Coral Sea Is Beautiful at Night

Chapter 36:  A Touch of the Armored Sleeve

Chapter 37:  The Largest Battleship in History

Chapter 38:  Where Is the American Fleet?

Chapter 39:  Prepare to Carry out Attacks

Chapter 40:  I Have Sighted the Enemy

Chapter 41:  Wisdom Comes after the Event

Chapter 42:  Nagumo Played His Last Card

Chapter 43:  What’s Going on, Captain?

Chapter 44:  The Destroyers Pounced

Chapter 45:  For Those in Peril on the Sea

Chapter 46:  He Blamed No One

Chapter 47:  Planes Savaged the Invaders

Chapter 48:  Stick to Your Guns, Sailor

Chapter 49:  The Hastily Prepared Operation

Chapter 50:  A Blistering Attack

Chapter 51:  Combat Experience Gained at Midway

Chapter 52:  There Will Be No Surrender

Chapter 53:  A Miserable Place to Fight a War

Chapter 54:  The Situation Is Not Hopeless

Chapter 55:  Through Blinding Rain and Knee-Deep Mud

Chapter 56:  Dead in the Water

Chapter 57:  A Lightning Storm from Hell

Chapter 58:  Too Many Easy Victories

Chapter 59:  Who Could Take His Place?

Chapter 60:  A Gallant Death

Chapter 61:  That Sense of Duty

Epilogue

Afterword

Acknowledgments

Selected Bibliography

About The Author

Photo And Map Credits

Endnotes

ACCOLADES for Showdown

in the Pacific War:

Nimitz and Yamamoto

Martell offers a deeply researched, richly detailed account of the events leading up to the first phase of the war, and he supports his facts and theories with extensive endnotes and a lengthy bibliography. The prose is usually solid though occasionally marred by clichés … . Otherwise, though, this is a rock-solid account that drives home the realities of the brutal fighting … . An … intelligent and valuable book that will help casual readers understand the story of the Pacific theater.

—Kirkus Reviews

Ron Martell has given us a new and very interesting look at World War II in the Pacific. Instead of simply retelling history, he puts the reader in a fictitious yet plausible latter-day conference between two of the conflict’s high-ranking adversaries, key staff officers of the American and Japanese navies. While Admirals Watanabe and Layton never met, they certainly could have and engaged in the book’s captivating banter. The result is a unique view of the Pacific War as seen by its top leadership, conveyed to the reader through the unusual experience of real time conversation. It’s a genuine page-turner for any fan of World War II history.

—Ronald Russell, author of No Right to Win: A Continuing Dialogue with Veterans of the Battle of Midway.

"Showdown in the Pacific is a thoroughly enjoyable read. The book traces the collision course of Nimitz and Yamamoto from their childhood, early navy days, and eventual rise to command their two nations navies, and ending with the ill-fated flight over Bougainville, April 18th, 1943. If someone asks me for a single book to read on how the Pacific War started and then was fought for the first 18 months, I will heartily recommend this one."

—Thom Walla, Editor and Host of The Battle of Midway Round Table.

List of Photographs

1. Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz

2. Fleet Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto

3. Captain Edwin Layton

4. Lieutenant Commander Yasuji Watanabe circa 1935. Courtesy of Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh.

5. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signing Declaration of War against Japan December 8, 1941

6. Emperor Hirohito 1935

7. Secretary of State Cordell Hull flanked by Ambassador Kichisaburo Nomura (left) and Envoy Saburo Kurusu November 17, 1941

8. Admiral Husband Kimmel

9. Admiral Ernest King

10. Lt. General Walter Short

11. Admiral William Halsey

12. Admiral Harold Stark and Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox

13. General George Marshall and Secretary of War Henry Stimson

14. The USS Arizona’s forward magazines explode December 7, 1941

15. Sailors rescue a survivor from the USS West Virginia

16. U.S. Army aircraft destroyed at Wheeler Air Field

17. Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo

18. General Hideki Tojo

19. Admiral Osami Nagano

20. Captain C. Wade McClusky Jr

21. Captain Joseph Rochefort

22. Mess Attendant Doris Dorie Miller with his Navy Cross Medal May 1942

23. Lt. Col. James Doolittle (left) and Captain Marc Mitscher aboard the USS Hornet April 1942

24. U.S. B-25B Bombers ready for take-off April 18, 1942

25. Scene on the flight deck of USS Yorktown after absorbing two torpedo hits June 4, 1942

26. Admiral Raymond Spruance

27. Vice Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher

28. SBD Dauntless dive-bombers

29. Japanese aircraft carrier Hiryu burning

30. Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo

31. Vice Admiral Matome Ugaki

32. Vice Admiral Robert Ghormley

33. Rear Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner (left) and Major General Alexander Vandegrift

34. Vice Admiral Nobutake Kondo

35. Vice Admiral Gunichi Mikawa

36. The funeral procession for Admiral Yamamoto June 5, 1943

37. The funeral procession for Admiral Yamamoto June 5, 1943

38. Retired Rear Admiral Yasuji Watanabe at Fleet Admiral Yamamoto’s grave in Nagaoka, Japan in 1960. Photo courtesy of Elaine B. Fischel and Douglas Shinsato

List of Maps

Map 1. The Pacific and Adjacent Theaters 1942

Map 2. Japan

Map 3. The Philippines

Map 4. Australia

Map 5. Papua New Guinea and Coral Sea

Map 6. Solomon Islands

Map 7. Guadalcanal and the Florida Islands

Introduction

Showdown in the Pacific War: Nimitz and Yamamoto is history with a twist. It combines a factual history with a fictional meeting between staff officers close to Admirals Nimitz and Yamamoto to tell their admirals’ stories. From Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto’s understanding of America’s capacity to defeat Japan that underlay his insistence on attacking Pearl Harbor and Midway to his assassination in 1943, Showdown in the Pacific gives an insight into the man and the war he did not want to wage—a war he knew Japan could not win. Meticulously researched yet easy to read, Showdown tells how the U.S. Navy, under Admiral Chester Nimitz, recovered from Pearl Harbor, defeated the Japanese fleet at Midway, and proved the accuracy of Admiral Yamamoto’s prediction of Japan’s ultimate defeat.

This book is a nonfiction novel, a genre Truman Capote established in the United States with his 1965 epic In Cold Blood. Showdown differs from other histories of World War II in the Pacific Ocean in two other respects. First, it is expressly written in a style for the enjoyment of the nonmilitary reader. Nonetheless, military history buffs will find much that is fresh, interesting, and controversial, as the book explores and explodes some of the mysteries and myths of the Pacific War. Second, it examines the history leading to the outbreak of the war and the key battles from Pearl Harbor to mid-1943 by reflecting fairly and equitably both the American and Japanese perspectives.

For simplicity, dates take the civilian form of month, day, and year, except when included in direct quotations. Times appear in the twelve-hour clock. The book uses the local time and date at the scene of action. Since the International Date Line separates two days in the Pacific, at 1:00 p.m., Sunday, December 7, 1941, in Washington DC, it was 7:30 a.m. in Honolulu; 2:00 a.m., December 8, in Manila; and 3:00 a.m., December 8, in Tokyo. Later, Honolulu local time moved forward thirty minutes to correlate with other time zones.

The times and dates for the Battle of Midway are those at Midway, which lies only 160 miles east of the date line. Actions occurred on both sides of the line, and each country used different times and dates for the same actions. Official United States Navy after-action reports and some histories utilized Greenwich Mean Time in describing the action at Midway. The Japanese Army and Navy always used Tokyo times and dates irrespective of the local time. At the time of the Battle of Midway, it was 9:00 a.m., June 4, 1942, on Midway, 11:00 a.m., June 4 Navy time in Hawaii, and 6:00 a.m., June 5, in Tokyo.

Japanese names appear in the Western fashion, with the given name preceding the family name. Place names are those used at the time of the action so that Edo becomes Tokyo for events after 1868, the year the emperor moved his residence from Kyoto following the overthrow of the shogun.

Japan’s historic calendar began in 660 BCE, with the mythical Emperor Jimmu’s ascension to the Imperial Throne. When folded into the Gregorian calendar, 1940 was the Japanese historical year 2600. This directly affected the description of Japanese aircraft and armaments. When the Japanese military accepted a weapon or plane, it was styled a type, followed in most cases by two digits showing the year of acceptance using the Japanese historical calendar. The Japanese navy accepted a type 97 plane in 1937, which was the Japanese year 2397. The military accepted the famous Zero fighter in 1940, which was the year 2600, so it was called a type 0 but not 00.

There are different ways to identify Japanese planes. For example, the Zero was a carrier or land-based fighter plane, formally identified as a Mitsubishi A6M type 0 kansen. In mid-1942, the Allies began giving names to Japanese aircraft to simplify identification and reporting. Fighters and observation floatplanes received male names and bombers, and other planes had female names. This book uses the Allied simplified names throughout. The most common Japanese planes in this narrative are the Zero fighter; the Val carrier-based dive-bomber; the Kate carrier-based torpedo bomber; and the land-based Betty bomber. Although the Allies called the Zero a Zeke, they often simply called it a Zero. It replaced the earlier Claude. A Val was an Aichi D3A, type 99 kanbaku dive-bomber. The versatile Kate torpedo bomber, sometimes called an attack plane, was a Nakajima B5N type 97 kanko, which served as either a high-altitude bomber or a low-approach torpedo-bomber. A Betty bomber was a Mitsubishi G4M type 1, which replaced the Nell.

Military ranks given for individuals were those attained at the time. Some readers may find useful a comparison of equivalent army, Marine Corps, and navy officer ranks.

Thousands of books, articles, oral histories, personal diaries, letters, Internet sites, and official reports record the events of World War II in the Pacific. These contain factual errors, inconsistencies, contradictions, and in a few cases, pure inventions. Two witnesses may relate the same event in starkly different terms, simply because they see it from two different locations. Reconciling their accounts may prove impossible. Whenever there are variances in descriptions of historical events, some authors include all and winnow out the most likely or let their readers draw their own conclusions. Others may simply select among them to bolster their own biases. Biographers sometimes completely ignored but more frequently downplayed the negative aspects of their subjects so that all warts became beauty marks.

Most inconsistencies are minor; some are substantial, but when in disagreement, one or more of the versions is fiction. The wording of some direct quotations in this book varies from source to source. Translations from Japanese may be direct quotations from a single source or merge different versions into one. The dialogues appearing as quotations in this book may blend versions of the facts from different sources or is author-created dialogue used solely to tell the story.

It was necessary to sort through factual inconsistencies and select the more probable based upon a judgment of credibility or accuracy. In some cases, the historical record is silent, perhaps indicating personnel purposefully destroyed documents, documents were lost or discarded, or that written documentation never existed and men carried secrets to the grave. The events related in this book certainly occurred, and the historical people existed. There are no fictitious characters in this book.

The two retired navy officers who serve as the narrators may never have met or sat and conversed about the war. There is no record showing that they did. Nonetheless, the similarity of their backgrounds and their daily wartime experiences on the staffs of Fleet Admirals Chester William Nimitz and Isoroku Yamamoto proved irresistible in using them to tell the tale of the Showdown in the Pacific War between Nimitz and Yamamoto.

Prologue

On July 8, 1853, Sadayoshi Takano was alert watching for ships his captain told him might arrive that day or the next. A mild breeze carried the heat of this July day as well as the saltwater tang of Edo Bay. The few clouds scudding along presaged only a vague chance of rain by evening. Two gulls squawked past intent on scavenging. Nothing else moved.

The twenty-six-year-old Sadayoshi stood lookout duty on the side of a hill above the shimmering cobalt blue waters of Edo Bay. He came from Nagaoka on the west coast of the large Honshu Island. He was part of the Echigo clan of samurai warriors called the men from beyond the mountains. He was one of five thousand samurai standing security duty, guarding the entire area of the Edo Castle grounds that year. The construction of Edo Castle, which began in 1457, encompassed an area of fifty square miles with huge moats both outside and within nearly ten miles of walls. The shogun had his huge palace on the grounds within the walls, and his lords, called daimyo, had their residences on the grounds as well.

Sadayoshi Takano took pride in his status as a third generation samurai, following the path hewed by his father and grandfather. He was a short, wiry man, perhaps five feet three inches tall and weighed at most one hundred and thirty pounds. He wore his hair styled in the traditional manner of a samurai with the front shaved to the scalp and the back rolled into a top knot. As a samurai, he carried the daisho, the paired swords of the warrior: a long katana for killing one’s enemies and a short-bladed shoto for killing one’s self. His kimono sash held both to his left side. His father and grandfather had carried these swords into battle, as he would when called to do his duty. Perhaps one of his two young sons or even his sons’ sons would wear them. He smiled as he thought of his young wife, pregnant with their third child.

Sadayoshi Takano was a midlevel samurai called an ashigaru or foot soldier, not as high ranking as horse-mounted samurais who came from wealthy families. Like all samurai, he was well educated. He could read and write, knew the ancient craft of calligraphy, could compose and recite poetry, knew more than five thousand Chinese ideographs, and was well versed in mathematics. He could also fight and kill. As a samurai warrior, Sadayoshi owed his allegiance to the head of his clan and to the shogun Ieyoshi Tokugawa then in the fifteenth year of a largely peaceful reign. However, like all Japanese, his ultimate loyalty was to the Divine Emperor Komei who lived in Kyoto, 230 miles west of Edo. The emperor presided over the spiritual well-being of his subjects.

The shogun—the generalissimo—was the highest-ranking military leader in Japan and the head of government, overseeing all bureaucratic and administrative work of the empire. He lived at Edo in a huge sprawling castle with his lords nearby. The shogun controlled his lords by permanently keeping their wives and children at Edo Castle, while the lords and their men alternately spent one year in residence at Edo and the next without their families in their own districts called Han. Each lord had his own bushi, the warrior men, divided into cavalry and infantry units. The days and nights at Edo were peaceful now. No lord threatened to take away another’s domain lands or conspired to overthrow the shogun. It was not always so.

Sadayoshi’s day had consisted of monotony and boredom. Then he saw dark specks floating on the horizon, which slowly grew larger. As they came closer, he saw thick black smoke belching from tall stacks on two of the black ships, while the other two were under sail. They had to be the ships he was watching for. Having seen enough, he ran to the castle to find his captain.

There are four large ships entering Edo Bay, he reported. I saw thick black smoke coming from chimneys on two ships.

The captain sent a runner with the information to the castle and with two more men ran with Takano to see for himself. The captain had seen the sailing ships that the Dutch and Portuguese used to bring trade goods to an island off the coast of Nagasaki, the only place foreigners could enter Japan for more than two hundred years. He could see black smoke coming from two ships gliding into the bay. He watched the four ships draw closer and drop their anchors. Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry of the United States Navy had arrived, and with his arrival came the wedge that would end the rule of the shoguns and force Japan into the modern world. A few would later say that Perry brought the first seeds of the Pacific War to Japan.

Chapter 1

Two Retired Naval Officers

Tokyo, April 1, 1968

Whispers of wind bore the freshness of a morning shower through Tokyo’s streets. Cherry blossoms making their annual appearance added their fragrance to the day. The broad Hibiya Dori was awash with cars, bicycles, and people. A tall, slender man, with the look and graceful stride of one who kept in trim, walked rapidly along the sidewalk. The day was chillier than usual for early April, yet he wore neither hat nor gloves. A full head of dark hair, parted on the left side, showed enough gray at the temples to confirm his advancing years. Gold metal frames held round lenses circling his dark eyes. Spit-shined black wing-tip shoes glowed below the hem of his pearl gray topcoat. He wore a charcoal suit with a patterned red and gold silk tie atop his white-on-white dress shirt. An astute observer would see the heavy gold ring that proclaimed him a graduate of the United States Naval Academy, one of the ring knockers. His stride carried him to the elaborate front entrance of the Imperial Hotel, Frank Lloyd Wright’s epic architectural contribution to Tokyo. The hotel stood across the broad street from the Imperial Palace Gardens and Hibiya Park.

Retired Rear Admiral Edwin T. Layton, on his way to meet a former foe, entered a small dining room adjacent to the lobby. After handing his topcoat to a cloakroom attendant, he said to the maître d’ hotel in Japanese, Admiral Layton for Admiral Watanabe. The maître d’ led him to a table set into an alcove overlooking the hotel’s reflecting pool.

A handsome Japanese man stood as Layton approached, smiled broadly, and said in English, Admiral Layton, I am Rear Admiral Yasuji Watanabe. I am so happy to meet you. Thank you for coming. Watanabe stood nearly six feet—tall for a Japanese man—and an inch or so taller than Layton. He had an oval-shaped, agreeably open face with prominent cheekbones. His full head of what once had been black hair was no longer close-cropped as it had been during his days in the Imperial Japanese Navy. His navy blue suit showed a thin maroon pinstripe. He wore a light blue French-cuffed shirt with gold cuff links in the shape of sea anchors and a plain burgundy silk tie. His dark eyes still did not need the help of glasses.

Layton bowed his head to acknowledge Watanabe’s greeting and then replied in Japanese, The pleasure is mine, Admiral, and I likewise have wanted to meet you. For the rest of their long conversation that day, the two would drift between English and Japanese, sometimes in the middle of a sentence. Because he had spent nine years in Japan, Layton spoke that language fluently. Watanabe had never been to America, so his English was not as polished. However, both men were perfectly comfortable speaking in the native language of the other.

Yasuji Watanabe and Edwin Layton were both born in 1903. Each entered his country’s naval academy in 1920. The course work at the Japanese Naval Academy on Eta Jima Island in Hiroshima Bay of the Inland Sea took three years. Watanabe finished his studies at Eta Jima in 1923. Then to finish his naval education, he went on an eight-month cruise required of all Eta Jima graduates. Layton completed his required four-year course of study at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1924. After graduation, he boarded the West Virginia, a newly commissioned battleship and part of the Pacific Fleet based in San Diego. Layton and Watanabe each served as a staff officer for the greatest admiral their respective navies had in the Pacific Ocean during World War II, Fleet Admiral Chester William Nimitz, and Fleet Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto.

From December 9, 1940, to April 1943, Yasuji Watanabe served on Yamamoto’s staff, first as the gunnery officer and then as the planning and logistics officer. Yamamoto was easily the most capable and highly admired admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy. Most Japanese and nearly all Imperial Japanese Naval officers held Yamamoto in the highest esteem—second only to that accorded Emperor Hirohito. Watanabe helped plan the triumph of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, his navy’s heartbreak at Midway, and the fierce struggle on Guadalcanal.

Edwin T. Layton began serving as the Pacific Fleet’s Staff Intelligence Officer at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1940, first to Adm. James O. Richardson and then to Adm. Husband E. Kimmel who replaced Richardson in February 1941. Layton helplessly witnessed the devastation that rained down upon the Pacific Fleet anchored in Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. From the horror of that day to the signing of the Japanese surrender in September 1945, Layton served as the fleet intelligence officer to Admiral Kimmel and then to Admiral Nimitz. He furnished and evaluated intelligence to assist Nimitz in planning the battles of Coral Sea, Midway, Guadalcanal, and beyond. Layton knew Nimitz as well as any living man knew him during those war years in the Pacific, just as Watanabe knew Yamamoto. They both had many stories they could tell about their admirals and perhaps a few they never told anyone. Layton and Watanabe had also met many of the admirals commanding their respective country’s largest naval forces.

After shaking hands in greeting, the two retired naval officers sat down. They studied the elaborate menus the maître d’ had left with them. Watanabe said, I see that you share your admiral’s reputation for punctuality. Admiral Yamamoto also believed in being precisely on time, never early and never late.

Layton chuckled. Admiral Nimitz insisted on being punctual to the minute. One night, he was five minutes early for a dinner party. So Nimitz told the driver to pull the car over to the curb and wait until he could arrive exactly on time.

Yamamoto would have done the same thing, Watanabe replied. I have wanted to meet you for a long time, Admiral Layton, and I am extremely happy you came.

Admiral Watanabe, how can I help? asked Layton.

I would be pleased if you would simply call me Yasuji, Watanabe said in reply.

And I am Eddie.

"Eddie, I have been retained as a story consultant for the writing and filming of a movie about the Hawaii Operation, as we called it, and would appreciate very much talking to you about the war years. The name of the movie will be Tora! Tora! Tora! It will be produced and filmed in both Japan and America, telling the story of each side in the run-up to our attack at Pearl Harbor and then to the attack itself. The Japanese producers employed me to tell them about Admiral Yamamoto’s planning and his reaction to the events of that day. They want the real details. I can tell them what I know. I would appreciate hearing your experiences about the attack to give me a better sense of what might be important. That is why I wrote to my friend in the United States to invite you to meet me today while you were in Tokyo."

He paused as their waiter came to their low table to take their orders and leave a pot of tea and cups.

I would like shiitake mushroom soup first, Watanabe said, then cuttlefish, rice with vegetables, and soya noodles.

And I will have miso bean paste soup to start, Layton ordered, "and Saga Wagyu beef with seaweed, rice, and sliced pickled cucumbers as my entree."

Will you have sake with your beef, Eddie?

Yes, thank you.

Watanabe ordered a bottle of Mukune rice wine and said, There are many, many questions that I still think about, even after nearly twenty-five years. Then Layton noticed the change in Watanabe’s appearance. The pain that showed in his face—particularly in his eyes—was palpable. His voice was tight.

Most of all, I need to know the truth of what really led up to the death of my admiral. I need to know, Eddie. Did I kill him?

No, Admiral Watanabe, Layton thought. You did not kill Yamamoto, but some of his blood is on my hands.

THE TWO PAUSED as the waiter brought a flask of sake and two ceramic cups to their table. He placed the wine flask in a bowl of hot water to warm.

Watanabe asked, Eddie, how did you learn to speak Japanese so well?

Basically, I volunteered, Layton replied.¹ "After graduating from the Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1924, I served on the battleship West Virginia. We sailed into San Francisco Bay with two other new battleships to greet the midshipmen from your naval academy on their annual cruise. Were you on that cruise, Yasuji?"

No, I graduated the year before, and we sailed to Australia and different ports in Southeast Asia. The 1924 class that went to North America included Minoru Genda and Matsuo Fuchida, who became two of our most famous pilots.

"I met Genda after the war when he was a general in the Japanese Air Service Defense Force and its chief of staff, but I did not ever meet Fuchida. Well, I was one of the hosts to squire one of your midshipmen around both the West Virginia and the city of San Francisco. It was soon apparent that all your officers and midshipmen were either fluent in English or spoke English quite well and were fluent in French. Not one of our officers aboard the Wee Vee, as we called her, knew more than a few words of Japanese, and the French we had studied at the naval academy was not at the level some of your graduates spoke."

Watanabe replied, In order to even take the competitive examination to enter Eta Jima, we had to be proficient in reading, writing, and translating English. At the academy, we were required to take three years of English, as well as either French or German.

After hosting the midshipman from your cruise, Layton continued, "I wrote to the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, saying that I thought it reflected badly on the United States Navy and Annapolis that we could not muster one Japanese-speaking officer to greet Japanese naval officers in their language. If there were no officers who could speak Japanese, I would be willing to learn.

I received an official reply. The United States Navy did have a program to send two officers each year to Japan for three years of language study. The officer had to have at least five years of naval service. I was selected in 1929 to study in Japan.

How many officers became language students in Japan? Watanabe asked.

In the beginning, there were two students each year, and the program began in 1910, with a break during the First World War. Later, there were three or four sent to study Japanese. The last of the group returned in the summer of 1941. There may have been between fifty and sixty overall, Layton replied. "On the trip over, I met the other language officer for that year, Joe Rochefort. He had not gone to the naval academy. Joe came up as an enlisted man through the Naval Reserve program. He received a commission as an ensign after graduating from a naval engineering program in New Jersey. Joe and I became great friends, and as good fortune would have it, we spent a year and a half working together at Pearl Harbor, both before and during the war. He was one of a very few married officers our navy sent to study in Japan.

"When we arrived in Tokyo, we reported to the naval attaché, Captain Joseph V. Ogan, who told us that we could not engage in any type of espionage, and as long as we kept our noses clean and studied hard, we’d be paid once a month.² We were to stay and study in Tokyo until we could carry on a conversation in Japanese. After that, we could go wherever we wanted to learn to read, write, and absorb the Japanese language and culture. I went to Beppu because it was a truly beautiful city. I thoroughly enjoyed my three years of study in Japan, although after Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931, a military policeman followed me wherever I went. I was glad to leave."

To learn conversational Japanese, Layton and Rochefort spent many afternoons in Tokyo movie theaters viewing American silent films complete with English subtitles. The theaters employed movie interpreters to explain the scenes and translate the dialogue into colloquial Japanese. After countless viewings, the two memorized what the interpreter said.

Japanese is easier to learn to speak and understand than it is to read or write. The language first came to Japan from China, written in more than five thousand ideographs called kanji. A second form consists of curved lines that some call hen scratches, which make up the kana alphabet. There were forty-six characters in the traditional kana alphabet, each character standing for one syllable. Different combinations of the syllables produce Japanese words.

When did you join Admiral Yamamoto’s staff, Yasuji? Layton asked.

"I boarded his flagship Nagato for the first time on December 9, 1940, Watanabe replied. When did you become the fleet intelligence officer, Eddie?

"In early 1939, I received command of a mine-sweeper, the USS Boggs, Layton said. She was part of the Pacific Fleet berthed at Pearl Harbor. I stayed with her until my appointment as the intelligence officer came through, and I took on that duty on December 7, 1940. How large a staff did Yamamoto have for the Combined Fleet?"

"When I arrived, there were fourteen on the staff reporting to the chief of staff who, at that time, was Rear Admiral Shigeru Fukudome. He had been the captain of the battleship Nagato when Yamamoto became commander in chief of the Combined Fleet at the end of August 1939. Then Fukudome stayed aboard as chief of staff until April 1941. Rear Admiral Seiichi Ito, who replaced Fukudome, was only there for four months before becoming the vice chief of the naval general staff. When Admiral Osami Nagano became the chief of the general staff in April 1941, he specifically requested Ito to be his vice chief. Fukudome became the chief of the first bureau of the general staff, which covered operations and planning. In August 1941, Rear Admiral Matome Ugaki replaced Ito as chief of staff for the Combined Fleet. Ugaki had been the chief of the general staff’s first bureau and then commanded the 8th Air Squadron for four months."

After a sip of rice wine, Watanabe continued, "Japan was at a crossroad in 1940. The empire had three choices: negotiate a peaceful solution with the United States, go to war within a year, or bear the situation for as long as ten years to allow our industrial production to prepare the empire for war. The government recommended to the emperor that Japan negotiate a peaceful solution while at the same time preparing for a war that would have to commence within a year or two at most. Our oil supply problems would not allow the country to wait any longer than that.

Then the walls began closing in on Japan. Your country insisted Japan withdraw from China, but the Imperial Japanese Army, which had considerable political power, absolutely refused. Hirohito dispatched Admiral Kichisaburo Nomura as the ambassador to the United States with instructions to negotiate a solution. While Nomura talked, the Japanese army aggressively pursued establishing the empire’s supremacy in Asia.

I knew Ambassador Nomura from my days in Japan, Layton said. We met in 1931. I got to know him better during my two years in Tokyo as an assistant naval attaché.

When was that, Eddie?

I arrived in Tokyo in April 1937, just about three months before your war in China erupted. During the two years I was in Tokyo, Nomura and I became friends. We played a lot of bridge and poker. He had served as the naval attaché in Washington for four years during World War I and spoke English very well. I liked him very much. He was a good friend of the United States.

Yes, but I am afraid he could not accomplish much.

Not so long as Japan would not agree to abandon its war with China, Layton added.

How long did you stay in the navy after the war, Eddie?

I left Guam in February 1946 and spent two years in California before being posted to Washington to organize the naval intelligence school. I had several postings in Hawaii and the Pacific during the Korean War. After thirty years in the navy, I received a promotion to rear admiral in 1953 before working in the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. After that, I returned to the naval intelligence school. I retired in 1959 with thirty-five years of active duty. After retirement, I worked for four years in Tokyo for the Northrup Corporation as the director for their Far East sales and service operation. What did you do after the war?

"I was a captain when the war ended and was one of the officers responsible to close out the Imperial Naval General Staff. For a time, I was hired to write histories about naval operations. General MacArthur, as the Allied Supreme Commander, issued orders that the Japanese Government had to reproduce its wartime operations files. Fires, from your bombing raids, destroyed many original documents, and after the war ended, some Japanese officers simply burned all records under their control. We took whatever documents we could find and supplemented those with personal recollections from officers who were involved in the operations. In 1946 I also assisted American lawyers for some of the defendants in the war crimes trial on a part-time basis. I joined the Japanese Maritime Safety Agency in 1949. I stayed there for fifteen years and retired as a rear admiral. Then I worked for the Komatsu-Cummins Sales Company. The people I work with on the movie say they will list me as a rear admiral on the film.³

What did you do for the Maritime Safety Agency?

I had both sea and staff duty. I gradually worked up to command the Kyushu district, which was the largest of the agency’s districts, having a total of more than two thousand men and ninety ships. Eddie, did you ever meet my admiral?

"Yes, I did, when I was an assistant naval attaché. We met and talked several times in his office when he was vice minister of the navy. He invited me to join him at a magnificent kabuki theater play. I played bridge and poker with him several times and lost some money to him. He invited me to a duck netting party, which was an interesting experience.⁴ I liked him, and he seemed to enjoy conversing with an American in Japanese."

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1. Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz

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2. Fleet Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto

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3. Captain Edwin Layton

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4. Lieutenant Commander Yasuji Watanabe circa 1935. Courtesy of Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh.

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Map 1. The Pacific and Adjacent Theaters 1942

Chapter 2

Two Future Admirals

In the late 1500s, traders from Portugal, England, Spain, and the Netherlands arrived in Japan. Catholic missionaries followed and began converting some of the population from Buddhism and the Shinto religion to Christianity. Over time, their efforts met with remarkable success. As the number of converts grew, Japanese lords became concerned that they might lose control of their people. Eventually, the shogun banned the missionaries from the country altogether. Samurai forced Japanese converts to renounce Christianity and killed those who refused. The shogun ordered all foreigners to leave Japan. By 1641, the Japanese required traders to land only at Dejima, an island port in Nagasaki bay. Japan remained closed to foreigners for more than two hundred years.

When California joined the union in 1850, the United States stretched along both the Atlantic and the Pacific coastlines. Wagon trains, stagecoaches, and ships sailing around Cape Horn carried people, food, and manufactured goods from the east coast to California. As the west coast developed, it needed to become self-sufficient. Trade with Japan became a desirable goal. To achieve it, President Millard Fillmore summoned Commodore Matthew Perry to the White House in 1852. The president instructed Perry to sail to Japan bearing gifts for the Japanese emperor with a letter to him couched in polite, peaceful language. Fillmore’s letter said the United States desired to establish peaceful relations and commercial trade between the two nations. No matter how politely worded the letter, Fillmore’s instructions to Perry were blunt. Make sure Japan opens its trade doors to the United States, show as much force as necessary.

Perry immediately began gathering every scrap of information he could find about Japan and the Japanese people and their culture. He knew his voyage would be historic, and he planned in minute detail to make it so. He would keep a detailed daily log of the journey and accurately describe all flora and fauna encountered. After his journeys, Perry wrote a three-volume work covering his voyages, complete with full color lithographs.⁵

Perry was one of the first American naval officers to understand the need for steam-powered ships, and he pushed hard for the navy to build them. He oversaw the building of the navy’s first steamship, the Mississippi. The flotilla for his first voyage to Japan included four capital ships, the Mississippi, the Susquehanna, the Plymouth, and the Saratoga. Both the Mississippi and the Susquehanna were steam powered and used coal to feed their boilers. The Plymouth and the Saratoga traveled only under sail.

Perry set sail for Japan from Norfolk, Virginia, on November 24, 1852, aboard the two-hundred-thirty-foot-long side-wheel steamer Mississippi. At each port of call, the Mississippi took on four to six hundred tons of coal and ten thousand gallons of water, as well as restocking the ships’ larders. At Hong Kong, Perry rendezvoused with three ships that traveled only under sail: the Plymouth, the Saratoga, and the store-ship Supply. From Shanghai, his small fleet sailed to Napha on Lew Chew Island, now known as Okinawa, where the steam-driven Susquehanna became Perry’s fourth capital ship and his flagship.

President Fillmore instructed Perry to present his letter and gifts to Emperor Komei in Kyoto. The Japanese worshiped their emperor, believing he was divine. Perry knew he had no chance to meet with the emperor. Shogun Iesada Tokugawa at Edo held all the power and controlled the day-to-day affairs of running Japan. Perry sailed for Edo.

After Perry’s Black Ships anchored in Edo Bay, small boats approached the ships. Perry ordered that any Japanese contact would only take place on the Susquehanna. When the Japanese tried to attach towlines to other ships, the Americans cut the ropes. Finally, a Japanese official held up a document, written in French, forbidding any ship to harbor anywhere other than Nagasaki Bay. After a few attempts at conversation, another Japanese officer conferred with one of Perry’s interpreters in Dutch. Perry’s interpreter said that the commander of the ships was a man of the highest rank in America. He had a letter from the president of the United States for the emperor of Japan. The commander could only give the letter to an official of the emperor who was of equal rank. Nearly a week of conversations and negotiations with lesser officials failed to yield a solution. After he had fired a broadside from all the ships’ sixty-nine cannons, Perry received permission to deliver the president’s letter to the emperor’s representatives Prince Toda and Prince Ido at Uraga City near present-day Yokosuka at the mouth of Edo Bay.

The letter, written in three languages, proclaimed the friendliness of the United States and said the president wished to establish a commercial treaty between the United States and Japan. After delivering the letter, Perry announced that he would return the next spring with more ships to deliver gifts from the president for the emperor and to receive the emperor’s answer to the president’s letter. The Japanese did not look forward to even more guns in their peaceful bay. On July 17, 1853, Perry and his four ships weighed anchor. Ten days later, Shogun Ieyoshi Tokugawa died.

President Fillmore’s letter created a firestorm in Japan. The Japanese desired the technology, skills, and manufactured goods from Western countries but did not want foreigners entering Japan. The debate raged for months. Should Japan open its ports for trade and submit the country to evolutionary change or remain closed and isolated? Opinions—fiercely debated—ranged from Japan embracing the modern world to shutting the door on progress. Some favored opening the country to the Americans. Others counseled Japan should declare war on them. Over time, opinions hardened. The new shogun, Iesada Tokugawa, a sickly man too weak to govern effectively, and some of his lords favored opening the door. Emperor Komei and several of the shogun’s powerful lords favored nailing it firmly closed.

Perry returned in March 1854 and presented President Fillmore’s gifts for the emperor. These included a pair of telegraph keys and wire and a small train with a working locomotive, tender, passenger coach, and a complete set of rails. The treasure trove included pistols, a plow, beautifully colored Audubon books, champagne, clocks, and more.⁶ The emperor and his counselors presented gifts for the president, for Perry, and for his captains.

Then Perry presented a draft of a treaty to establish relations between the United States and Japan. The first article nobly proclaimed:

There shall be a perfect, permanent, and universal peace, and a sincere and cordial amity between the United States of America on the one part, and the Empire of Japan on the other part, and between their people respectively, without exception of persons or places.

Perry and the emperor’s counselors negotiated the text of twelve articles that comprised the treaty. When signed on March 31, 1854, the Kanagawa Treaty opened two Japanese ports to the Americans: Shimoda, sixty miles southwest of Edo, and Hakodate on the northern island of Hokkaido. There, American trade ships could enter, reprovision, and receive any American sailors shipwrecked in Japanese waters. In 1858, Townsend Harris, the American consul in Japan, negotiated a Treaty of Amity and Commerce, opening ports at Edo, Kobe, Nagasaki, Niigata, and Yokohama for trading with the United States. Japan then entered into treaties with Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Russia with essentially the same terms.

The debate over the opening of Japan to foreigners became even more strident and divisive, with the emperor’s supporters exclaiming, Revere the emperor. Throw the barbarians out. On March 11, 1863, Emperor Komei issued the order to expel all foreigners. Shogun Iemochi Tokugawa, who succeeded Iesada in 1858, refused to comply with this order. His lords divided into forces that followed the emperor and those who supported the shogun. During the next five years, the split grew wider and hardened. Two powerful lords wanted the emperor to have power over the country, not the shogun. The Boshin War was the inevitable result. Emperor Komei died on January 30, 1867, succeeded by his son, the great Emperor Meiji.

The emperor commanded one hundred twenty thousand well-armed troops. The shogun’s fifty thousand samurai carried their traditional two swords. Some had outdated rifles; others bore French Minié rifles. In Aizu province, fifteen thousand of the emperor’s soldiers attacked five thousand samurai led by Tatewaki Yamamoto. His small army included Sadayoshi Takano and his two eldest sons, Yazuru and Noboru. In a fierce battle near the town of Wakamatsu on October 24, 1868, the emperor’s troops captured Tatewaki Yamamoto, and a samurai beheaded him with a single sword stroke. Sadayoshi and his sons suffered wounds in the same battle.⁷

After the battle at Wakamatsu ended in the shogun’s defeat, Emperor Meiji moved from Kyoto to Edo in November 1868, and changed its name to Tokyo, the east capital. Other battles followed, and it was not until May 1869 that the last flickering flames of rebellion died.

After the war ended, the emperor and lords loyal to him finally determined that it would be better for Japan to adopt the technology and advancements of the Western countries. Japan needed a strong army and sent military men to Prussia to study the arts of war. Japan needed a modern navy, sending men to England, France, and America to study naval warfare. Later, Japan built its own military and naval academies.

Those samurai who were loyal to the shogun found life in Japan very difficult. They could not find good jobs, attend service academies, or study in foreign countries. The once proud and lofty samurai had rebelled and lost, and now they would suffer for their defeat. Sadayoshi Takano was no exception. He, his wife, and four sons barely survived, eking out just enough food to exist. As a well-educated samurai, Sadayoshi eventually found work as a schoolteacher in a small town. As time passed, the hardships of the losing samurai lessened, and reconciliation flowered.

Sadayoshi Takano moved his family to the larger town of Nagaoka where he became the schoolmaster. When his wife died, Sadayoshi married his wife’s younger sister, Mineko. They had three children: Kazuko, Sadayoshi’s only daughter; followed by a son, Kihachi; and finally another son, born on April 4, 1884. A week after he was born, Mineko told Sadayoshi the boy needed a name. Sadayoshi offhandedly replied, I am fifty-six years old. Call him 56—Isoroku. Sadayoshi spent many hours with his youngest son regaling him with stories of the samurai, telling him of Perry’s black ships, recounting the battle at Wakamatsu, and instilling in the son the duty of loyalty a Japanese man owed to his emperor and his country.

The young Isoroku played on the banks of the Shinano River, which flowed through Nagaoka into the Sea of Japan. He swam, fished, and thoroughly enjoyed the water. He attended the highly regarded Nagaoka middle school and took up gymnastics with a passion. He ran to and from school, building strength and endurance. Mr. Newall, an American Christian missionary, taught