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New That's from the movies . . .
. . there is no shred of evidence that Admiral Yamamoto said anything at all resembling that. The statement itself is thought to have been derived from a comment by Napoleon regarding China.

The actual recorded comment was by Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, who lead the air strikes (Yammoto was not with the Pearl Harbor attackers). The comment (roughly translated from Japanese) was, "They were shooting back - we could never have done that. This is not good."

Both Nagumo and Yamamoto considered the Pearl Harbor attack to be somewhat of a failure, because the aircraft carriers, which were always in port on Sundays, why the attack was on Sunday, were not in port this Sunday. All they sank was obsolete battleships.

This spawned many conspiracy theories, but the truth is simple. The carriers were hustling land based aircraft to Midway. It took both of them because land based aircraft don't pack well on ships.

The real failure, by Nagumo, originally approved by Yamamoto, was not launching a third strike. Nagumo decided this because most of his losses were in the second strike, and he would have lost most of his planes. The Japanese (nor the Americans) were capable of landing on aircraft carriers after dark. Only the British had practiced that.

The items they did not bomb were: (1) The administration buildings, in the basement of which were the people working to break the JN25 code (a code so good the Japanese didn't think it breakable, especially by stupid Americans). (2) The fuel oil tanks. (3) The submarine docks and especially the torpedo stores. Later, Yamamoto realized what a mistake that was. American estimates were that the third strike could have added up to 2 more years to the war.

The JN25 code was broken - not entirely, but well enough. This was done in a room full of long tables with the base words coded by numbers laid out, and a bunch of Japanese speaking ladies hustling up and down trying to make matches to the base code from the secondary code used for messages.

The Japanese were so confident in JN25 (that's the American title) they were lazy about getting out new subsidiary code books. A new one was issued a month before Pearl Harbor, but not getting another out soon enough cost Yamamoto dearly in the battle of Midway (which he was present for). The Americans knew the time of the attack within a few hours, what ships were involved, and where they would be.

Not getting code books out on time also cost Yamamoto his life, later in the war (though his insistence on punctuality was also a factor).
New Re: his insistence on punctuality was also a factor
Yep, the interception of Yamamoto's plane was barely in the range of the P-38s sent to shoot him down.
Alex

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

-- Isaac Asimov
New 10 minutes hover time.
It was enough.

One weakness of the JN25 code was not a weakness of the code itself. It was the formalities with which Japanese officers addressed each other. With some idea what ranks the sender and receiver were, the code folks could get a few words to start with.

Of course, the diplomatic code (American title "Purple") was also extremely secure, and based on a machine. No machine was ever captured, any to be abandoned were pounded into sand.

The crypto folks knew they needed the machine, so they figured out how it probably worked and built one. It worked. The Japanese were told the code was broken, but were certain that was just a deception, Americans were far too stupid to break it - they didn't really know the truth until testimony before Congress.

Only one small piece of a Purple machine was ever found, in the ruins of the Japanese embassy in Berlin. It turned out the American machine was based on the exact same model of telephone switch as the Japanese original.

Japanese propaganda, which they came to believe without question, was that Americans were really stupid. When the bomb went off over Hiroshima, the guy in charge of Japan's nuclear bomb program says he recognized what it was instantly, but wondered, "How could the Americans develop the bomb?"

Of course, he was waiting for a shipment of enriched uranium from Germany, but the U Boat was captured. The Japanese officers on board immediately committed suicide. The uranium was eventually delivered to Japan. Uranium short Americans used it in their bombs.
New Yess! ..wasn't That synchronicity ... via a too-pecksniffish victim!
New ..bows to superior granularity of that History.
The phrase has been 'quoted' so ofen that, I may have heard it in Tyke-hood or soon after--it is so pithy
--one should expect that it appeared elsewhere countless times--it rhymes so perfectly!

Have read books re the bitchin' Midway fiasco and other WW-II material, thus query:
Have you a fav Chronicle /Book title ~ enough in exactitude (ie Fact-checked ) if an old one?
As my Pater was off-Okinawa at his end, I need to clean-up some errant factoids 'attributed' but rong.
(I wonder if there's a way to tie his MIl-ID-data to info in n-files: re that Kamikaze attack, Ship#, etc.
Maybe as COVID-20, 21 etc. happen I'll actually do that exact homework--too many distractions now).

As many have opined here, since dinosaurs roamed: When are you gonna Write the Memoir!?
--in a series of Volumes--I mean, Churchill was on a roll, though a lot there was Me-Me insertion.
(And I know not if he paid much attention to Pacific matters ..beyond overlapping Strategies du jour).

Thanks.
New Granularity
No, I can't recommend any great tome. My knowledge comes from a great many small but very detailed documents, both print and Internet. I reconcile discrepancies as best I can.

When I'm just too tired to do actual work, I tend to study wars, and especially all the machines and equipment used in them. It is amazing how little is known about the Pacific war. Archaeologists are hard at work trying to fill it all in. It is a major region of study today.

Okinawa was a really horrifying battle, the only one where the ratio of American and Japanese casualties and deaths was nearly equal. More typically it was close to 1 American to 10 Japanese. Their tactics tended to be less than ideal.

The decision to use The Bomb (the Army and Navy were against it) was the horrifying experience of Okinawa, expected to be 100 times worse on the home islands. The military realized the Japanese would surrender soon anyway, due to the approaching Russian armies, freed from action in Europe. The politicians wanted revenge, and the scientists wanted to try out their new toy.

Churchill didn't like the Pacific war at all, because the British were getting their asses wiped big time there. The sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse in the same day left Singapore no longer a sea power. The surrender of Singapore is considered one of the greatest military disasters of all time. The British didn't realize the Japanese were at the end of their supply lines and had only a few hours of ammunition.

The Japanese attitude at Singapore was "War Crimes R Us". The hanging of General Tomoyuki Yamashita solidified legal precedent, that the commanding officer is responsible for War Crimes, whether or not he approved of, or even knew about, what was being done by his troops - knowing is an important part of his job. The Americans hanged him for the Philippines, not Singapore, depriving the English of the honor.

As for "Write the Memoir", there is just a bare start of it in the Memoriam pages of Clovegarden, and many notes elsewhere, and I'm building a cast of characters. I should have more time to work on that now that updating clovegarden.com to html5 and css3 is done. The last of it, accidentally overlooked before, was done Sunday in a single 11 hour stint.
New Lay On! MacDuff--the forest is now accelerating towards Dunsinane--just like Macbeth's nightmare.
New Re: Okinawa
I was there last September (2019) and got to see the Peace Memorial Park. 240,000 people are commemorated including US and even a few Brit and Aussies. This was the first island that was Japan proper. The Japanese military fought hard and did not surrender and many civilians committed suicide. The battles lasted almost 3 months.
Alex

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

-- Isaac Asimov
New There are ironies all-around re that Japanese version of Custer's Last Stand..
One: having seen samples of mail-in Courses my Pater was taking--even then and there: (a Pharmicist's Mate in Navy)
He would have gone on to 'save lives' in chosen career; the Kamikaze pilot was--from his perspective--also 'saving lives' of his tribe: by trading his own.
(Hard to fault either one--just another homo-sap version of, Unclear on the Concept of perpetual warfare--sans all Scale & Relativty of Each Side's predictable perfidy.

Have grokked the tactics, history of that encounter; the Japanese had perfectly refined their strategy to use the topology (!!) of that island
--to a Fare-Thee-Well; The GI's had to make PIcketts' Charge /Civil War a necessity, all unawares of the tunnel complex as made pop-up sniping a Dead (-ening) certainty.

All symbolized within that immortal Flag-raising photo, which must have received more views than any similar event--even the scenes of the Hindenberg
(that clusterfuck of Bad-chemistry in its paint! + static electricity + Hydrogen: because! the U.S. would not sell Helium to the Germans! ..make that, !!!

[See what I mean?] Okinawa was a pellucid metaphor for any ✓-off listicle re DON'T DO THIS--you IDIOTS!



Even moi can see THIS as a Given (but I never found a copy of) Kirkegård's

Two Ethical-Religious Minor Essays.
(Tvende ethisk-religieuse Smaa-Afhandlinger.)
a. Does a Human Being Have the Right to Let Himself Be Put to Death for the Truth? A Posthumous Work of a Solitary Human Being. A Poetical Venture. by H.H.
b. The Difference between a Genius and an Apostle. 1847.


Rest Case: homo-sap has a Terminal-Fault within its meat-ware ..'Thinking'? ... Meat ??!!
(Mayhap Nature's next-Try?) shall start from some Dysprosium-Praseodymium-(other Lanthanides) mix:
better suited for Turing-Complete, pico-Second switching-rate brainz--or must I design one?
;^>
Expand Edited by Ashton Aug. 5, 2020, 04:47:36 PM EDT
     topical sign - (lincoln) - (11)
         That's about the size of things -NT - (drook)
         In 1941 Admiral Yamamoto made the observation, - (Ashton) - (9)
             That's from the movies . . . - (Andrew Grygus) - (8)
                 Re: his insistence on punctuality was also a factor - (a6l6e6x) - (2)
                     10 minutes hover time. - (Andrew Grygus)
                     Yess! ..wasn't That synchronicity ... via a too-pecksniffish victim! -NT - (Ashton)
                 ..bows to superior granularity of that History. - (Ashton) - (4)
                     Granularity - (Andrew Grygus) - (3)
                         Lay On! MacDuff--the forest is now accelerating towards Dunsinane--just like Macbeth's nightmare. -NT - (Ashton)
                         Re: Okinawa - (a6l6e6x) - (1)
                             There are ironies all-around re that Japanese version of Custer's Last Stand.. - (Ashton)

Sentinels and abdominal tracking shrimp.
68 ms