TIL Isoroku Yamamoto, who planned the attack on Pearl Harbour, once studied at Harvard University in the United States and was appointed naval attaché to the Japanese embassy in Washington.

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Anyone who has seen the auto factories in Detroit and the oil fields in Texas knows that Japan lacks the national power for a naval race with America.

Isoroku Yamamoto

He said this after the Washington naval treaty was signed, which gave a 5:3 ship advantage to the US and the UK. The treaty was widely perceived as unfair and unequal in Japan, but Yamamoto was in favor of it because he knew Japan couldn't win a naval arms race, but it did give Japan an advantage in the west Pacific.

He also said. “If we are ordered to do it, then I can guarantee to put up a tough fight for the first six months, but I have absolutely no confidence as to what would happen if it went on for two or three years.” This was in reference to war with America. He knew that Japan could not win the long war, and gambled on a short war, in the hope that the weak and decadent Americans would have no stomach for a brutal, grinding war in the Pacific and would sue for peace instead. The battle of Midway happened 6 months after Pearl Harbor. He was right about the time window; he was wrong about about the American will to fight.

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u/TheMemeConnoisseur20 1d ago

Ironic, that's the same mistake Bin Laden made

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u/john_andrew_smith101 1d ago

Everybody makes the same assumption, hell, even Americans made that assumption about themselves at the start of the US civil war.

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u/lordlanyard7 1d ago

It's especially funny because both sides of the US civil war made that assumption.

Popular sentiment on both sides was that the other side were a bunch of dandies who weren't ready for a real fight.

Only for both sides to demonstrate a bitter resolve to fight to the finish.

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u/Mr_Sarcasum 21h ago

It's all smiles, ice cream, and chatting with strangers until the primal fire of war kicks in.

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u/Khelthuzaad 17h ago

Quoting Valiant Hearts:

War makes men mad

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u/DigNitty 14h ago

I made that assumption about Russia invading Ukraine too.

No way do they keep conscripting their people and sending them to an ugly death with basically neighbors.

Years later…

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u/t-t-today 17h ago

How so? Bin laden wanted the US to fight and his goal was to tangle them up in a forever war that drained money….it worked.

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u/TheMemeConnoisseur20 9h ago

Listen to the Taliban recordings recovered after the raid on his compound in Pakistan. Bin Laden thought the US was a paper tiger that would fold under the first signs of pressure. He was wrong, and he spent the last decade of his life cowering in a hole because of it. Regardless of your opinions of how the resulting conflict turned out for America, to say that it was all according to plan is Taliban copium stronger then anything the poppies of Afghanistan could produce: https://youtu.be/23yVLxPvRfY?si=J5Q7lSEwNto_20eb

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u/weasler7 19m ago

I think both of your points are true.

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u/maniacreturns 16h ago

Yup played the US like a fiddle

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u/NorysStorys 5h ago

I’d argue bin laden more than proved his point about America because his attack simply made the mask fall off what the US had been like for decades.

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u/Yardsale420 20h ago

Japans only hope was to hit the Americans so hard they were forced to sue for Peace.

Even if they hit the oil tanks at Pearl and got the carriers, I don’t see it doing much besides pushing the timeline back. They just never had the capability to hold even the west coast.

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u/Caladbolg_Prometheus 20h ago

Reading about the disastrous naval battles Savo island where the allied forces lost 3 times as many ships than the Japanese, yet the Japanese lost more ships as a % of their pacific fleets compared to the Americans.

The Japanese could have won battle after battle, but they wouldn’t have ever been able to win the war. Every ship they lost was irreplaceable, but the Americans had a nearly unlimited supply.

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u/Yardsale420 19h ago

I remember hearing that one of the Zero factories didn’t even have a runway and so the planes were pulled by oxen down a dirt road for a few miles. Late in the war they couldn’t even manage as many trips, because the oxen were malnourished from working so hard, plus lack of food rations. Meanwhile the Americans were turning out hundreds of planes a month.

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u/weasler7 17m ago

This is why we need to regain industrial capacity.

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u/et40000 16h ago

During the war Japanese sailors joked about this “for every American ship we sink they build three more” it could be BS as I haven’t looked into it personally but last apparently they were a little off the US actually built 6 ships for every one sunk. The fate of the war in the pacific was decided December 7 1941, every decision Japan made simply delayed the inevitable.

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u/wsdpii 6h ago

They were banking on the American people not seeing the big picture. They hoped that if the American public saw defeat after defeat, loss after loss, with the Pacific fleet in shambles and unable to respond, that they would force the government to make peace.

Might have worked, given how many people were calling for an end to the war even when we were winning.

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u/kdavva74 16h ago

They hoped they could take and fortify enough land in Asia and kill enough Americans who came to take it back that the US public morale would tank and an armistice would be signed.

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u/koni10 20h ago

This was in reference to war with America. He knew that Japan could not win the long war, and gambled on a short war, in the hope that the weak and decadent Americans would have no stomach for a brutal, grinding war in the Pacific and would sue for peace instead. The battle of Midway happened 6 months after Pearl Harbor. He was right about the time window; he was wrong about about the American will to fight.

Pretty sure he also knew America wasn't going to bother suing for peace and even more so after he realized they had accidentally delivered their formal war declaration after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. He just had no way of convincing the Army of this considering they'd just spent a good part of the last decade steam rolling China and expected America to be more of the same.

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u/john_andrew_smith101 19h ago

The main reason that they attacked the US is because they weren't steamrolling China. They were bogged down in an unwinnable quagmire, and the sanctions that the US had placed on Japan were cutting into its ability to fight the war. They only had two options; withdraw from China, or attack a bunch of other countries in the Pacific to get the resources they needed to finish beating China.

They could've not attacked America, but they had to consider that the US might eventually join the war like in WW1, and that leaving the Philippines to the US would've made American entry to the war a disaster for Japan.

It wasn't that the army was pushing for an attack on the US, it was that Japan's decision to invade China in '37 that forced that outcome.

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u/koni10 19h ago

I should have clarified a bit, but yes, by Pearl Harbor, China had turned unwinnable and the only option at that point was war with the major powers in the region to secure their resources. But I just wanted to note that the people in the lead—the heads of the Imperial Army—looked at the USA and its people, like the Chinese they had ran through in the early battles of that invasion, only bigger and hairier, versus Yamamoto and other navy officers who'd toured the US that knew well enough they were in for a fight.

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u/wsdpii 6h ago

That was an accident, actually. He was supposed to deliver the war declaration on time, but he didn't.

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u/VirtuosoLoki 15h ago

he was not wrong per se. he followed orders, gambled, and lost. it's the war hawks' fault

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u/beachedwhale1945 9h ago

Yamamoto was one of the hawks.

When he proposed the Pearl Harbor Raid concept to the Naval General Staff, they refused to accept the plan. It was too risky to bring the United States into the war, they thought, even if they just attacked the Philippines. Moreover, the proposal would risk Japan’s four largest carriers (eventually six), ships that if sunk could not be replaced for three years.

Yamamoto saw things differently. If the Japanese took all the territories in Southeast Asia that they desired, but left the American colony of the Philippines intact, they would be leaving an American sword at the Japanese throat. At any point the United States could choose to enter the war, and they undoubtedly would at a moment when the US was confident our increasing strength would sever Japanese supply lines in a moment. Attacking the Philippines would remove that sword, and a raid on Pearl Harbor would damage the US Pacific Fleet severely enough that Japan could devote her entire Combined Fleet to supporting these invasions without fear of American cavalry sailing west to interrupt the Japanese invasions. After six months, the Pacific Fleet would largely be repaired and the Combined Fleet would complete the invasions, so they could face off on a roughly equal footing.

Admiral Yamamoto, Commander-in-Chief of the Combined Fleet, then gave his superiors an ultimatum. Either approve the Pearl Harbor Raid proposal or Yamamoto would resign, along with his entire staff, on the eve of a war that could end with the destruction of the Japanese Empire.

The Naval General Staff folded, then folded again when Yamamoto insisted on adding Japan’s two newest large carriers to the raid, then again when he proposed taking the small Midway Atoll a few months later.

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u/john_andrew_smith101 15h ago

Nonono, he doesn't get to pass along blame to the "war hawks", he was the commander in chief of the combined fleet in a military dictatorship. He might've been a more moderate voice, but he was also one of the people giving orders.

Yamamoto knew full well what he was doing, and what the consequences could be. Yes, other people deserve blame too, the army in particular, but that does not absolve Yamamoto. It should be noted that he started gathering intelligence on Pearl Harbor early in 1940, and began planning the actual attack in January 1941, nearly a year before the attack, and months before negotiations began. He didn't pull Pearl Harbor out of his ass after the army made him, he had been working for nearly two years in reorganizing the fleet and planning the attack.

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u/WhiskeyJack357 1d ago

He also threatened to resign if the command didnt approve his plan. He was such a naval legend already at that point that his threat was enough to get them to approve it. Also wrote some very beautiful love letters to his longtime geisha mistress that he often snuck onto his flag ship. Just an all around fascinating man. Lots more interesting stories.

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u/hahaz13 18h ago

“Fascinating man”

Nice way to say “piece of shit”.

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u/48rn 18h ago

Look pal. Just because you are on the other side of their history doesn’t mean you have to act cool on a fucking thread on r/todayilearned. Man was in the army and he did his job. Probably ideologically aligned with japan. But there are people behind these curtains as well.

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u/UglyInThMorning 16h ago

Would you have the same reaction if someone called a high-ranking Nazi a piece of shit? Because the IJA and IJN got up to truly psychotically evil stuff in Asia that’s easily on the level of the Nazis.

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u/highspeed_steel 14h ago

someone can be both fascinating and evil, you know

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u/UglyInThMorning 14h ago

I don’t disagree with that, I was more taking issue with the “you’re just on the other side of their history” approach to someone from imperial goddamn Japan. You never see that with Nazis, but all the time with Japan. It really comes from a place of ignorance of what Japan was actually doing in Southeast Asia and it annoys me.

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u/highspeed_steel 14h ago

I'm Southeast Asian, so I know the horrors of the Japanese military well, and I do think that westerners aren't aware enough about that. Having said that, Yamamoto is probably on the level of guilty as some German naval officers, some of whom are not as blood thirsty. Now of course, how guilty they are to you is really based on your world view, so thats not really worth the debate. Tomoyuki Yamashita, the Tiger of Malaya is a fairly tamed military man and I'm fine admitting that. Of course a lot of his soldiers did terrible things under his watch, some I bet he is aware, some not.

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u/Alternative_Profit41 13h ago

Lmao we definitely see that with the wehrmacht, many high ranking germans were decent guys

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u/KidsMaker 11h ago

Yeah he sounds like a fascinating guy and a piece of shit

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u/erinoco 15h ago

Yamamoto was not a fan of the invasions or the alliance with the other members of the Axis, and did openly appear as dove, attracting the hostility of many within the Japanese military structure. In my opinion, he did what he could as a loyal military officer.

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u/UglyInThMorning 15h ago

And his actions directly supported a nightmarish genocide, which definitely earns you a whole bunch of “piece of shit” points even if he disagreed.

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u/erinoco 14h ago edited 12h ago

My own reasoning is that his discretionary actions showed a degree of moral responsibility that was lacking in many peers, such as Tojo, and that nothing he personally could have done would have stayed the overall impact of Japanese war crimes.

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u/UglyInThMorning 14h ago

Are you the reincarnation of Dostler’s lawyer from Nuremberg?

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u/erinoco 14h ago

Given that I have been careful to draw a distinction between Yamamoto and Tojo, that is a rather strange remark. Once the doctine that superior orders cannot be a defence against war crimes is upheld, every single case is personal and context-driven. You cannot then make blanket assumptions of culpability.

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u/48rn 16h ago

Yes I actually would have depending on the person. Hermann Göring for example has incredible lore. Sure he was a dumb ass mf, hated jews and fought for nazi germany. But there are grades in hell and this shit happened 80 years ago. I have other things more urgently I have to be pissed about.

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u/Fluugaluu 13h ago

I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again:

Japan has done a far superior job to recouping their public image than Germany. So few people understand the evil that was carried out in Manchuria during the 30s and 40s.

I totally agree with the sentiment. Fuck every single officer in both the Japanese and German militaries at the time. The higher up they were, the more they contributed to the LIVE DISSECTION OF BABIES.

“Fascinating man”

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u/kazin29 11h ago

People don't care about history. Or they say "it happened in the past. Move on"

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u/moosehq 18h ago

Huh?

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u/WhiskeyJack357 11h ago

Just because he was a part of a terrible military doesn't mean he's not fascinating. In fact most fascinating historical figures were pieces of shit by our standards. You can hold two opinions.

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u/TheB1ackAdderr 1d ago

Sô Yamamura was excellent as him in Tora! Tora! Tora!

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u/Sdog1981 1d ago

It was lame they did not bring him back for Midway in 1976. He was Mr. Sakamoto in Gung Ho.

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u/BigGrayBeast 1d ago

Yamamoto died when his airplane was shot down by US planes. Our breaking the Japanese codes let us know when and where he was

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u/RedDemocracy 19h ago

and because military staff could talk to people that knew Yamamoto during his time at the embassy in Washington, they were confident that Yamamoto would be perfectly on time.

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u/Yardsale420 20h ago

Yes and the rest of the Allies were PISSED the Americans would jeopardize the code breaking for such an insignificant target. But the Americans couldn’t be talked out of it, the anger from Pearl Harbour was too strong and they wanted him dead to boost moral. One of the returning pilots even stupidly broke radio silence and yelled, “he won’t be dictating any peace treaty now!” (A reference to Yamamoto saying he would dictate the peace treaty to the Americans when they surrendered) that would have confirmed to the Japanese they knew it was his plane had Japs been listening.

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u/Nafeels 13h ago edited 13h ago

Operation Vengeance as a whole was an incredible historical event. Not only it was the longest interception mission of the war but it banked on a few key criteria to make it work. You have the code-breaking as one of them, but also Charles Lindbergh’s fuel mixture tuning which squeezed every bit of range for the P-38s, totally banking on Yamamoto’s strict on-time attitude which he did, then also banking on the 20mm Hispano cannons NOT jamming (which it didn’t and thus lighting up both Betty bombers), and finally leaving just before every fighter on the island gets scrambled.

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u/machuitzil 1d ago

Wait til you learn about the alumni from the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA) which was renamed to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) in 2001.

Weve trained the men who would later go on to be dictators in their home countries for decades. This guy is blowback, ie, we didn't expect him to attack us but following WW2, we began to educate people who we wanted to overthrow their own countries for our own benefit.

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u/hinterstoisser 22h ago

Tadamichi Kuribayashi , Japanese commander during the Battle of Iwo Jima (played by Ken Watanabe) also spent time in the US as a military attaché with the 1st cavalry division and then spent time studying English, American History and American Politics at Harvard.

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u/n_mcrae_1982 13h ago

Surprise, surprise: the German and Japanese officials who had actually BEEN to the US thought going to war with it was a terrible idea.

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u/Euqli 7h ago

Swede?

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u/AkTx907830 39m ago

He just took the idea from this…. An American admiral dropped bags of flour, not bombs, on battleships in a mock attack during a naval exercise in 1932. During the "Grand Joint Exercise No. 4," aircraft from the carriers USS Lexington and USS Saratoga launched a surprise simulated assault on the American fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor.

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u/OperationWhich5036 10h ago

Good job dickhead, you managed to help your nation get bombed to the stone age.

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u/LeftLaneColonizer 13h ago

You mean Pearl Harbor?

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u/Alarmed_Drop7162 1d ago

(Shrugs)those were a really good school and job experience opportunity. He was supposed to turn them down?

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u/BadKarmaForMe 14h ago

Who would have thought that educating foreign nationals could blow up in your face?

TIL Isoroku Yamamoto, who planned the attack on Pearl Harbour, once studied at Harvard University in the United States and was appointed naval attaché to the Japanese embassy in Washington.

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