Admiral Yamamoto - Early life to Pearl Harbor

Admiral Yamamoto

The man who would become the leader of the Imperial Japanese Navy by the start of WW2 had a career that in many ways charted the rise and fall of the navy in which he served.

His origins have a direct relationship with the two civil wars that defined the official beginnings of the IJN, the Boshin War of the late 1860’s and the subsequent Satsuma Rebellion of the late 1870’s, even though both of these took place well before he was born.

This was because he was not born a Yamamoto, note in Japanese the surname precedes your personal name, unlike the practice of the English speaking world. Back in the 1860’s the Nagaoka Domain, one of the many semi-feudal style states that made up Japan as a whole, picked the side of the Shogunate in the Boshin War, or Meiji Restoration. For those of you wondering where they lived, this was in the Echigo Province, now the Niigata Prefecture, on the west coast of the island of Honshu, largest of the Japanese home islands, right about where the coast curves from roughly E-W and starts heading N-S.

The Shogunate lost that war and one of the many samurai who fell in that conflict was Yamamoto Tatewaki, who was only 23 at the time. This was a problem for the family not just because he had died, but also because he was supposed to be the heir of the family. But that’s the last we’ll hear about them for a while. This was the conflict which saw the birth of the IJN as a distinct force, as for the previous few years the Japanese Navy had been a collection of warships, many of which had been built or purchased by individual domains, with only a few government run vessels. During the war those serving the forces loyal to the Emperor had been organised into a single force, which was then more formally codified as the IJN in the aftermath.

Almost a decade later, the samurai of the Nagaoka Domain, although the Domain itself had been formally abolished in 1871, showed a consistent habit of picking the losing side when they rose in revolt as part of the Satsuma Rebellion, centred on the Satsuma Clan, formally Domain, right down in the SW of Japan. This rebellion was eventually crushed and the government took further steps to dismantle the old samurai system, this meant many samurai from the losing side found themselves without income and facing significant problems finding new work as their family names immediately identified them as having recently been rebels. Such was the situation faced by Takano Sadayoshi, who tried to become a teacher, drifting from job to job until he eventually fetched up back in his home province. Having remarried after his first wife’s death, he went on to have three children in this new family, the youngest was born on April 4th, 1884, and was named Takano Isoroku, the name meaning ‘56’ as that was how old Sadayoshi was when his son was born.

By now relatively poor, the young Takano Isoroku grew up in an environment where simple food and where to get the money to buy it were the primary concerns. He would not receive the formal education that the children of samurai had so recently enjoyed, and some still continued to do. But in some ways this benefitted him as it meant the only educational options open to him were the more recently established public schools, which combined with a degree of charitable education from missionaries meant he received what for the time from a modern program of learning that mixed Japanese moral values with the latest advancements in science, which in the 1880’s and 1890’s was still advancing at what for us these days would be a frankly terrifying pace, the naval field for instance, saw three wholesale shifts in metallurgy, three changes of propulsion systems, two changes of propellant and the introduction of true long range communications all in the span of a decade. Which is the equivalent of us today having lived in the early 2010’s with a community telegraph station and prop driven airliners and going through all the advancement that would land us with smartphones and jet-liners in the intervening time, with personal communication going from weekly letters to daily post to dial up to broadband internet in the same time.

As a teenager, he figured out quickly that this could be a path out of the poverty he lived in and so applied himself to learning intensively, although some habits from this time remained, in the interwar period whilst some of his fellows were enjoying the finer foods served at a buffet they were confused as to why he was polishing off over a dozen skewers of plain boiled dumplings, only for him to declare that this was how he’d grown up eating them and he still enjoyed them this way. Speaking of eating, his determination to win and never back down showed itself at an early age, teased in school over his poverty which had led him to be constantly on the lookout for anything edible, he was told “You’ll eat anything, but you can’t eat pencils.” Not to be defeated, the young boy promptly grabbed the nearest pencil and ate it.

The year he turned 17 he used his knowledge to applied to the Imperial Naval Academy and, in a service dominated by the Satsuma clan many miles to the SW, one admission with the second highest results of any applicant in the entire country. His sparse upbringing was now something of a two-edged sword, poor early nutrition meant he only reached a height of 5ft 3”, and would struggle to outmass an adult aardvark or capybara, but the spartan living conditions of officer cadets were nothing strange to him and thus little hardship. Without this hinderance he was free to demonstrate his leadership capabilities and his increasing skills in kendo without as much of a settling in period as the cadets from better off backgrounds.

Typically the program for cadets was 3 years at the Academy and one year at sea, and following graduation in mid-November 1904 the young Isoroku was duly assigned to a training ship, the Kanzaki Maru, as the 2nd Lt, but now events began to overtake the situation, earlier in the year the Russo-Japanese War had broken out and the IJN, which was in the process of transitioning away from a Jeune Ecole style navy to a more traditional battleline navy but still considerably smaller on paper that the fleet of Imperial Russia, needed every ship and sailor it could get. Thus, he was quickly transferred to the armoured cruiser Nisshin, which thanks to previous battleship losses due to mines, was now part of the 6-strong first Division, along with 4 pre-dreadnought battleships and her sister cruiser Kasuga, under the command of Admiral Togo.

Nisshin would then be in the thick of the fighting at the Battle of Tsushima, whilst it was a decisive victory for the IJN, poor old Nisshin became something of a punching bag, reduced to an almost disarmed state by multiple heavy shell hits, which seemed unusually capable of seeking out the ships 8” main guns, she suffered numerous casualties, amongst then Takano Isoroku, who’d had the misfortune to be hit by multiple bits of shrapnel from an exploding gun, where this was as the result of overheating through heavy use or a Russian shell impact is debated in some circles, not that it made all that much difference to him. This left him with a deep wound in the thigh, numerous small wounds which would scar all over his lower body, and one errant fragment severed two fingers from his left hand. Had his hand been positioned in such a way that he lost another finger, it would have been a mandatory discharge from the navy, but with two fingers and thumb remaining on that hand he could still serve.

Rather than leave his post for treatment, he stayed at his station for the duration of the battle, this netted him formal commendation from Admiral Togo, thus, what might’ve ended his career completely only months from its formal beginning instead gave him a serious boost for the future.

After recovery, he served of a series of ships, the cruiser Suma, the battleship Kashima, the coast defence ship Mishima and the Murakumo class destroyer Kagero. In between these cruisers, which typically lasted 4-5 months, he was also studying at the Naval Gunnery School and later at the Naval Torpedo School, completing the basic courses in 1908 and the advanced courses in 1911. During this period one of his cruises took him to the US West Coast, and he would continued to see brief service on other vessels including the destroyer Harusame, the cruiser Aso, and the training ship Soya, a former cruiser. By the time her served on her he was now an instructor, among his students on that cruise was the future Admiral Ozawa, which must’ve been somewhat amusing to see given the colossal height difference between the higher ranked Isoroku and the gangly cadet.

Shortly before WW1 broke out he was granted a place at the Japanese Naval Staff College, and during this period he received an offer he’d be stupid to refuse. His parents had died in 1912 and he had several older brothers from his fathers first marriage, the chances of Takano Isoroku ever becoming head of the Takano clan were slim to none. However, you remember Yamamoto Tatewaki from the start of this video? This particular branch of the Yamamoto family (it’s a pretty common family name in Japan) had exhausted all options for finding a male heir in their own bloodline and come up short. The Yamamoto’s are described in some sources as having been the primary samurai family of the old Nagaoka Domain, so fairly prestigious. Makino Tadakatsu, the last daimyo or lord of the Nagaoka, suggested that they adopt a reputable young man from the samurai families of Nagaoka to continue the line, something that was fairly common practice at the time. He further suggested that the young Takano Isoroku would be a good candidate, he was a war hero, on a fast track through the prestigious IJN, was of a lower ranking clan that he had no hope of leading and had precious little social or material baggage that might complicate things. Thus, whilst in his final year of studies, Isoroku received an offer of adoption. Unsurprisingly he decided to accept and so on September 20th 1915 Takano Isoroku became Yamamoto Isoroku.

Things were looking up for the young officer again, but as seemed to be a pattern, it came as a two edged sword, he graduated from the staff college in 1916 and was send to the admirals staff of the 2nd Fleet, only to almost immediately contract typhoid fever, followed by appendicitis. After surgery for the latter, he was in recovery until summer 1917, after which he was posted to the Ministry of the Navy, and whilst on this duty met and would marry Mitsuhashi Reiko, with whom he would go on to have 4 children, the oldest and youngest, Yoshimasa and Tadao, being boys, and the middle two, Sumiko and Masako, being girls, the births spread out over 10 years from 1922 to 1932.

Now a Lt-Cmdr, he was assigned to the USA as a naval representative, he briefly enrolled at Harvard to get a basic understanding on English, before deciding he knew enough to teach himself the rest and set off to understand more about the country, touring large factories, oil fields and logistics warehouses, sometimes on assignment from the Navy and sometimes because a particular industry caught his fancy, funding those trips from his winnings at poker and other games of chance, which he quickly picked up and became something of a ruthless master of. Somewhere along the line of this overseas tour he was promoted to commander, found a specific interest in oil and partially as a result of his observations and partially under the tutelage of Ueda Yoshitake, the Japanese naval attache in the US, he also developed a deep interest in naval aviation.

1921 saw him return to Japan for a brief stint as an instructor at the same Staff College he’d graduated from a half decade earlier, before heading out to sea again as the XO of the brand-new light cruiser Kitakami. However, the skills he’d developed in the US meant he was soon in demand elsewhere and so after being recalled to the Staff College again he was assigned to accompany Admiral Ide Kenji on a tour of the US and Europe, in this case because of his English-speaking skills. Promoted to Captain whilst abroad, he would actually receive almost every promotion in his career whilst overseas, he returned to Japan and transferred to the naval aviation section of the Navy, as XO off the Kasumigaura Aviation Corps. As a somewhat established officer in a new field dominated by young enthusiastic men, it took some time for him to fit in, but he soon managed this, learning to fly and building his expertise in this field.

By 1926 he was sent off to the US again, this time seen off by a formation flypast of his aviation corps, and used his time there to more deeply study American culture and industrial capabilities, lessons which he would apply in the future when it came to planning war with the US. But it seemed the IJN couldn’t get enough of him and after couple of years on this assignment he was brought back to Japan and assigned to the light cruiser Isuzu as captain, his first command. By this point his lectures on future war with the USN included the heavy use of naval aviation and plans to attack Hawaii, although at this point to deny a staging area to the USN and potentially enable its use by the IJN, since it was not yet the Pacific Fleet home base.

He was only in command of Isuzu for 4 months, this being essentially a quick check by the IJN to ensure he knew how to command a warship, because they had much bigger things in mind, transferring him to command of the mighty, and at that point brand-new aircraft carrier Akagi. At one point an aircraft botched a landing and was about to roll off the side of the ship, only to be hauled back aboard by a combination of deck crew, Yamamoto himself and a junior officer by the name of Yamaguchi Tamon, who would of course go on to command aircraft carriers himself in WW2.

But once again due to his English language skills he was called away after not even quite a year in command to help Japan prepare for the London Naval Conference of 1930, which he would attend as a delegate. Whilst there he would be promoted to Rear Admiral. There seems to be quite a lot of argument in various sources about whether Yamamoto was in favour of or opposed to the Japanese Navy being restricted by the various naval treaties, some claiming he was for it, others that he was totally against it. Looking at the various primary source documents available in English or readily translatable Japanese I’ve come to the conclusion neither is entirely correct, based on his observations of American and British construction capacity and industry Yamamoto seems to have recognised that an unlimited naval arms race would be something Japan would lose almost before it started. But at the same time he was opposed to giving up too much, instead he seems to have believed that a treaty system that in his view more curtailed US and British fleets than it did Japan’s compared to the relative industrial capacity of each was in Japan’s interests, but that such a treaty should also be negotiated to Japan’s advantage, and so whilst broadly in favour of the idea of naval treaties, he was opposed to some of the concessions the Japanese delegation made as he felt these would put Japan at a disadvantage that couldn’t be made up in other areas such as quality of training.

His return to Japan saw a 3 year stint as Technical Director of the Naval Aeronautics Section, during this time he advocated strengthening Japan’s own aviation industry, but in a pattern the IJN had followed in the 1900’s and 1910’s with surface ships, to bring in as many relevant foreign aircraft as possible to learn as much as possible before adapting what was learned with their own expertise to produce their own craft without further recourse of overseas technology. To this end, he also encouraged the development of all-metal monoplanes and approved of plans to refit Akagi and Kaga with longer flight decks, which would allow for the employment of these heavier, higher performance aircraft, which needed more room to take off and land.

However, he was cautious about pushing ahead too far and too fast, a proposal for an agile single seat dive bomber that could also work as a fighter was rejected on safety grounds, as with the long range Yamamoto demanded of dive bombers, he felt a long pilot would not be able to handle long distance navigation in addition to dogfighting and dive-bombing responsibilities.

In autumn 1933 he moved on to command Carrier Division 1, which included his previous ship, the Akagi, but once again he didn’t quite manage to see out the year as another naval conference, the 2nd London, was coming up and since he not only had the still-rare English skills but also the experience of the first conference he duly headed off to London again in September 1934.

He arrived for the preliminary negotiations personally in favour of an extension of the treaty system that was favourable to Japan, but just before he left he’d received orders that Japan was not going to sign up to any more treaties and their way of bowing out was to be by making a series of outrageous demands which clearly could not be accommodated. Part of these demands included reduced overall tonnage and parity for the IJN with the RN and USN, he did his duty but didn’t have to like it, heading home via the trans-Siberan railway, stopping off in Germany along the way and helping negotiate and agreement whereby Germany would provide amongst other things its expertise in the field of dive bombing whilst Japan would send over the specs of the Akagi to help Germany learn about aircraft carriers.

Disappointed at being in his view ‘used as a tool’, Yamamoto refused to return to London for the main Disarmament Conference, which he knew would be a pantomime from the Japanese side of things and eve considered resigning. He spent most of 1935 at home, but by the end of the year he had been called back to active duty as head of the Naval Aeronautics and Aviation Department. This he saw as key, since he was now in charge of anything in the IJN that flew or involved flying, the field he saw as the potential decisive weapon in future conflicts.

This of course put him into conflict with the faction of the Navy that was pressing for the construction of the Yamato class battleships, Yamamoto argued that for all the time and money invested in them he could get more carriers, more aircraft and more pilots and this would serve the IJN’s interests far better in the long term. The core of his argument was that a battleship took several years to design, several more to build and then to be worth it had to remain relevant for at least a decade, all told that design had to be considered front-line for over 15 years. Conversely, aircraft development was coming on at such a pace that an aircraft that flew 3 years ago might well be succeeded by an even better model this year and so by the time the Yamato’s were half-way through their first decade, even if you considered the keel-laying the starting point, four generations of aircraft would have appeared, and given the theoretical capabilities of Japan’s carriers and strike aircraft now, this would leave the battleship obsolete long before it had effectively paid for itself in terms of front-line capabilities. Thus, carriers were a better investment as once Yamato was in the water you weren’t realistically going to be able to upgrade her guns or armour, whereas the newly proposed Shokaku’s could, within reason, simply support better and better aircraft, so even if a single Shokaku and it’s air wing couldn’t sink Yamato on the day of its commissioning, they would be able to a few years down the line, and a few years after that they’d already be able to sink whatever successor class might then be having its keel laid.

Unfortunately, there was no seriously taken example of an aircraft attack managing to sink a capital warship, stationary or moving, at that point, the flaws in Billy Mitchell’s test being well known in most naval circles. And so whilst the battleship faction could point to all sorts of battles, including of course Tsushima, as evidence for their case, Yamamoto had to admit that his own position was still technically unproven. And so Yamato and Musashi were laid down, although Yamamoto did get Shokaku and Zuikaku included alongside them, even if her would’ve preferred four Shokaku’s instead.

However, before internal dissent in the IJN could escalate beyond yelling and threats of physical violence, the IJA turned up to remind them all who the real enemy was on February 26th 1936 when a cadre of IJA officers tried to stage a coup. They managed to murder or injure a number of government officials, many of whom were IJN veterans, and seemed halfway to taking power, some young officers in the Navy agreed with the rebels general stance and appeared as a group demanding the Navy support the coup. Yamamoto shouted at them to, in family friendly terms, go away and stop bothering him. For a few days it looked like the  Army and Navy might actually go to war with each other, although ironically five of the seven primary targets the rebels had chosen were targeted in part because of their previous support for the 1st London Naval Treaty.

The Navy responded quickly, summoning ships from the 1st Fleet and deploying naval infantry, the Emperor took a dim view of the rebellion but approved of the quick naval response whilst at the same time upbrading the army for their scattered and slow efforts. Eventually the rebellion was put down, although one of their goals, greater military control of the government, ended up being realised, but with the IJN able to gain more favour and the not rebellious military branch and the one who had suffered attacks when their retired Admirals were targeted. One of the big changes was allowing serving military officers to also take political appointments and the new Navy minister requested/ordered Yamamoto to take the job of Vice Navy Minister, which he did against his own better judgement, but he proved a skilled politician, remaining in post as political tensions in Japan flared and several governments came and went.

However, whilst the IJN had power at the top, the Army was on the upswing in influence generally and Yamamoto found himself fighting a rearguard action to try and curtail the IJA’s initiatives. In this he was partially successful in that he managed to slow them down, but not stop them entirely. Once the Army managed to engineer war with China Yamamoto was often left running around trying to put out the brushfires it caused, Japanese aircraft managed to accidentally bomb and injure the British Ambassador as well as the US gunboat Panay, and that was just two on the incidents he was left to try and clear up.

The Army also advocated for a triple alliance with Germany and Italy, Yamamoto opposed this, stating that it would make relations with the US and UK worse, which would make resolving the China War in any way that wasn’t just an eternal shootout difficult, if the war in China led to war with the British or Americans, Germany and Italy were too far away and too lacking in naval assets to do much to help, and that therefore such an alliance would be detrimental to Japan.

Tensions in Japan itself had escalated to the point that Yamamoto was under near constant threat of assassination by both the IJA and some of the more radical IJN elements who wanted to escalate the war in China and ally with the fascist powers of Europe. Then everything got even more unstable and confused when Germany signed a non-aggression pact with the USSR, aka Russia, also known as Japan’s most recent major enemy and one they’d clashed with and would continue to clash with in the late 1930’s.

That incident forced the latest government to resign and Yamamoto looked like he was finally going to be out of a job. Recognising that this latest round of tensions might well get Yamamoto killed, outgoing Navy Minister Yoneuchi Mitsumasa arranged for him to be transferred to the post of Commander in Chief of the Combined Fleet. This was not at first to Yamamoto’s wishes, he knew he’d actually had relatively little at-sea command experience but orders were orders and so he threw himself into this new role, he could see war was coming even if he thought Japan couldn’t win it, especially because with Yamamoto and Yoneuchi gone the opposition in government to signing alliances with Germany and Italy was diminished and Japan soon had signed up to the treaty.

When he heard of this and the continued plans for Japanese expansion, including plans to go to war with the US, he said “This is completely insane. Now that the situation has turned out like this, I will do my best, but I will probably die in battle aboard the flagship. By then, Tokyo will have been destroyed and the country will be in terrible condition.”

It was also at this point that he made his famous prediction that if war came he could guarantee than the IJN could ‘run wild’ for 6 months, but after that things would be grim. However, he was first and foremost an officer of the IJN and so regardless of his personal feelings if he was being ordered to prepare for war with the USA, then he would do his best to ensure Japan’s success for as long as possible.

To this end, he demanded increased aircraft production and began organising the carriers he had into the now famous Kido Butai. But matters were coming to a head far faster than even Yamamoto had guessed, in July 1941 the US, followed soon by the UK and the Dutch government in exile, declared a trade embargo of Japan, which included forbidding any trade in oil. This was effectively seen as a declaration of war, economic war at least, since Japan imported 9 out of every 10 barrels of oil it used and the IJN was the single largest oil consumer in the country. Reserves would last about a year and a half, two if they were stretched, and the only two choices available were to accede to foreign demands and curtail all action in China, or seize control of vitally needed resources, especially oil, well before the reserves ran out. The nearest and best candidate for this was the oil field of the Dutch East Indies. The Dutch forces themselves were not a major concern given their relative strength compared to Japan, but to do so would mean the IJN would have to sail past the Philippines, then under US control, and the US Asiatic Squadron. Leaving these forces, which could then easily accommodate the arrival of the US Pacific Fleet from Pearl Harbor, unmolested was clearly suicidal as it would give the USN a perfect opportunity to cut off and annihilate the IJN in a decisive battle of the American’s choosing. Equally, the Dutch East Indies were very close to Australia and British Imperial holdings in SEA. Whilst the British were a bit distracted fighting the Germans and Italians over in Europe, aircraft and ships based out of Singapore and other British held ports might offer immediate support to Dutch ships, troops and aircraft as well as potentially launching their own offensives from the opposite flank to the one which the IJN would have to be guarding against potential US interference.

Thus, whilst some in Japan thought they could take the Dutch oil without getting the US involved, Yamamoto was not so naive. Any effort would require taking out the Philippines first as well as seizing British SEA holdings to ensure a zone of safety around the main prize. The British he thought could be semi-ignored after that given their other distractions, but the US could not. Accepting from his studies and visits to the US than a traditional industrial war with the US would only end in defeat, Yamamoto concluded that the only chance, long shot though it may be, would be to so undermine the confidence and morale of the American populace that even if the government wanted war it would be voted out by a population who didn’t want their fathers, brothers and sons to be sent off to die in a war that seemed to them unwinnable. The only way to scare them badly enough and which was in Japan’s reach seemed to be to utterly destroy the US Pacific Fleet in harbour, which had conveniently moved closer to Japan earlier in 1941 as an attempt to deter them. This would have the double benefit of denying any American government much of the means to prosecute a war even if they wanted to, at least until replacements could be built, which would take time. During that time he hoped that further crushing defeats might further sap American morale if the initial attack wasn’t enough, and as a Plan C the IJN would establish a layered defence covering half the Pacific, which would hopefully force the USN, when it came, into a long grinding struggle where they would have to pin themselves in place trying to take fortified Japanese held islands, giving the IJN freedom to manoeuvre to maximum advantage and attack with local superiority of force, knocking out further USN formations to continue to increase war weariness and sap morale back in the US.

As we’ve seen, something like this had been percolating in Yamamoto’s mind for years now, and even before the embargo made the schedule accelerate he was already making the needed plans. Contrary to some popular belief, he was not inspired by the British attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto, as he’d already begun planning, but it was a useful marker in confirming to doubters that such an attack could both take place and be effective. After all, if the British could pull that off with a couple dozen biplanes, how much more devastating would the hundreds of modern aircraft of the Kido Butai be?

The final hurdle was convincing the Navy General Staff that the idea was feasible, and then getting them to agree to send the entire strength on the IJN’s carrier forces, at first they thought the plan was too risky and then they wanted to only send Kaga, Shokaku and Zuikaku, retaining Akagi, Hiryu and Soryu for immediate attacks southwards. But between exercises, personal authority and threatening to resign outright, Yamamoto succeeded in getting his plan though, pointing out that even though it was a long-shot, in his estimation any other strategy would ensure the war was over before it had even begun.

As so it was it late November 1941 the IJN’s most powerful formation set sail, with the attack date set for Sunday December 7th 1941, a flourish added by Yamamoto as he knew Sunday’s would be the day of least readiness for a Western nation at peace. He was not with the fleet, instead, he was aboard the Nagato which, along with the rest of the IJN battleships, was to form a distant cover force. From there he issued the code phrase ‘Climb Mount Niitaka’, signifying final authorisation for the attack. And with that, the chain of events that would bring the USA fully into WW2 was set in motion.

It would now be up to Yamamoto Isoroku to deal with the consequences.