Customer Reviews

Japanese Destroyer Captain: Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal, Midway - The Great Naval Battles As Seen Through Japanese Eyes

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Captain Hara discusses how he commanded a Japanese destroyer in all of the major Pacific sea conflicts during World War II: Empress Augusta Bay, Coral Sea, the invasion of the Philippines, Guadalcanal, Savo Island, and Midway. While on a re-supply mission through Blackett Straight in August 1943, upon noticing a fire-ball explosion near the destroyer "Amagiri" in front of his destroyer "Shigure", he ordered for his ship's crew to shoot at Lt. John F. Kennedy's sinking PT-109. He provides a most harrowing description -- as commander of cruiser Yahagi -- how he barely survied its sinking alongside the ill-fated battleship Yamato on their suicide mission to attack the U.S. forces invaiding Okinawa. He details his training of the pilots of suicide motorboats (Shinyo: "ocean shaker") that were designed to ram Allied warships approaching Japan. After I wrote to him, he sent me an autographed photograph of himself in 1968 -- a fine keepsake from one of the luckiest Japanese destroyer commanders to have survived so many desperately fought WWII sea battles. His 312-page book was initially published by Ballantine Books in 1961.

Hara is the last samurai. He objected to compulsory suicide as official doctrine, because he saw this as a violation of bushido values. He turned pacifist BEFORE the Bomb. His personal doctrines demonstrate why the Japanese lost the war--they were inflexible; he wasn't. His doctrines were "Never ever do the same thing twice" and "If he hits you high, then hit him low; if he hits you low, then hit him high," the latter a maxim of MacArthur's, too. Hara criticizes superiors for using cavalry tactics to fight naval battles; never understanding the implications of air power; dividing their forces in the face of enemy forces of unknown strength; basing tactics on what they thought their enemy would do; and acceping a war of attrition with a foe more capable of maintaining it. His technical discussions are superb. What gives the book significance is his explication of strategy/tactics and their implications. Hara is a brave man who knew WHY he did what he did. This puts him in a minority, in any navy.

Probably one of the two books anyone interested in the Pacific naval war simply MUST have in his libraray (the other the brilliant 'Battle History of the Imperial Japanese Navy' by the unfortunately named Paul S. Dull). True experts and affecionados should overlook the occasional mis-identification of ship types (undoubtedly a result of either negligent editing or translation problems), but otherwise a superb recollection of the Pacific war from the point of view of a famous Japanese destroyer captain.

Having studied this war and its naval campaigns, one thing that always struck me was the peculiar paradox of the near-deification of Admiral Yamamoto (engineer of the Pearl Harbor attack) by the Japanese at the time, and many foreign historians as well. Frankly, from any objective point of view, it was Yamamoto who almost single-handedly ensured the disasterous defeat of the Japanese navy, first, by not in fact taking out the most important targets at Pearl Harbor (the enormous fuel tank farm, and the even more important ship-repair facilities and machine shops), and secondly, by repeatedly committing vastly insufficient forces at the places of most importance, and invariably sending these elements through the most convoluted and tortuous separate routes to get there (each element could be easily defeated one at a time).

Further, it appears that at no time during the war did the Japanese have the slightest interest in obtaining or using intelligence, by either method or desire, and this led them into one catastrophe after another. Guadalcanal is probably the best exemplar of this failed strategy, where neither the Japanes Navy, nor the Japanese Army had any idea of the strength of the American presence there, apparently weren't even interested, and instead committed and lost battalions, regiments, whole divisions of troops and squadrons of ships again, and again, and again, until both the Army, and Navy were bled white.

The Japanese submarine fleet was even more useless, not because of any real defect in the subs themselves, but the ridiculous manner in which they were used. This is even more stunning when you consider that not only was the Japanese submarine fleet largely founded by German engineers and specialist after the First World War, but the Japanese maintained close communications with the Germans throughout the war, even sending submarines to Germany and back several times, as well as German U-Boats sailing to Japan and being used by the Japanese Navy. Yet despite the continued availability of the very finest in submarine expertise, the Japanese apparently never bothered to discuss the topic of strategy and/or tactics with the Germans. Incredible!

With all my various studies of this war, I never came across any real recognition of these fundamental flaws, until I read this book, and it is apparent that not only were these flaws as real as i thought, but that many members of the Japanese Navy itself were fully cognisant of these same mistakes, and yet, were unable to convince their own senior command of the need for changes, and so went down together. Starting to sound familiar?

I read this book in paperback the summer before I started college in 1972. I still have the old Ballantine paperback in my personal library here in my office - along with many other classic WWII memoirs and histories which were released between the early '60's and '70's - and they remain to this day the backbone of any historians efforts to understand the conflict from a human perspective.

Hara was there. Regardless of the rhetoric,and the apologetics of his stance, it's impossible to argue with the eyewitness accounts he provides, and the detail of his style.

He creates at once a sympathetic and enthralled audience for his side of the story - one which needed telling, and which wasn't available until he committed it to print.

An enduring classic; this one belongs on the shelf of any person who wants to thoroughly understand the Pacific War.

I first encountered this work thirty-odd years ago while doing some fairly extensive research on the early years of World War II in the South Pacific. My original copy of this book, now in an advanced stage of deterioration, was a paperback, and the work had been out of print for a long time; therefore I was very glad to find this hardback reprint.

It's important to remember that the author is a product of a different culture, and within the context of that culture, the product of a different time; inevitably his writing style reflects those differences. Readers who anticipate the smooth style of Robert Leckie, E.B. Sledge, or Samuel Eliot Morison may find Hara's narrative a bit slower, perhaps a little more taxing. Nonetheless, the rewards are worth the extra attention.

In 1941 the Imperial Japanese Navy was the queen of the Pacific. The IJN had never lost a battle. It's seamen had been forged in a crucible of exacting, intense, even brutal training, in which the deaths of sailors were considered a regrettable but otherwise inconsequential matter. They were tough, seasoned, highly motivated, and - on the surface of it at least - contemptuous of death. Moreover, Japan had already been at war for some years, so their ranks included many veterans already blooded.

Hara's story as an officer, a leader of such men in the IJN, humanizes the face of the enemy somewhat, provides an alternative script to events we thought we already knew, but does not greatly illuminate the interested Western mind in those matters which have rendered the Eastern mind puzzling to us. This can be a little offputting; you know how we love explanations. But then, this is a combat officer's narrative, so maybe we shouldn't expect much instruction beyond the facts, as he understood them, surrounding combat . . .

Hara takes us into the workings of the IJN's command system and strategies. He is unstinting in his criticism of the ineffective policies that wasted time, lives, and materiel and which, in his view, cost Japan the war. He names names and leaves no sacred cow unassailed, up to and even beyond the nearly-never-assailed Isoroku Yamamoto. His descriptions of the counterproductive, steel-rigid behavioral codes that governed conduct among officers in Imperial Japan's military establishment leave us wondering . . .

But far from being merely a rant against foolishness and even outright incompetence in high places, his account is rich with first-person battle stories from a perspective a notch or two above the station of the ordinary seaman. Even in his conservative style, these accounts are riveting.

Unfortunately personal accounts are famously prone to errors, and Hara commits a couple of his own. I might note as an example his claim that his ship sank the USS Helena (CL50) at the pell mell naval action off Guadalcanal in the wee hours of November 13, 1942. Perhaps we should not judge Hara too harshly in this mistake; this was an intense, confused engagement that Samuel Eliot Morison described as "a vicious, hull-to-hull slugfest, the likes of which have not been seen since the days of sail."

(As it happens, my father was manning a 5-inch mount aboard Helena in the battle cited, and I am prepared to assert unequivocally that Helena survived the battle relatively unhurt. She continued to aggravate the Japanese until the Battle of Kula Gulf in July, 1943, where she actually was sunk. I am surprised that Hara's editors allowed such errors to pass without comment.)

I might further note that I feel Hara is rather parochial in his perception of certain events. He dismisses the infamous Japanese "Rape of Nanking" as having been over-reported and sensationalized, and - as freely as he castigates the tactical and strategic decisions of the high command - he never suggests that his nation was culpable in its imperialist ambitions or its treatment of other peoples. It seems his regret does not extend beyond the fact that Japan lost the war, and he never bothers himself with ethical questions concerning why they were at war in the first place.

Despite these few flaws, however, I have no reservations about recommending this book to those with an interest in the topic. History is a never ending voyage of discovery. Books like this add depth to our perceptions and justify the journey.

Conclusion: For the student of the War in the Pacific, this book is an essential. Even in its drawbacks it provides an example of what our Japanese enemy understood as truth in those days of bitter combat, and how he experienced his war.

The casual reader looking for a "rollicking good tale" might find himself frustrated by the unfamiliar pace of the narrative. Those looking deeper will likely find an engrossing, possibly even disturbing, read.

Growing up, I read as much as I could of the Pacific Theater during World War II. I was disappointed that so much was available from the U.S. side, with very little published on the Japanese side. Of course one reason for that was so many Japanese died during the war. So it was a great pleasure to find this book. Hara fought in almost every major surface engagement during the war, and still lived to tell about it. As another reviewer wrote, Hara gets into some of the technical aspects, notably his work before the war on the "Long Lance" torpedo. This weapon was one of the few systems that was superior to the allies- and was a surprise to them in 1941. It had extremely long range and a large warhead and was used with devestating effect during the night battles around Guadalcanal, many of which Hara was an eyewitness of.
In short, if you are interested in WW2 Naval History, this book is a "must have" for your library.

"Japanese Destroyer Captain", as the title may imply, is a totally different military tale. Captain Hara gives his readers an entirely unique insight toward the WW2 naval war in the Pacific. JDC was written in 1967, when memories were still intact and relatively fresh. Two items become obvious immediately: Captain Hara was a careful and conscientious skipper who cared about the welfare of his crew. He also maintains respect for his adversary- the United States Navy. The reader could almost let it pass that the author was our military foe.

Early in the text, author Hara criticizes the Washington Conference of 1921, which severely limited the post WW1 size of the future Japanese Navy. Japan had sided with the United States during that conflict. Hara reports that soon after, the U.S. first became viewed as a "potential enemy".

Author Hara takes the reader into battle. This reviewer was startled to read of the importance of tactics and maneuver in Naval combat. Ships did not simply stand and fight! Hara's descriptions of the naval conflicts surrounding the battle for control of the highly strategic island of Guadalcanal are riveting. The author credits his ship "Amatsukaze", with sinking the cruiser "Juneau" and severely damaging the flagship "San Francisco", skippered by the immortal Daniel T. Callaghan. On the "Juneau" were the 5 Sullivan brothers, from Waterloo, Iowa. Hara also relates how his destroyer sunk a US sub when that vessel violated light discipline at night.

Another surprising highlight of JDC is the author's direct and often personal criticisms of the high command of the Japanese Imperial Navy: > JIN Minister Admiral Shigetaro Shimada is termed a "Tojo stooge". > The famous Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto is accused of committing "a series of strategic and tactical blunders after the Battle of Midway". > Admiral Nobutake Kondo is termed a "misfit". > Hara also refers to the "stupidity of our high command". The reader will quickly get a portrait of a frustrated skipper reporting to a ring of rigid, inflexible JIN higher ups. In fairness to those gentlemen, it has to be noted that they have no opportunity on these pages to defend themselves. Had Admiral Yamamoto survived the War, he would surely have his own story. One wonders what Japanese readers thought of such brutal honesty directed at their former military leaders.

JDC includes some fine maps and interesting photos, though readers may wish for more of them. We must remember that these come from "the other side". This reader enjoyed the battle diagrams, especially the one for Guadalcanal-though he cannot claim to have fully understood them. The 3 appendices are a high point-not simply filler. One is the story of one Lieutenant (j.g.) Jack Kennedy and the "P.T. 109". The last is a before/after chart of naval strength and wartime losses. One wonders why Japan ever went to war! The final call for JDC is a solid 5 stars. It seems trite to term such a serious work "different" but this one is. WW2 and Naval aficionados owe it to themselves to pursue this one. And Japanese readers may realize a true eye opener on their nation's past activities and wartime leadership.

i first read this book 40 years ago and have recently completed it for a third time. excellent primary source account from a japanese perspective during ww2. an exceptional translation and the author's story make j.d.c. more a story of fate and luck rather than one of duty and war. a fine addition to anyone's book collection, not just those with an interest in ww2.

If you want an unwaveringly objective opinion from the other side, the story of smart, brave, and yes, lucky destroyer skipper, then this is your book. A funny, informative, and exciting read. What more can you ask? Oh, and one more thing, you'll find yourself growing fond of this former antagonist right from the start!

I remember reading this book about 20 or 30 years ago. It is still impressive. If you are interested in WW2 naval history, you will find this book fascinating because of its unique perspective from the "other side". Captain Hara took part in the battle of the Java Sea, many of the crucial battles in the Solomon Islands, and also was commanding one of the ships accompanying the Battleship Yamato on its suicide mission. His insights into Japanese fighting methods and the confusion that often reigned in their high command offer a unique view of how they fought and why they ultimately lost.