Customer Reviews

Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan, the Japanese Navy's Story

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is a splendid analysis of the Battle of Midway as seen from the Japanese side. The authors had firsthand knowledge of the plans, actions, mistakes, strengths, and weaknesses of the Imperial Japanese Navy in connection with the Battle of Midway, and they pull no punches telling us about the battle. The Battle of Midway turned the tide of the Pacific War for all time against Japan, as an outnumbered and outmatched, but plucky, U.S. Navy inflicted a devastating defeat on the greatest carrier force ever assembled up to that time. This book goes far in explaining how this miracle took place. The authors tell us about the dithering of the Japanese commander as to whether to strike Midway again, or to strike the American fleet, or do a hasty strike against the American fleet before all his planes were recovered--and how this indecision helped lose a battle that almost could not be lost. So too did the sloppiness of the deck crews, who stacked bombs and torpedos carelessly on the decks of the carriers as the Admiral kept changing his mind--this ordinance of course exploded when the American dive bombers attacked, ensuring that three Japanese carriers went to the bottom, rather than having a chance of surviving through damage control. The book is filled with excellent details like this.

The authors also do a fine job explaining the motivations and outlooks of the Japanese leaders, including the great famed Admiral Yamamoto--who evidently reacted to the Doolittle Raid by pushing for the attack on Midway. This key decision signed Japan's death warrant as regards the Pacific war. Had Japan instead turned west and attacked Russia, this could have changed the entire complexion of the war, as Germany might have prevailed against Russia, forcing the US to divert even more resources in its "Germany First" policy. The authors reveal how close Japan may have been to adopting this strategy.

This book impresses the reader not just with the mistakes the Japanese made, but also of the tenacity, skill, and competence of the former Japanese foe. The book was written in the early 1950s and the authors' viewpoints are somewhat overly colored by the aftermath of defeat--Japan had not yet shaken off the trauma of defeat and this pessimism about Japan's prospects is readily apparent. I trust the authors lived to see that in reality the Japanese people won, not lost, the war by becoming a prosperous and democratic economic powerhouse.

Incidentally, it appeared clear to me that the movie "Battle of Midway" with Henry Fonda was essentially based on this book.

This is a fine analysis of the most important battle of the Pacific War and constitutes essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand the Battle of Midway and the reasons that Japan was defeated in both the battle and the war.

Many accounts of the battle of Midway have been written from the American point of view and of the reasons for our success--code breaking and trickery to reveal the target, the amazing repair job done on the Yorktown, and American adaptation to battle conditions plus a little bit of luck. Little is known, however, of the Japanese view of the battle.

A few years after Midway two Japanese Naval aviators, Mitsuo Fuchida and Masatake Okumiya, wrote a scathing critique of the battle, exposing Japanese overconfidence, the rigidity of Japanese decision-making, and tarnishing in so doing the reputations of Admiral Yamamoto and others. Fushica's views are particularly valuable in that he was aboard the Japanese carrier Akagi during the battle, though grounded because of a recent operation. His record of the terrifying few minutes when the Dauntless dive bombers came out of the clouds to destroy the heart of the Japanese carrier fleet are invaluable, including his rescue and eventual return to Japan. Okumiya was attached to the northern force, part of the Midway operation, that attacked the fog-bound Aleutians, but who gathered much information about the battle afterwards from survivors.

The authors are harsh on the fecklessness of the Japanese naval forays into the Indian ocean which accomplished little of strategic value, the high-level conflicts in the Japanese decision-making process, and the over-confidence generated by their success at Pearl Harbor and elsewhere.
Tactics are also criticized, such as the perfunctory search plane missions to detect and locate enemy forces because the Japanese high command could not imagine that US forces might be within striking distance.

The book, reissued some years back by the Naval Institute Press, also contains footnotes that adds information not known to the Japanese authors at the time of writing.
The book is highly recommended for filling out the blanks in the battle of Midway and of adding details to the failures of Japanese strategic planning and decision-making.

This is quite a short book that was written by two Japanese one who was a flyer from the Akagi. Although a book of a little over 200 pages the book describes the attack on Pearly Harbour, the cruise of the Japanese carrier fleet in the Indian Ocean and the attack on Sri Lanka, the bombing of Darwin, the battle of the Coral Sea and Midway.

The facts around these battles have been explained in a range of other books so that there are no real surprises. What is of interest is the insight that the book gives into the process of Japanese decision making during the war.

The authors show that following the victory at Pearl Harbour the Japanese didn't know what to do. The cruise to the Indian Ocean achieved little and used a large amount of their oil reserves. The overall command simply was not able to formulate a plan. Some groups thought of invading Darwin a plan which was shelved. In the end the attack on Midway was decided on. Such a plan put the Japanese miles from home at a considerable disadvantage.

The authors go on to show how the arrogance and self-confidence in that attack doomed the Japanese fleet. The failure to properly use sighting planes, the leaving of large numbers of aircraft on deck prior to the American attack.

The book is one of the most coherent attacks on the reputation of Yamamoto that I have read. For some reason Yamamoto has had a high reputation with American writers. The record shows that although Pearl Harbor went to plan it was all down hill after that.

The book is readable and evokes the frustration of felt by Japanese fighting men at the shortcomings of their leaders.

Commander Fuchida Mitsuo, leader of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, along with co-author Okumiya Masatake, provide the most intimate Japanese account of the turning point at sea of World War II. Discussion of "victory" disease which lead to faulty dispositions and assumptions about what America would do rather than what she could do perceptively explains the disaster which the Nihon Kaigon (Imperial Japanese Navy ) experienced. The Kido Butai (First Striking Force) was destroyed as a unit at Midway, but Japanese naval airpower was not critically hurt until the Battle of Santa Cruz. This book is an absolute must for any student of the Pacific War. Even after 40 plus years, it has yet to be surpassed.

It is clear in "Midway" that, in the pursuit of Empire, Japan paid a terrible price. In its quest for the decisive fleet engagement, and in order to prevent another Doolittle raid, the Imperial Navy sought to draw out the United States Pacific Fleet by invading the tiny island of Midway. Until Midway, the Japanese were having a free hand in Asia. The Midway plan was thus tainted by hubris. First, believing in the utter invincibility of their fleet, Japanese naval planners opted for a plan which divided their forces, clearly a violation of one of the basic precepts of war. Second, they drew up an invasion plan which relegated their powerful carriers to a supporting role. This also had the effect of unmasking the battleship mentality so prevalent at the time. Third, they assumed that the enemy would act as anticipated. Fourth, in executing the plan, they somehow lost sight of their true objective: to lure the US Pacific Fleet, especially its carriers, into a vulnerable position and destroy it.

Fuchida and Okumiya place the reader on the bridge of the Akagi as she prepares to launch her airborne armada. One can only watch helplessly as the bombs begin to fall on the Japanese carriers at the moment of maximum peril, when bombs were scattered along the decks and fuel lines snaked between planes and flight personnel.

The author actually covers much wider ground than his title suggests - before proceeding to Midway he gives a detailed account of the campaigns leading up to it, starting before Pearl Harbor. This is interesting reading in itself.

His orders of battle are useful too, including the revelation that the carrier Soryu had 2 Judies aboard as fast recons, which I hadn't heard before. This is the kind of detail I like. The IJN lost 47% of its aircraft carrier tonnage at Midway, which makes it the Trafalgar of the carrier age. Fuchida still feels the pain. Definitely a recommended read, and it's well translated too.

One of Fuchida's less perceptive comments does rather stick in my mind. Writing in around 1950, he comments that his country has been completely laid low by military defeat, and he is deeply pessimistic about Japan's prospects in a world dominated by the huge economic muscle of the victors. The Japanese are, after all, he muses, a nation of craftsmen and artisans - they'll never get the hang of this massive-industrial-output lark!

Yeah, right! -- but fortunately his naval analysis skills are miles better than his futurology!

This book provides a quite open view of the battle of Midway from the Japanese viewpoint as seen after "all the facts were in." - The author seems to provide more useful information in this little paperback than do much larger hardbacks. The account is fascinating, rich in Japanese detail, well described, and goes into a what-went-wrong and why reasoning as each episode unveils itself. If you want to read about the battle of Midway in the Pacific War, this is the first book you should read.

Perhaps the definitive account of Midway. An absolutely masterful combination of historical research and gripping personal testimony. This one is made all the more interesting from its Japanese perspective. Fuchida's account of Akagi's destruction (with him on board!) reveals the horror of America's dive bombing attack and the fury of high explosives. This one is a must read! For more reviews see the "WWII Aviation Booklist" http://www.ampsc.com/~prophet/booklist.htm

The winner always writes history - right? In the case of the Battle of Midway, Mitsuo Fuchida's "The Battle That Doomed Japan" served as basically the only source material for Western historians of the battle for 50 years. Too bad it's just plain wrong - since his death in 1976, this book was essentially discredited in Japan, and recent findings have proven it as self-serving revisionism.

Fuchida's distortions are numerous and probably won't be caught by the majority of readers. He implies that the Aleutians invasion was a diversionary attack, when it was really a secondary operation tacked onto the Midway operation. He ridicules Nagumo for failing to implement a two-phase aerial search, a strategy not employed by the Japanese until more than a year later.

The most blatant revisionism, however, lies in Fuchida's distortion and simplification of the events of the morning of June 4, 1942. Recent research shows that the Japanese were still launching and recovering Combat Air Patrol fighters when the fatal dive bomber attack occurred, while Fuchida has their carriers just minutes away from launching a massive counterattack. WWII carriers couldn't recover aircraft while spotting an air strike on deck, something that Fuchida hoped we'd ignore and something that even the most scrupulous naval historians seemed to have ignored.

While this book might be short and fairly easy to read, it's undeniably long-in-the-tooth and riddled with intentional manipulations of fact. Even if he was there, there's no denying that Fuchida lied about what happened at the Battle of Midway. His conclusion that Japan lost the battle due to "Victory Disease" is a self-serving one that ignores that fact that the IJN shunned basic concepts such as damage control and anti-aircraft gunnery for years. For a better study of Japan's defeat at Midway, read "Shattered Sword," which debunks all of the myths put forth in this book.

Reading the account of Midway through the eyes of the Japanese opponent, and a key individual at that, is truly a must read for any serious student of the Pacific war. There are many books that cover the turning of the tide against the Japanese from the US point of view and worth reading, but this is the one to have a companion to any and all of them. To hear the recounting through Japanese eyes of the initial and unsuccessful aerial assaults from Midway land-based aircraft and the torpedo squadrons from Yorktown, Enterprise and Hornet is truly captivating. To see how and why it gave rise to feeling of virtual invincibility on the part of the Japanese until the unchallenged dive bombers from Enterprise and Yorktown attacked is a fine study of Japanese tactics and dogma. The dive bombers deadly success in knocking out three of the four Japanese carriers in scant moments when they had sailed undamaged from the hail of US attacks for hours is described virtually bomb by bomb. The authors describe this from the deckplates in riveting style recounting actual conversations and feelings as the pride of the Japanese Navy was suddenly aflame and suffering death throes. I have reread this part of the book many times and been spellbound each time as the events play out. These particular passages and those describing the logic leading to delays in launching aircraft and switching of ordnance make this book unique and extremely worthwhile. The rest of the book is chockfull of key insights and details as well making it a mandatory part of any serious collection. The publishers deserve credit for realizing this and keeping it in print for so many years. One of its strengths is its readability despite those years. True, the breaking of the Imperial Navy code allowed the three US carriers to be in a position to challenge the Japanese attempt to take Midway. But no codebreaking on our part substitutes for the final critical moments when both carrier forces were aware of each other and sent their best aviators to slug it out. The fourth carrier, which survived the devastating carrier dive bomber attacks, met its end later at the hands of a second strike by US carrier aircraft, but not before the surviving Japanese aircraft heavily damaged Yorktown in their last assault. The results of this battle were kept from the Japanese public and much of the military for years. It pierced the supposed invincibility of the Samurai spirit while giving the US a turning point victory and continued possession of the vital Midway atoll. I applaud the authors for their willingness to examine the Japanese defeat in detail and make no apologies or excuses.