Isoroku Yamamoto

Biography

Isoroku Yamamoto was born in Nagaoka in 1884 and graduated from the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy in 1904. During the Russo-Japanese War he was wounded at the Battle of Tsushima and lost two fingers of his left hand. He went on to the Naval Staff College and was promoted to commander in 1919.

From 1919 to 1921 he studied at Harvard University while serving as naval attaché in Washington, and he returned there as attaché from 1926 to 1928. These years convinced him that Japan could not match American industry and oil in a long war. In 1924 he switched from gunnery to naval aviation, later commanding the cruiser Isuzu, the carrier Akagi and the First Carrier Division, and he attended the London naval arms talks of 1930 and 1935 as a technical delegate.

As vice minister of the navy from 1936, Yamamoto opposed the war in China and the alliance with Germany and Italy, and he apologised to the American ambassador after Japanese aircraft sank the gunboat Panay in 1937. His views drew death threats from nationalists. On 30 August 1939 he became commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet. Ordered to prepare for war with the United States, he planned the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor of December 1941, which was followed by months of Japanese successes, the defeat at Midway in June 1942 and the long struggle for Guadalcanal.

In April 1943 American codebreakers decrypted the schedule of his inspection tour of the Solomon Islands, and on 18 April US fighters shot down his aircraft near Bougainville, killing him. He was posthumously promoted to marshal admiral.