Bloody Battle in the Pacific

Since the Meiji Restoration, Japan had continually expanded abroad through military force to make up for its economic weakness. As a result, the military held decisive sway over national policy, and the policies it pursued only deepened Japan’s faith in force. Many of Japan’s foreign campaigns after the Meiji Restoration could be called gambles with the nation’s fate, and Japan was indeed fortunate: it won both the First Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War. The September 18 Incident of 1931 was another such gamble, and victory came easily.

Each successive victory brought further expansion, and expansion demanded enormous resources. To seize more, Japan had to expand still further. This cycle of positive feedback made it inevitable that Japan would attack China, a poor and weakened continental power at the time. It also made a direct clash with the United States, then the world’s most powerful nation, inevitable.

Starting a war is easy. The hard part is figuring out how to end it. The balance of power between the two sides was so lopsided that, aside from Japan’s fanatics, few could have believed Japan might win. Even Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the Combined Fleet and the man who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor, did not believe Japan could achieve final victory. All his plans focused on destroying the main strength of the U.S. Pacific Fleet as quickly as possible and forcing peace talks, in the hope of preserving as many Japanese interests as he could.

But people make plans, and fate laughs. The United States was far more determined than Japan had anticipated. Its immense industrial base gave it military strength that kept it overwhelmingly superior throughout its desperate struggle with Japan.

Yet even such a vast advantage had to be turned into victory by the generals and warriors on the battlefield. And so we witnessed the flawless surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the Battle of the Coral Sea, humanity’s first carrier battle, the brilliant underdog victory at Midway, the Green Hell of Guadalcanal, the test of endurance between both sides in the South Pacific, the Battle of the Philippine Sea, the largest carrier battle in history, the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the greatest naval battle ever fought, the inferno of Tokyo, and the dawn of the atomic age.