These two operations strengthened Yamamoto in his belief that the further acquisition of territory was not of consequence, and that any action which distracted Japanese power from its main preoccupations was dangerous. At his insistence, it was decided that Japan must concentrate its efforts on the destruction of what was left of the sea power of the Western Allies, especially of the American Pacific Fleet. He, who had inspired the raid on Pearl Harbor, was under no illusion about Japan’s hopeless position if the war was prolonged, or until Japan had gained the full advantage which had been hoped for in that bombardment. At the moment when Japan at home was still exulting in the mastery of the lands in the South Seas, he saw only the danger preparing for it in the American dockyards. If the United States had the time to bring its economic strength into play, and to translate this into warships, the United States would be irresistible. Japan could find safety only by striking again, and at once.
Yamamoto had his mind set upon enticing the United States Pacific Fleet out to its destruction by his numerically superior forces. He had little option but to attempt this. His defensive line, 3,000 miles long, was in no sense a barrier impervious to enemy task forces advancing westwards across the Pacific. United States naval operations in the Atlantic and in the Caribbean had deprived the US Pacific Fleet of the superior numerical strength that had figured so largely in pre-war calculations. Nevertheless, United States task forces could be expected to penetrate the Japanese perimeter soon and at any point. Only a dynamic, not static, defence stood any chance of victory in the Pacific. Yamamoto perceived that the only hope of the Imperial Navy lay in luring those task forces into well-laid traps. To that end he formulated a masterful plan. It would incorporate features of Japan’s traditional naval strategy, rehearsed a thousand times in Japanese blackboard and table-top exercises, a strategy based upon an attrition of the enemy by auxiliary forces prior to a main engagement from which there would be no escape. It would manifest all the intricacy and counterpoint that the Japanese had learnt from Chinese classical studies of the art of war. The rather simpler and more hidebound dogmas of Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan and the strictures of Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond, although understood and appreciated by the Japanese, would be expected to limit the initiative of the Americans, who would find themselves mystified, befuddled and demoralized by the dazzling synchronization and complexity that the Japanese attack would display. It was to be an operation, then, well worthy of this historic occasion in the destiny of nations.
Yamamoto urged, and despite strong dissent from the Naval General Staff had it accepted, that Japan’s next move should be a conquest of Midway, a small coral outcrop composed of two tiny islands less than 1,200 acres in size, linked together to form a circular atoll located near the geographical centre of the North Pacific, where the prevailing oceanic currents sweep 1,100 miles west by north-west of Pearl Harbor along the arc of the Hawaiian Islands. The Doolittle Raid, quite apart from its other consequences, had convinced the Japanese Government and High Command that Yamamoto had been right all along in advocating the importance of depriving the United States of its commanding position in Hawaii.
Hawaii, then, as recent scholarship now shows, was the ultimate objective of the great strategical game that ended in disaster for Japan at Midway. In any event, there were other sufficiently compelling reasons for the Japanese to regard the capture of Midway as a major prize worthy of the risks and expense involved in the operation. If Midway fell into Japan’s hands, it would be ideal for mounting Japanese raids against the Pacific coast of America. Yamamoto counted on the United States accepting that its defence was of vital interest, and that it would bring out what was left of the American Navy in its defence. In the battle which would result, he reckoned on sinking the American carriers; and this was the main objective of the expedition. The force which chance had put beyond Japan’s reach at Pearl Harbor he would now succeed in driving into action.
Another motive which also weighed with him was to deprive America of the possible use of Midway Island as the airfield for the bombardment of Japan. Though Midway Island had played no part in the recent Doolittle air raid, Midway was only 2,500 miles from Tokyo. Yamamoto felt himself heavily burdened by the duty of protecting the capital of his lord the Emperor from the indignity of bombardment. Everything pointed to Midway Island as the next target at which he should strike. Yamamoto hoped that if the Combined Fleet decisively won the Battle of Midway, as he expected, he could ride the crest of his personal popularity to induce Prime Minister Tōjō to offer the United States a generous peace on terms that the United States could not afford to refuse. Yamamoto’s plan involved the extension of Japan’s defensive perimeter 2,000 miles into the Pacific through a balletic sequence of offensives executed by half a dozen task forces.
The United States had been in occupation of Midway Island since as long ago as 1867; but it was only in 1938, two years after the expiration of the Washington Treaty limitations, that it recognized its importance. It began to spend large sums of money in fortifying it as a kind of outpost of Pearl Harbor. It was to prove one of the chief theatres of the Pacific War. It was a small coral atoll; the colours, in the dazzling sunshine, were so bright and assertive that they wearied the eye. In the years just before the war, the Americans had built a small but very up-to-date hotel. Its public rooms had, uncannily, the feeling of mountain hotels in, say, Austria; it was strange because the nearest mountains were thousands of miles away; the illusion was heightened because the views from the hotel rooms might have been alpine. The vivid white of the ubiquitous coral might have been snow. The strangest phenomenon of the island was its prehistoric appearance. On all sides were small, gnarled, dried-up, gaunt trees, of stilted and incredible shape, looking like fossils. The whole place was unnaturally silent. There were noises of traffic and motor cars; but behind this a great hush prevailed. The impression was unreal and nightmarish. This was now to be the scenery for one of the greatest battles of the war.
The Japanese assembled a huge fleet. It included eight aircraft-carriers of which four were very large, eleven battleships, twenty-two cruisers, sixty-five destroyers and twenty-one submarines. It was the greatest fleet concentration which had been known in the history of the Pacific. The 145 ships in the fleet were divided into no less than sixteen divisions under four separate commands each assigned a role in Yamamoto’s grand strategy to envelop the American fleet. Admiral Nagumo’s First Carrier Striking Force, in which were four aircraft-carriers, two battleships, one heavy cruiser, one light cruiser and eleven destroyers, was to make for Midway. They would operate in close support of Vice-Admiral Kondō’s Midway Invasion Force, consisting of two battleships, one light carrier, two seaplane carriers, eight heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, twenty-one destroyers and one patrol boat. Under the shadow of Kondō’s formidable gunnery was a convoy of fifteen transports under Rear-Admiral Tanaka Raizé carrying an Army regimental force of 3,000 troops and two battalions of marines to form the necessary landing party. Following this, 300 miles in the rear, lurked an even more powerful surface fleet, designated Main Force. It comprised seven battleships, one light carrier, two seaplane carriers (one loaded with midget submarines), three light cruisers and twenty-one destroyers. Very oddly, Yamamoto, who this time did not confine himself to making the general plan of action and supervising it from his headquarters in Japan, placed himself aboard the 72,000-ton monster battleship Yamato in command of this section. It was held in reserve to take whatever action might be required after the invasion of Midway, but its intended role was to spring the trap when the United States main battlefleet emerged from its lair at Pearl Harbor to break up the landings. The fourth section of the Japanese fleet, Northern Force, commanded by Vice-Admiral Hosogaya Boshiro and grouped round two carriers supported by three heavy cruisers, three light cruisers, an armed merchant cruiser, twelve destroyers and three troop transports, was to detach itself from the main body and to move up to the Aleutian Islands, attacking and landing on some selected places three days before the invasion of Midway. This was included in the general plan as the complication and the feint which nearly all Japanese plans contained. The concept was that the United States would divide whatever forces were available to it, and one force would sail for the North Pacific in search of this decoy.
The plan as a whole was a re-run of the Battle of Jutland, in which the stage encompassed the whole of the mid-Pacific rather than the confines of the North Sea. As in the classical, time-honoured battle plan upon which Japan had relied prior to 1941, an advance screen of Japanese submarines, spread across the line of the American advance, would weaken and demoralize the American main fleet as it sailed towards its obliteration in a final duel to the death. Any misjudgement of the American response on the part of Yamamoto and his commanders, however, would doom the Japanese fleet to the destruction of its widely dispersed divisions. It was a calculated risk which went contrary to Admiral Mahan’s injunction against divisions into inferior fleets. It ignored Admiral Richmond’s reminders that larger capital ships and carriers were not necessarily more capable of performing their mission than smaller ones. It was, however, a gamble worthy of the player, and it went wrong.
From the start there were grave doubts about the expedition among the Japanese Naval Staff, as indeed there were, privately, in the upper echelons of the Combined Fleet. There was anxiety about the deficient preparation of officers, about their inadequate briefing, about the speed with which the expedition was launched, about the lack of time for adequate digestion of the lessons of the Battle of the Coral Sea, about the wisdom of the tactics which had been used in that, about the security which had been observed, even about the morale of some of the fleet. The senior officers were despondent at the boasting and indiscipline of some of the younger men. The Navy pilots, whom Yamamoto had trained, were held in suspicion by the rest of the Navy, and this was not relieved by their tendency to regard themselves as a race apart. Especially by the more responsible officers, Yamamoto was criticized for the speed which he demanded. This meant that the two powerful aircraft-carriers which had been badly damaged in the Battle of the Coral Sea could not take part; they had to be in dock under repair for several months. Their absence was severely felt. So was the fact that the remaining carriers and their crews, worked to the limits of their endurance since 7 December, were sorely in need of extensive refurbishment and rest. But Yamamoto felt that the political situation required immediate action, and everything was subordinated to this.
The sailing of the fleet from Hashira through the Bungo Channel on 21 May for two days of fleet exercises was one of the most spectacular sights in any country during the war years. There were cheers and enthusiasm from the considerable crowd who witnessed it. The Japanese, though they lived with extreme frugality on all their expeditions, contrasting spectacularly in this with the standards of well-being required by British and American forces, observed ritual and ceremony for commemorating the start of a major operation. On their return to their anchorages on 25 May, Yamamoto gathered together his senior commanders to issue them with final instructions. On 27 May, Navy Day, celebrations were held in harbour to mark the anniversary of Admiral Tōgō’s victory over the Russians at Tsushima. All present were conscious that the destiny of Japan now lay with them. The sailing of a fleet which was intended to complete the work of Pearl Harbor and to destroy the capacity of the American Navy to restrain Japan in Asia, was blessed by all the forms of Shinto, the Japanese state religion, and also, though less wholeheartedly, by Buddhism. Cups of sake were drunk which were a present from the Japanese Emperor. Early on the morning of 28 May, the first elements of Yamamoto’s forces weighed anchor, sailing away from Hashira and from other harbours for their appointed positions. For two days, other ships followed at pre-set intervals. The weather was fair, and along the shores, where people once more gathered to watch in awe as the ships departed, it was widely rumoured that the destination of the fleet was Midway. Yamamoto, however, hoped that the complexity of his plan would disguise his ultimate objective. He knew from intercepted radio transmissions that American submarines reported his departure. Western scholars, reading of these scenes, may remember the account by Thucydides of the sailing of another fleet on what was meant to be the culminating operation of a war 2,300 years before:
The ships being now manned, and everything with which they meant to sail being put on board, the trumpet commanded silence, and the prayers customary before putting out to sea were offered, not in each ship by itself, but by all together to the voice of the herald; and bowls of wine were mixed through all the armament, and libations made by the soldiers and their officers in gold and silver goblets. In their prayers joined also the crowds on shore, the citizens and all others that wished them well. The hymns sung and the libations finished, they put out to sea, and sang. The first ships then raced each other in columns as far as Aegina.
The battle came on 4 June 1942. The Americans had been better informed than Japanese Intelligence allowed for, and had again been admirably served by what they were able to learn from cracking the Japanese naval codes. On 1 April the Japanese Naval General Staff had taken the precaution of distributing new codes to the fleet, but the United States Navy had recovered a set of codebooks and cipher tables from a Japanese fleet submarine sunk in shallow waters off the coast of Australia in January. This, together with the activities of a United States Navy codebreaking team based in Hawaii, had enabled the Americans to unravel vital naval ciphers that had previously eluded them. Problems in distributing the new codebooks led the Japanese to delay their introduction until 1 June. By then it was too late. The broad outlines of the Japanese plans were known (although it would take the Americans months to adapt to the new codes afterwards).
We may pause to marvel at the fact that on the other side of the globe German naval Intelligence had come to believe that the Japanese naval ciphers were being read by the Allied Powers. Their long-standing suspicions had been confirmed by documentary evidence acquired after the German surface raider Thor intercepted the Australian steamer Nankin in the Indian Ocean on its way from Sydney to Colombo on 10 May 1942: mail bags found aboard the vessel included Intelligence summaries prepared by the Combined Operations Intelligence Centre at Wellington. In spite of this hard information, the Germans remained silent, doing nothing to alert the Japanese. It was a decision which speaks volumes about the contemptuous disregard of the Germans for their most powerful ally, and it was a disastrous misjudgement.
The Americans, then, and their British Allies were aware of what Japan had gone to ingenious lengths to hide: that Yamamoto’s main objective was Midway, and that the assault on the Aleutians was a diversion. Yamamoto was right in supposing that the Americans would fight, even though their Navy had not yet recovered from Pearl Harbor, and was manifestly not ready; he was wrong in thinking that they would divide their inadequate fleet, and would send a part to hunt for the raiders in the Aleutians. The Americans could assemble on the spot three aircraft-carriers: in the whole American Navy at this time there were seven. One of these carriers was the Yorktown, which had been so heavily damaged in the Coral Sea that the Japanese believed it sunk, and had accredited themselves with a groundless victory. In fact it escaped to Hawaii, and, while the Japanese ships in a similar plight had entered the Japanese shipyards for thorough repairs, and were out of action for some months, the Hawaiian shipyards, under pressure of the news about Midway, made the Yorktown fit for fighting again in three days, though their first estimate had been that it would take three months: 1,400 men worked on her round the clock. The Americans also assembled eight cruisers and fifteen destroyers. The Japanese had therefore a more formidable resistance to overcome than they had thought it possible for the United States to assemble, especially as they also underestimated the American strength in aircraft and troops on Midway.
The poor state of Japanese naval Intelligence at Midway is illustrated by an expectation at the Imperial General Headquarters that the Invasion Force would have to overcome 750 American troops and 60 land-based enemy aircraft. It was anticipated that the 5,000 Japanese marines and close to 234 operational Japanese naval aircraft available to cover them would quickly overwhelm the defenders. In fact, however, Midway was protected by a battalion of more than 3,000 marines and 126 aircraft, and since the 230 aircraft in the combined task forces of Rear-Admiral Raymond Spruance and Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher were lying in wait for the Japanese to strike, the odds were stacked heavily against the success of the invasion.
Bad preliminary Intelligence on the Japanese side was compounded by haphazard fleet reconnaissance during the operation. The over-confidence felt by the Japanese naval forces affected every aspect of the battle in its initial phases. Luck favoured the Americans as it had at the Battle of the Coral Sea. Ever since March, Kawanishi flying boats based in the Marshall Islands had flown periodic night-time reconnaissance missions over Pearl Harbor, hazardous undertakings made possible only by refuelling from big I-class submarines at an isolated anchorage known as French Frigate Shoals. Between 27–30 May, however, while the USS Yorktown was under repair at Pearl Harbor, the submarines signalled Tokyo that a tanker, two American destroyers and two flying boats were patrolling the reef where the rendezvous was expected to take place: the Americans, having discovered what the Japanese were doing, were determined to put a stop to it. On 30 May the Naval General Staff ordered the flights suspended. Unaccountably, the Japanese had failed to provide a fall-back plan and no attempt was made to divert the submarine to nearby Necker Island where refuelling could have taken place. Had a flight been possible on the following day, the Japanese would have found Pearl Harbor empty: the hunted had turned hunters. Meanwhile Yamamoto had sent out thirteen I-class submarines to form a picket line between Pearl Harbor and Midway. They were intended to detect the approach of the American fleet and then to attack it. They arrived too late: the Americans were already in the vicinity of Midway. Although Yamamoto had not expected to surprise the Americans at Midway, the Japanese Fleet continued to remain in the dark concerning the size and location of the US Pacific Fleet.
The Japanese Navy had no radar. That Japan, and that Admiral Yamamoto, who had espoused everything to do with the air, had neglected to acquaint himself with this invention, is astonishing. The fact must detract something from Yamamoto’s reputation for alertness. Radar had already been widely used in Britain for more than two years, and a form of it was also known in Germany. The Germans sent the Japanese two radar sets by submarine, but either they did not send technicians with the apparatus, or these made no impression upon the Japanese. This incident, together with the Germans’ failure to advise the Japanese about the insecurity of the Japanese ciphers, shows how slight and ineffective was much of the technical cooperation of the two Powers. In the present case the deficiencies of Intelligence, working without adequate equipment, were to exact a price.
As the two American task forces awaited the approaching Japanese, a US Navy Catalina PBY flying boat, only thirty miles within the extreme range of his aircraft, early on the morning of 3 June located Rear-Admiral Tanaka Raizō’s Second Fleet Occupation Escort Force 670 miles west of Midway. A few hours later, nine land-based B17 bombers attacked this force, scoring no hits. Before the B17s returned, four Catalinas left Midway in search of the same targets. In a moonlit night attack, they torpedoed a tanker and raked one of Tanaka’s fifteen troop transports with machine-gun fire. As the Catalina crews neared home, their radios reported that Midway itself was under enemy air attack.
At 4.30 a.m., 108 Japanese aircraft prepared for take-off aboard Admiral Nagumo’s four carriers in fine weather and calm seas 220 miles west of Midway. Within a quarter of an hour, 36 Aichi high-level bombers and 36 Nakajima torpedo bombers accompanied by 36 Zero fighters were airborne. Half an hour later, a Catalina reconnaissance aircraft sighted the Akagi and flashed its location to Midway. The USS Enterprise overheard the exchange and passed the message to the USS Yorktown. Another Catalina reported sighting the incoming enemy aircraft heading for Midway at a distance of 150 miles from the atoll. Within minutes radar installations on Midway began tracking the Japanese aircraft. At 5.53 a.m. every American aircraft on Midway capable of flight was ordered into the air to meet the enemy.
A motley collection of 6 Navy Avenger torpedo bombers, 16 Marine Corps Dauntless dive bombers, 16 Army B17s and 4 strange torpedo-carrying B26s left Midway in a splendidly brave but vain effort to destroy Nagumo’s Carrier Strike Force. They caused little direct damage. Few of them survived.
The air raid on Midway went ahead at 6.34 a.m. In the one-sided aerial combat that ensued, 17 of the 27 hopelessly outdated Buffaloes and Wildcat fighter aircraft flown by US Marine Corps airmen perished. Of the remaining 10, 7 sustained such severe damage that they would never fly again. None of the Japanese aircraft fell victim to the American fliers, a tribute to the skills of the Japanese and to the performance of the latest Japanese Zeke fighters (which were incomparably superior to the Zeros that had proved so successful in the opening days of the Pacific War). Nevertheless, exceptionally accurate anti-aircraft fire took a toll of 38 Japanese aircraft and disabled a further 29. That left Nagumo with only 167 aircraft to match against the 230 of the American carriers. The advantages of experience and better aircraft still lay with the Japanese, but it was apparent that Admiral Yamamoto had been unfortunate in frittering away a third of his total air combat forces by detaching the Ryūjō and Junyō to the Aleutian Campaign, the Hōshō to his Main Force battleships and the Zuiho to Admiral Kondō’s Second Fleet.
The first that the Japanese admiral commanding the aircraft-carrier, who was again Nagumo, knew of the proximity of the Americans was when, about 9 a.m. on 4 June, he was surprised by an American raid when he had his aircraft assembled on deck for a raid on Midway, but when they had not yet taken off. As it appeared afterwards, the fate of the mighty armada, of the Midway expedition, and of the possibility of a future descent on the American coast, was decided in five minutes. Nagumo’s carrier was torpedoed at this time, and three of the four carriers in his Strike Force were mortally struck. The battle continued all that day, very similar to the Coral Sea, with the two navies out of sight of each other; this time the Japanese pilots, in contrast to the Americans, proved definitely inferior. The action was a confused affair of aircraft from each side which savagely attacked the others, and then pounced on each other’s carriers when they were inadequately guarded.
The Japanese had more than their share of misfortune. Radio messages were received five minutes too late; cloud movements happened in such a way as just to obscure the movements of the enemy. But in all the confusion, it is clear that on this occasion the high commanders, and the Japanese Navy as a whole, did not display the professionalism, the power of rapid adaptation, the coolness amid the horrors of air combat at sea, which were necessary to bring victory in this kind of action.
Apart from the deficiencies in their communications equipment, the defects in the Japanese Fleet were personal rather than mechanical. Japan did not lose the battle because of the engineering superiority of the United States. In the actual fighting, the Japanese aircraft, the Zeke fighter, which was first tried out at Midway, was the best plane on either side.
Skilful shiphandling by the Japanese, far superior skill by the Japanese pilots in their even more superior aircraft – all of this was set at nought by reconnaissance failures and errors in judgement of Admiral Yamamoto, Admiral Nagumo and their subordinate commanders. Yamamoto himself cannot escape blame for his failure to obtain reliable Intelligence confirming his assumptions that the Yorktown had perished in the Coral Sea and that the Hornet and Enterprise had remained in the South-West Pacific. Equally, he alone had the responsibility of determining the moment when the screen of submarines should take their appointed place in the line: it is difficult to fathom why he failed to dispatch them earlier. These errors were compounded by his inability to change the plan once it was set in motion. He and his subordinate commanders were handicapped by a completely inadequate radio communications system. Even after his forces were detected, Yamamoto imposed a radio silence throughout the battle; he was virtually a spectator of the action. Thus Yamamoto, his fleets widely and needlessly dispersed, condemned himself to impotence in the kind of battle which he had for so long preached as inevitable at the stage which naval strategy had reached at the time.
The American fleet, as it appeared later, did not realize for some time how complete and profound their victory had been. In the confusion of the conflict, they assumed for some time that two of the carriers, which had in fact been sunk, had escaped and were on their way back to Japan. Ultimately the facts were established and they were these. Within the space of twenty-four hours, Japan had lost all four of its largest aircraft-carriers (the fourth sank later in the day) and a heavy cruiser. Another heavy cruiser suffered serious damage, two destroyers were disabled, and three further vessels including a battleship were slightly damaged. The Japanese had lost a total of 332 aircraft, including 10 flying boats, 6 aircraft shot down by anti-aircraft fire during the Midway air strike, 12 fighters that failed to return from combat air patrol, 24 aircraft lost in attacking the American carriers, and another 280 (including 70 partially dismantled fighter aircraft which the carriers were ferrying to Midway) that went down when their carriers sank. A total of 3,500 Japanese sailors lost their lives.
By contrast, the American losses were the Yorktown, which was finally sunk, a destroyer, 38 shore-based aircraft, 109 carrier-based aircraft, and 307 lives. A number of ground installations on Midway were destroyed and others were temporarily put out of action.
The nature and source of the losses reveals the scale of the Japanese misfortune. The Imperial Navy lost a high percentage of its best pilots not in air combat (where they continued to excel) but aboard the carriers where the Americans caught them rearming their aircraft. Others dropped one by one into the sea when their fuel supplies were exhausted and there was nowhere else left to land. These airmen, many veterans of the China Incident and years of training, were irreplacable. Midway marked a turning-point in the fortunes of the Pacific War, and the Japanese Navy never again fought from a position of strength.
Admiral Yamamoto, with the Main Force of battleships, made some effort at retrieving the disaster. He ordered Vice-Admiral Tanaka’s Invasion Force back to Japan before it had even attempted to storm the Island of Midway. He recalled the aircraft-carriers which had been sent to the Aleutians, and resumed the hunt for the American carriers, which had destroyed his own fleet. But, in the end, he broke off the battle, partly, it seems, because he felt he could no longer rely on Japanese Intelligence, and because he wisely decided not to risk his battleships further. He brought the Combined Fleet home to Japan, reorganized it, and with an oddly disembodied sense of purpose, laid plans for what should be done next.
Only the Alaskan venture went ahead to achieve a modest success before it petered out in aimless sailings. An American weather station, fuel dumps, a handful of vessels and a few aircraft were attacked at Dutch Harbor on the eastern end of the Aleutians. Japanese troops made unopposed landings on Attu and Kiska at the extreme western end of the island chain and thereby had the distinction of becoming the only enemy garrisons ever to establish themselves on the soil of the Western Hemisphere at any time during the Second World War. Without the strength of the Combined Fleet to give it support, it was to be only a question of time before it would wither on the vine. It was a thoroughly bad detachment. Eventually the Americans were sufficiently distracted by the bait to tie up tens of thousands of troops and considerable naval forces in what became a protracted effort to recapture the two islands. But from the Japanese point of view it became costly to maintain the garrisons, which anyway suffered excruciating hardships. Any small gains produced by their fortitude and endurance, however, were as nothing compared to the importance of the losses sustained by the Japanese at Midway.
The Japanese Government, very prudently, did not allow the shock of the defeat and the collapse of hopes to become public. Its first aim was to hush up the defeat. Admiral Kondō Nobutake, to whom Yamamoto had handed command of Admiral Nagumo’s carriers after the latter’s disgrace, said: ‘Our forces suffered a reverse so decisive and so grave that details of it were kept as a secret to all but a limited circle, even within the Japanese Navy. Even after the war, few among high ranking officers were familiar with the details of the Midway operation.’∗ A Japanese naval captain complained of the way that the returning sailors were held incommunicado. The wounded were brought ashore after dark, and taken to hospital through the rear entrances. He was himself among those who suffered. The experience is described in Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan by Fuchida and Okumiya.† ‘My room was in complete isolation,’ he says. ‘No nurses or medical attendants were allowed in, and I could not communicate with the world outside. All the wounded from Midway were treated like this. It was like being a prisoner of war among your own people.’ After the Japanese surrender in 1945, all the papers that the Japanese authorities could find about the defeat, classified as top secret, were burned. The extent and gravity of the disaster which Japan had suffered did not become plain to the Japanese public until publication of accounts of the battle by survivors in the course of the 1950s.
The long run of sensational Japanese victories, bought at such little cost, had come finally to an end. The crippling of the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, and the blows at the Royal Navy, had all been made at the ridiculously small expense of the loss of four destroyers. This period was over. At Midway a technically smaller American fleet had challenged the passage of the Japanese Imperial Navy, had defeated it, had turned it back. It had lost prestige hopelessly, it had lost the élan of victory, and the margin of its losses turned decisively against it. It had forfeited its ability to strike where it chose, and to govern the course of the war. Having lost this initiative, it had condemned Japan to convert the war into a holding operation – this, as Admiral Yamamoto had warned, condemned Japan to defeat by the United States as soon as the American economic mobilization was complete.