山本 五十六

choi

Ian W Toll, A Reluctant Enemy; How an admiral who had warned against war came to plan the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. New York Times, Dec 7, 2011.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/0 ... yamamoto&st=cse

Quote:

"During the political turmoil of the 1930s, Yamamoto was a leading figure in the navy’s moderate “treaty faction,” known for its support of unpopular disarmament treaties. He criticized the mindlessly bellicose rhetoric of the ultranationalist right and opposed the radicals who used revolutionary violence and assassinations to achieve their ends. He despised the Japanese Army and its leaders, who subverted the power of civilian ministers and engineered military adventures in Manchuria and other parts of China.

"He reminded his government that Japan imported around four-fifths of its oil and steel from areas controlled by the Allies. * * * It [Japan] signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy in Berlin in September 1940. As Yamamoto had predicted, the American government quickly restricted and finally cut off exports of oil and other vital materials.  The sanctions brought events to a head, because Japan had no domestic oil production to speak of, and would exhaust its stockpiles in about a year.

"And yet even in the final weeks of peace [before Pear Harbor attack], Yamamoto continued to urge that the wiser course was not to fight the United States at all. 'We must not start a war with so little a chance of success,' he told Admiral Nagano. He recommended abrogating the Tripartite Pact and pulling Japanese troops out of China. Finally, he hoped that the emperor would intervene with a 'sacred decision' against war. But the emperor remained silent.

"And yet, Pearl Harbor aside, Yamamoto was not a great admiral. His strategic blunders were numerous and egregious, and were criticized even by his own subordinate officers. Indeed, from a strategic point of view, Pearl Harbor was one of the most spectacular miscalculations in history. It aroused the American people to wage total, unrelenting war until Japan was conquered. Yamamoto was also directly responsible for Japan’s cataclysmic defeat at the Battle of Midway

Note:
(a) Today is the 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor attack.
(b) "A Date Which Will Live in Infamy": The First Typed Draft of Franklin D Roosevelt's War Address. National Archives, undated.
http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/day-of-infamy/
(c) Battle of Tsushima
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tsushima
(対馬海戦; May 27–28, 1905; Casualties and losses  Japan 117 dead, torpedo boats sunk)

Quote:

"This was naval history's only decisive sea battle fought by modern steel battleship fleets * * * and has been characterized as the 'dying echo of the old era – for the last time in the history of naval warfare ships of the line of a beaten fleet surrendered on the high seas.'

"In London in 1906, Sir George Sydenham Clarke wrote, 'The battle of Tsu-shima is by far the greatest and the most important naval event since Trafalgar'

"The Battle of Tsushima demonstrated that battleship speed and big guns with longer ranges were more advantageous in naval battles than mixed batteries of different sizes.

"The battle was a devastating loss for Russia, which lost all of its battleships, most of its cruisers and destroyers, and effectively ended the Russo-Japanese war in Japan's favor. The Russians suffered 4,380 killed and 5,917 captured, including two admirals, with 1,862 interned.

(d) Yamamoto was with Harvard University (1919-1921).
(e) shogi 将棋
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shogi
(f) Shinbashi  新橋

* 新橋 (東京都港区)
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%96%B0%E6%A9%8B_(%E6%9D%B1%E4%BA%AC%E9%83%BD%E6%B8%AF%E5%8C%BA)
(section 2 沿革: In 1707 a wooden bridge called 新橋 was build over Shiodomegawa 汐留川)

Paved over, the river is mostly underground, so no bridge is there.
* Tokyo ca 1885 • Shinbashi Bridge, Ginza. Old Photos of Japan, undated.
http://oldphotosjapan.com/photos/52/shinbashi-bridge-at-ginza
("A view on the Shinbashi (also Shimbashi) bridge and Ginza avenue in Tokyo by Kozaburo Tamamura (1856-19??), sometime between 1882 and 1899. The wooden bridge over the Shiodomegawa (Shiodome River) was replaced with an iron bridge in April 1899")

(g) hatchet face (n): "a thin sharp face"
hatchet-faced (adj)
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/%20hatchet-faced

No separate definition for "hatchet-faced."
(h) "running dog" is the same in Japan: 走狗 pronounced soku
(i) on heaven’s behalf  天に代わって ("替天行道" does not appear in Japanese)

避戦の提督―山本五十六元帥の開戦前後の書簡
http://www3.ocn.ne.jp/~y.hirama/yh_ronbun_yamamoto_shokan.html
("この｢述志｣は三国同盟に反対し続ける山本海軍次官に右翼団体の聖戦完遂同盟から｢天に代わってて奸賊山本五十六を誅す｣との脅迫状が送られ､山本元帥に護衛の｢憲兵ヲツケラレタ時ニ書イタモノ｣であった")

In response to the death threat, he wrote a will.
(j) Adm Osami NAGANO, chief of the Naval General Staff  軍令部 総長  永野 修身
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osami_Nagano
(1880-1947; Class A war criminal; died of pneumonia before the conclusion of the trial)
(k) Ian W Toll, Pacific Crucible: War at sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942. WW Norton & Company, Nov 7, 2011.
http://books.wwnorton.com/books/Pacific-Crucible/