Pearl Harbor: The View From Japan (1994)
The planes take off to attack Pearl Harbor.
The attack.
The person explains how the attack changed the way things were done by the Navy, opening the way to much greater use of planes in attacks. Yamamoto, the mind behind the attack, realized fleets of battleships were not what was needed. A mixture of battleships and things like aircraft carriers was the way to go.
The combined fleet was formed but, in the end, it was destroyed and the guy notes the question is how did it end up destroyed if it was so powerful.
An earlier war against China where the combined fleet was victorious.
Ten years later, another war, another fleet victory.
It's pointed out that the battleships used in those early battles were all built in other countries, rather than in Japan by Japanese.
Yamamoto did not think building bigger ships with bigger guns was the answer, like the other nations were doing. He was interested in doing something that would allow the use of airplanes and ships, both.
One of the many new kinds of planes that Japan developed before the war.
Then the program goes into the Japanese war with China.
Yamamoto was against Japan allying with Germany and Italy.
His stance was unpopular and an assassin was out to get him, so he was bumped upstairs and put somewhere he would be safer.
The speaker, who is at Yasukuni Shrine, notes that Yamamoto did not want to go to war with the U.S. He knew, from being in the United States for a few years, that the industrial production capability would be a very major problem for Japan. Yamamoto's plan for a war was to hit America hard and then hope that it would lose it's willingness to go to war so Japan could then make peace with the U.S.
There was opposition to Yamamoto's plan to attack Pearl Harbor using ships and planes, but he was finally given permission to use his approach.
Yamamoto set about carefully organizing all of Japan's ships and ship-related planes. The attack fleet sailed, but not without controversy. Yamamoto wanted all ships to return and the attack to be called off if an agreement was settled with the U.S. (negotiations were still going on) even if the attack had started. Some of the people in the attack group said they couldn't do that and Yamamoto told them they had better agree to do that right off or they would be removed from that fleet.
He didn't get his way, though, as Command ordered Yamamoto to go to war.
The attack was ordered to begin.
The the film discusses the Japanese victory over a British group near Malay.
It was a battle of Japanese planes vs. British ships.
The United States understood the value of Yamamoto's approach and immediately began concentrating on building aircraft carriers and aircraft.
On the other hand, the Japanese didn't seem to learn from their success and they concentrated on building two new huge super-battleships.
In 1942, this was the Japanese area of 'defense' (actually, area of control.) Yamamoto proposed an attack on Hawaii and taking over that territory which might make negotiations for peace go better. Once again, the higher-ups didn't bother listening to him.
Another plan he proposed was to attack Ceylon along with Germany.
He kept offering proposals and the higher-ups kept shooting them down. Yamamoto threatened to resign if they didn't approve his plans and the higher-ups gave in.
What the Japanese military had not counted on was Jimmy Doolittle's raid on Tokyo which threw a monkey-wrench into Yamamoto's proposals.
The Japanese naval forces agreed that attacking Midway might lure out the American carriers and they could all be destroyed. They also added a plan to attack the Aleutian islands. Then the Japanese army got involved and they shifted the original proposal of Yamamoto to attack and take over some of the Aleutian islands.
The Japanese attack fleet for Midway included the Yamamto, one of the two mammoth battleships the Japanese had built. The fleet also included four of their airacraft carriers.
What the Japanese had not counted on was the fact that the Americans had figured out the Japanese code and so they knew just what was supposed to happen, where and when.
Two American carrier fleets moved out to ambush Nagumo's carrier fleet.
Half the fleet launched planes to attack Midway while the other half had planes with torpedos that were to wait to attack any American ships. They had no idea that American carriers were in the area.
The Japanese ships came under attack from various American planes. The first few waves of attacks failed miserably, but eventually a wave was able to stage a successful attack. Nagumo didn't know just what to do at first because opposition of that nature was not expected at all. He decided to re-equip all the planes already on the decks of the aircraft characters, removing the torpedoes and installing bombs, all this being done while the first wave of Japanese attack planes were returning.
Then one Japanese plane spotted some American ships and Nagumo ordered things redone again, this time to attack American ships. Chaos ensued.
Finally, a wave of American dive bombers was able to penetrate the Japanese defense and they bombed three of the Japanese carriers, all of them crowded with planes on the decks along with lots of bombs and torpedoes.
Within minutes three of the four Japanese characters were put out of commission.
The Yorktown came under attack and was sunk.
The last remaining Japanese carrier of the attack group was attacked by American bombers and was then sunk. (One thing to keep in mind here is that the Japanese did not have the resources to build lots more planes and ships to replace those lost, while the United States, as Yamamoto had earlier pointed out, had a vast industrial ability and could replace the losses quickly. Thus, the war was partially a war of attrition that the Japanese could not possibly win.)
A breakdown of the losses on each side in the battle.
The Japanese position at the start of 1942. They hoped to push further south and cut the supply line of Australia to the U.S. The battles of the Coral Sea and Midway forced the Japanese to regroup and drop plans for further advancement. This meant, of course, that Australia could be used as an Allied base of operations.
The Japanese took two areas but American counter attacks drove the Japanese off and this began the slow, steady push of American forces towards Japan itself.
The battle for the Solomons continued with American plans attacking Japanese transport ships to prevent them from reinforcing the Japanese on Guadalcanal.
Yamamoto wanted to withdraw past Rabaul and form a major defense area in the Marshall Islands. He never got to do that, though, since the Americans found out where he was going on a trip and ambused him, shooting down his plane and killing him.
Matters began to turn against Japan. American attacked their base at Truk.
The Japanese figured Truk would be attacked, but American attacked it sooner than expected.
The Americans attack Saipan and the Japanese respond by sending out the entire combined fleet.
The Japanese attack planes were ambushed by American planes and many were destroyed. Some of the new Japanese carriers were torpedoed and sunk. The Japanese fleet lost about two-thirds of its planes during the battle.
The Americans attack the Philippines and the Japanese plan their own attack on American forces.
The Japanese attempt to stop American forces at Leyte failed. Then they began to use the kamikaze attacks.
The Yamato, the last Japanese super-battleship, is sunk. The ship was given no air cover at all by Japan. This effectively ended the Combined Fleet.
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