The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power

by Daniel Yergin

Yamamoto continued to share with other Japanese naval leaders the deep belief in and commitment to the “decisive battle,” which would knock the enemy out of the war. A quick victory was essential, he knew from his years in the United States, because of America’s oil and other resources and its industrial might. Thus, the Japanese decided to mount a major attack on Midway Island, just eleven hundred miles west of Hawaii. At the very least, the Japanese planned to use an assault on Midway to extend their defense perimeter. And if the American fleet were drawn out, so much the better, for the Japanese could make this the decisive battle and finish the job they had started at Pearl Harbor, obliterating the U.S. Navy in the Pacific. The Battle of Midway, in early June 1942, turned out to be decisive, but not in the way most Japanese expected. Instead, it was the “adults’ hour” that Yamamoto had feared. Having made a remarkable recovery from the devastation at Pearl Harbor, and with the additional advantage of being able to read the enemy’s code (which the Japanese had been slow to change because their forces were so dispersed), the U.S. Navy dealt a resounding defeat to the complacent Japanese, sending four of the Imperial Fleet’s aircraft carriers to the bottom, while losing just one of its own. Midway was the true turning point in the Pacific War, the end of the Japanese offensive. Thereafter, the balance would shift, as the relentless weight of American manpower, resources, ...