Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945 (The Pacific War Trilogy Book 3)

by Ian W. Toll

LOOKING BACK ON THE WAR THEY HAD JUST LOST, Japanese leaders marveled at their own stupidity. Asked to name the turning point of the Pacific War, Admiral Yonai replied: “To be very frank, I think that the turning point was the start. I felt from the very beginning that there was no chance of success. . . . I think to this day that it was not a proper plan in view of the situation, our national war strength.”80 Similar views were expressed by many of the Japanese leaders interrogated by the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey in the fall of 1945. Their fateful decision to attack the United States and the Allies in December 1941 had been founded upon a catalog of faulty assumptions. They had assumed that the war could be won quickly, averting a prolonged war of attrition in which American economic power would become decisive. They had assumed that Nazi Germany was unbeatable in Europe, and would break Britain and Russia to its yoke; that sea routes linking Japan to its oil supply in the East Indies could be secured against submarine and air attacks; and that the main U.S. naval fleet would charge into the western Pacific to be met and annihilated in a single decisive sea battle, reprising the Imperial Navy’s triumph at the Battle of Tsushima in 1905.