Since then, the consequences of having missed the carriers had been vividly demonstrated by American raids on the Marshalls, Wake, Lae/Salamaua, and elsewhere. In addition, Yamamoto was haunted by the thought that so long as the American carriers roamed the Pacific, there was always a chance, however remote, that they might find a way to launch a raid against the Japanese homeland. His chief of staff confided to his diary that protecting Tokyo from air raids was “the most important thing to be borne in mind.” Halsey’s raid on Marcus Island, only 999 nautical miles from Tokyo, was a reminder that such a catastrophic event was not impossible. As early as January of 1941, Yamamoto had expressed the fear that “we cannot rule out the possibility that the enemy would dare to launch an attack upon our homeland to burn our capital city and other cities.” He feared that the Americans might strike while the Kidō Butai was still in the Indian Ocean, and as a precaution he ordered the establishment of a picket line of small vessels seven hundred miles off the Japanese coast, well beyond the maximum range of American carrier bombers. However, there was always a chance that one or more American carriers might sneak past those pickets and find a way to launch. Since the protection of the homeland—and especially protecting the life and safety of the emperor—was the Navy’s first mission, such a possibility was unacceptable.17
Consequently, even before the Kidō Butai returned from its initial strike at Pearl Harbor, Yamamoto had already begun to think about ways to complete what Nagumo had left unfinished. He ordered his chief of staff, Ugaki Matome, to sketch out a plan for an invasion of Hawaii as a way of provoking a climactic sea battle that would result in the destruction of the American carriers. Ugaki spent four days in mid-January battling a terrible toothache while he outlined an operational plan to “mobilize all available strength to invade Hawaii while attempting to destroy the enemy fleet in a decisive battle.” Such plans were completely unrealistic, however, because the Japanese simply did not have the resources to invade Hawaii and lacked the sealift capability to keep it supplied even if they could take it. Both the Naval General Staff and the Army made it clear that such an operation was out of the question. In spite of that, Yamamoto continued to hope that he could contrive a way to lure the American carrier force out to its destruction. He was aware that Nagano and the General Staff, and the Army, too, opposed his plan for a decisive confrontation in the central Pacific, but to Yamamoto that only made the challenge of getting his way more appealing. As strategically important as it was to get the American carriers, it was almost as important to outwit his domestic rivals within the Japanese military hierarchy.18
The one constant in all of these plans was the Kidō Butai. Carriers would be needed to spearhead the invasion of Fiji and Samoa, and also for the Aleutian initiative, and now Inoue was calling for at least some portion of the Kidō Butai for the assault on Port Moresby as well. Yamamoto found all these requests annoying and wrongheaded. Just as Chester Nimitz complained to Ernie King that carriers should be used offensively, not defensively, Yamamoto wanted to use his carriers to attack and destroy their American counterparts, not to protect transports in invasion fleets. His view was that once the American carriers were out of the picture, future Japanese invasion groups could roam the western Pacific at will. To achieve this end, it would be necessary to threaten an asset so important that the Americans would feel compelled to commit most or even all of their carriers to defend it. Given Ernie King’s concern for the security of Fiji and Samoa, a Japanese thrust at those islands might provoke the reaction Yamamoto sought. Yamamoto, however, did not think them important enough to ensure a decisive confrontation. He sought an objective close to the Americans’ principal base at Pearl Harbor. Yamamoto continued to hope that operations in the central Pacific could somehow lead to the occupation of Hawaii, which could then be used as a bargaining chip in negotiations with the Americans. These considerations led him to examine the Hawaiian archipelago carefully. Since neither the Army nor the General Staff would support an invasion of Hawaii, he decided to target the small two-island atoll of Midway.19
Midway was an unlikely objective. A barren, sandy outpost in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, it was quite literally a thousand miles from anywhere: Pearl Harbor was 1,135 nautical miles in one direction, and Wake Island was 1,185 nautical miles in the other. Like every other atoll in the Pacific, Midway was essentially a circular coral reef that enclosed a small lagoon. On the southern edge of that lagoon, two small sandy islands barely broke the surface of the sea. The larger of them, appropriately named Sand Island, was less than two miles long; the other, Eastern Island, was even smaller. For hundreds of years, the chief inhabitant of those two tiny islands was the Laysan Albatross, whose odd mating dance provoked visitors to dub them “gooney birds.” So remote was Midway that there is no record of its having been “discovered” until 1859, though whalers and others had certainly stopped there intermittently before that. The United States established a coaling station there after the Civil War, and two years later, in 1869, the U.S. Navy began dredging a channel between the two islands in order to provide access to the sheltered lagoon, though the project ran out of money before it could be completed.20
After the war with Spain in 1898, which expanded American interest in the Pacific, President Theodore Roosevelt placed Midway under the control of the Navy Department, and that same year the United States established a telegraph cable station on Sand Island, connecting it to Hawaii. The outpost was further developed in the 1930s when Pan American Airlines used it as a seaplane base for its trans-Pacific Clippers and even built a small hotel there for its passengers. In 1940, as war with Japan loomed, the Navy finally completed the ship channel into the lagoon, which made Midway a sheltered anchorage, principally for seaplanes and the occasional submarine. And in the summer of 1941, four months before Pearl Harbor, the Navy completed an airfield on Eastern Island that made it a kind of unsinkable—though also immobile—aircraft carrier.
Thus, small as it was, Midway’s isolation made it an important outpost in the American defense line. Taking off from its protected lagoon, broad winged PBY Catalina seaplanes could scour the ocean out to a thousand miles, and from that same lagoon, American submarines could initiate patrols to the very shores of Japan itself. From the new airfield on Eastern Island, bombers and fighters could guard the northern approach to Hawaii. In their communications to one another, King and Nimitz both acknowledged the importance of the “Midway-Hawaii line.” Yamamoto calculated that Midway was important enough to the Americans that a threat to it would compel them to sortie from Oahu with their carriers to contest an invasion. When that happened, the Kidō Butai would pounce on them and send them to the bottom.21
An aerial photograph of Midway Atoll in 1942. Eastern Island, with its airfield, is in the foreground. The ship channel into the central lagoon and the channel from the lagoon to the Eastern Island dock are clearly visible. (U.S. Naval Institute)
In February, Yamamoto ordered his staff to put together an operational plan for the invasion and occupation of Midway. The Kidō Butai would approach Midway from the north (as it had the previous December) and launch a strike on its airfield, in order to destroy whatever American air assets were on the island. Meanwhile, a powerful (but not too powerful) surface force would approach Midway from the west to attract the attention of the Americans. The American carriers would presumably sortie from Pearl Harbor in response to either the bombardment of Midway or the appearance of this modest surface force, or both. When they did, a prepositioned group of Japanese submarines would inflict as much damage on them as possible as they moved toward the decisive battle. Then the Kidō Butai would steam southward to engage. The six carriers of the Kidō Butai should have little trouble with the two or three surviving American carriers, but just in case, Yamamoto himself—with several heavy battleships, including the giant Yamato—would back up the Kidō Butai to finish off any survivors. Despite his early advocacy of carriers, and his criticism of depending too much on battle
ships, Yamamoto felt obligated to find a role in this decisive engagement for the new and expensive heavy battleships.
For all its boldness, the plan was not a complete departure from traditional Japanese strategy, for it was essentially a tactical version of the strategic plan that had been part of Japanese thinking for more than a decade: submarines and airplanes would whittle down the American striking force as it moved toward the decisive confrontation. Here was the same plan in miniature. A critical difference, however, was that this decisive engagement would take place 2,500 miles from Japanese home waters. Indeed, by targeting Midway, Yamamoto was granting to the Americans all the advantages that the Japanese had counted on in their own defense of the Pacific: shorter logistic lines, proximity to repair facilities, and land-based air cover.22
It is noteworthy that this plan divided Japanese naval assets into four different and independent groups. If this seemed more complicated than it needed to be, it was because Yamamoto was more concerned that the Americans would refuse to take the bait than that they might actually pose a serious threat to his armada. If he put all six carriers of the Kidō Butai and the battle fleet into one mighty armada, it would unquestionably dominate the Pacific, but it might also intimidate the Americans to the point that they would refuse to come out to contest it, and the opportunity to sink the American carriers would be lost. As a result, in translating Yamamoto’s vision into an operational plan, the staff planners of the Combined Fleet divided up the available forces into at least four distinct groups that would sail independently.
The first of these was the so-called Midway Invasion Group, which was actually a surface force under Vice Admiral Kondō Nabutake, consisting of two battleships, five cruisers, and seven destroyers, plus the new light carrier Zuiho, which was capable of carrying two dozen torpedo planes and fighters. As Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully point out in their detailed study of Japanese operations at Midway, “Kondō was the bait.” Combined Fleet planners hoped that when the Americans discovered this force approaching Midway, they would see it as powerful enough to be tempting and yet not so large as to be intimidating. That would encourage them to come out of Pearl Harbor to contest its advance.23
Kondō’s force would screen the actual invasion force (called the “Transport Group”) that would carry the five thousand naval infantry and the construction battalion that would occupy Midway and turn it into a Japanese base. Carried in twelve large transport ships escorted by a light cruiser and ten destroyers, it would also approach Midway from the west. In close support would be four heavy cruisers and two destroyers under Vice Admiral Kurita Takeo.
While Kondō and Kurita approached from the west, the Kidō Butai would approach Midway from the northwest. If Kondō’s surface force did not draw out the Americans, the first strike by planes from the Kidō Butai against Midway surely would. Once again Nagumo Chūichi would command this key element of the fleet. His main purpose, as Yamamoto saw it, was the destruction of the American carrier force, but assigning him responsibility to soften up Midway for the invasion and to cover the landing also created the opportunity for confusion and uncertainty, especially with a literal-minded commander like Nagumo.
Yamamoto himself would lead what was called the “Main Body,” composed of three heavy battleships, including the enormous Yamato, accompanied by a screen of one light cruiser and eight destroyers. This force would trail Kondō’s invasion force by several hundred miles, not only to remain beyond the range of American search planes but also to enable Yamamoto to support whichever of the other two advances turned out to be the focus of the American sortie. It would be the first time in the war that the commander in chief of the Combined Fleet personally accompanied an operation. Subsequent critics cited this as a grave error, since Yamamoto would have to maintain radio silence while at sea, preventing him from exerting any active supervision over the operation. Had he remained ashore, as Chester Nimitz did, he could have listened in on the radio net and sent out orders as necessary to ensure that his command vision was fulfilled.
But passive command from a distance was unappealing to a man with Yamamoto’s worldview. Though the early victories of the Japanese Navy had made him a national hero and won him many official decorations, he had not yet smelled the smoke of battle or even put himself in harm’s way. He confessed to a friend that the accolades that poured into his headquarters after the first victories left him “intolerably embarrassed.” Moreover, Yamamoto may have had a political objective in mind as well. The historian Hugh Bicheno speculates that Yamamoto went to sea during the Midway campaign so that he could return to Tokyo with a decisive victory in hand and use his elevated prestige to depose Tōjō’s government and open negotiations for an end to the war. Whether or not that was part of his grand strategy, Yamamoto’s gambler’s instinct was evident in every part of the Midway plan. Just as he had contrived the Pearl Harbor strike as a dramatic alternative to the thrust southward the previous fall, so now did he prepare a dramatic alternative to the Naval General Staff’s notion of consolidating Japan’s defense perimeter in the South Pacific and the Aleutians. If there was also a political element in play, that only raised the stakes for this nautical gambler.24
With the plan fleshed out, Yamamoto sent a representative from his staff to Tokyo on April 2 to present it to the Naval General Staff. The man he sent was Commander Watanabe Yasuji, his logistics officer and frequent shogi partner. Watanabe was not only a great admirer of his boss, he had also played an active role in developing the plan and therefore had a proprietary interest in its adoption. Watanabe flew to Tokyo by seaplane and reported to the two-story brick building near the Imperial Palace that housed the Naval General Staff. As he laid out the particulars, it soon became evident that the plan would monopolize virtually all the assets of the Imperial Navy and require the postponement of all other plans, including the move to Port Moresby and the seizure of Fiji-Samoa.
Both Nagano and Rear Admiral Fukudome Shigeru, head of the plans division, remained mute. It was Commander Miyo Tatsukichi, the only naval aviator in the room, who challenged Watanabe. A short, wiry man with gold fillings, he had attended both Eta Jima and the Naval Staff College with Watanabe, and the two men knew each other well. Nevertheless, their exchange grew increasingly tense. Possession of Midway, Miyo argued, would be more of a burden than an asset. Even if the invasion went flawlessly, the atoll’s distance from Japan would make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to sustain. Japan’s logistical capabilities were already stretched to the breaking point, and everything needed to sustain Midway as a Japanese outpost—food, ammunition, and especially oil—would have to be shipped there across an ocean crawling with American submarines. Sufficient tankers needed to carry refined oil from Japan to Midway simply did not exist, and, if they did, how wise was it for Japan to be exporting refined oil—the dearth of which had triggered the war in the first place? Moreover, up to this point in the war, Japan had advanced from one position to another only under the umbrella of land-based air. That would not be the case with Midway. The atoll was, however, under the umbrella of American land-based air from Oahu, which would make it vulnerable to American raids and recapture. Finally, if Combined Fleet wanted a battle with the American carriers, one could be had by attacking Fiji or Samoa, the loss of which would break the American link to Australia. And a battle in the South Pacific would give Japan all the advantages that the Americans would have at Midway.25
Watanabe was not used to hearing such sharp and direct criticism of a plan generated by the commander in chief. He responded to Miyo by asserting that “after capture [Midway] would be supplied the same as was already being done with Wake.” And he pledged “to go to Fiji and Samoa after the Battle of Midway had been won.” Apparently flustered, he merely repeated the outlines of the plan that he had been entrusted to deliver. It was evident that the evidence weighed heavily against adoption of the Midway plan, but Yamamoto’s influence had grown so great that it could not be dismissed outri
ght. Fukudome, who had once been Yamamoto’s chief of staff, tried to calm the heated discussion: “Come, come,” he said, “don’t get too excited. Since the Combined Fleet’s so set on the plan, why don’t we study it to see if we can’t accept it?”26
The group met again three days later. It was clear at once that studying the details of the plan had only confirmed Miyo’s doubts. He reiterated, even more strongly, its obvious defects. Unable to counter Miyo’s arguments, Watanabe left the room to telephone the flagship Yamato. He summarized Miyo’s criticisms and asked for a response. Was Yamamoto still committed to the Midway plan? He was. Watanabe returned to the room to tell the members of the General Staff that Yamamoto’s mind was made up, and that “if his plan was not adopted he might resign.”
It was Fukudome who asked the crucial question: “If the C in C’s so set on it, shall we leave it to him?” No one else in the room spoke, but several nodded. Nagano capitulated once again, as he had over the Pearl Harbor raid. Miyo could only bow his head; some thought he was forcing back tears. Yamamoto had forced the Pearl Harbor raid onto the General Staff by bluff and threat. Now he was imposing the Midway plan on his skeptical and reluctant superiors. The behavior of the Naval General Staff was, as the historian H. P. Willmott has noted, “nothing less than an abject and craven shirking of responsibility.”27
The Army’s response was, in effect, a shrug. Since the plan did not call for any significant participation by the Army, its leaders seemed to say: do whatever you want so long as you don’t call on us for support. But the Army did worry about Inoue’s move southward to Port Moresby, for that did involve Army assets, and as a result, five days after winning his victory over the Naval General Staff, Yamamoto agreed to lend one carrier division of the Kidō Butai to Inoue for what was codenamed Operation MO—the capture of Port Moresby. For that operation, Yamamoto selected the newest and least experienced of the carrier divisions—CarDiv 5, composed of the new carriers Shōkaku and Zuikaku. Inoue had to promise that he would complete the conquest of Port Moresby swiftly, so that those carriers could rejoin the Kidō Butai in time for the Midway campaign, now codenamed Operation MI. The Fiji-Samoa operation would have to be postponed until July, though Yamamoto agreed to allow a smaller operation for the capture of Ocean and Nauru Islands (Operation RY), and another to seize the westernmost islands in the Aleutians (Operation AL). This latter effort, often referred to as a diversion for Midway, was in fact a separate initiative unrelated to the Midway Operation apart from its timing. In effect, instead of choosing between moves to the south, north, or west, the Japanese decided to undertake all three, and to do so virtually simultaneously.28
The Battle of Midway (Pivotal Moments in American History) Page 12