Read by Terence Aselford
MIDWAY: The Battle that Doomed Japan is a book of enormous narrative excitement
and genuine historical importance. It tells of the great naval battle that marked
the turning point of the war in the Pacific. Its authors, Mitsuo Fuchida and
Masatake Okumiya, were officers in the Imperial Japanese Navy and were participants
in the events they describe. Fuchida served as commander of the Air Unit on
the Akagi, flag ship of the Japanese carrier group. He assisted in planning
the Midway operation and saw the destruction of the Akagi from the flaming flight
deck. Okumiya served with the northern diversionary force that made the attack
and landings on the Aleutians.
Readers of this American edition owe a real debt to Roger Pineau, who worked with
Admiral Morrison in preparing the U.S. naval history of the war, and to Clarke
Kawakami, a Japanese- American, who served with the historical section of General
MacArthur's headquarters in Tokyo. They have worked over the Japanese text,
prompting the authors to give further detail where needed, checking facts against
American battle records, correcting errors, correlating statements with those of
U.S. naval commanders. The result is a book as nearly perfect as any battle
history can be.
No brief resume can do justice to the Midway engagement.the book itself is
the story, magnificently told. For the Japanese, still gloating over the easy
victory at Pearl Harbor and the rapid conquest of their Pacific empire, the Midway
operation had one objective: to draw out the U.S. Navy and destroy it.
Midway Island was selected as the base which, by its loss, would pose the greatest
threat to American naval power in the Pacific. The Japanese had trained to fight
a war in which quality of men and equipment would offset the superior quantity of
arms and manpower available to the Allies. But at Midway their forces were actually
larger than those the U.S. Navy could move against them. Admiral Yamamoto's force
was the largest ever assembled in the Pacific up to that time, and consisted of
some 350 ships and 100,000 officers and men.
It was a plan for victory. Only afterward, stunned by their losses, did
the Japanese ask themselves, "What should we have done that we did not do?
Why did we fail?" In this book you will see the battle for Midway as it appeared
to Japanese eyes.
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