Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan. The Japanese Navy's Story

Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute, 1955. Hardcover. Good. 266 pages. Illustrations. Maps. Endpaper maps. Appendices. Index, usual library markings, some soiling inside boards & flyleaves, spine faded. Mitsuo Fuchida (3 December 1902 - 30 May 1976) was a Japanese captain in the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service and a bomber aviator in the Japanese navy before and during World War II. He is perhaps best known for leading the first wave of air attacks on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. Working under the overall fleet commander, Vice Admiral Ch ichi Nagumo, Fuchida was responsible for the coordination of the entire aerial attack. Masatake Okumiya (July 27, 1909 - February 22, 2007[1][2]) was a historian and lieutenant general in the Japan Air Self-Defense Force. In 1937, he participated in the attack on the USS Panay. Okumiya wrote extensively on Japan's role in World War II. He co-wrote Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan; the Japanese Navy's Story. He co-wrote, with Horikoshi and Caidin, an account of the Mitsubishi A6M Zero, titled Zero! The great air and sea battle of World War II, as seen through Japanese eyes . . . For the Japanese, confident over the easy victory at Pearl Harbor, the Midway operation had one objective; to draw out the U.S. Navy and destroy it. Thus, on June 4, 1942, Admiral Yamamoto launched his attack on the base at Midway Island with the largest fleet yet assembled in the Pacific, including 350 ships and more than 100,000 officers and men. It was a plan for victory . . . that ended in monumental defeat. Only after this crushing loss did the Japanese ask themselves: What should we have done that we did not do? Why did we fail? Now, for the first time, officers from the Japanese Imperial Navy open the sealed archives to tell the authoritative, dramatic story of what really happened at the historic Battle of Midway.