Days of Infamy Read Free Page A

totally failed in their mission. When he had agreed to undertake the planning of this war, back early in the year, he had absolutely insisted, before the Emperor himself, that with his knowledge of Americans, their proper sense of diplomatic and military protocol must be followed. That a formal declaration of war must be delivered before the first bomb fell. Some thought him insane, loudly proclaiming that it was folly, that it would double, triple the losses, but he had always replied that the life of fifty, a hundred pilots, when placed in the balance of fighting an opponent who could not claim “a stab in the back,” as Americans put it, would be worth the price. If their sense of correct behavior had been observed, their anger, though significant, would not be aroused to fever pitch. Just as an opponent in cards, knowing he was beaten fairly in a poker match, would withdraw as a gentleman, but if ever he suspected a sleight of hand, a bitter rivalry and hatred that could burn for years would be the result. Yamamoto now faced just such an opponent. The Foreign Ministry had left him with a terrible task. He could not just achieve victory here, he must achieve a crushing victory. It would have been far easier if their carriers had indeed been in harbor, but they were not. The Americans would now turn to those three carriers,
Enterprise, Lexington
, and
Saratoga
, and most likely within the month,
Yorktown
and
Hornet
, as the means of trying to gain revenge.
    No, he had to give an even more crippling blow, a far more crippling blow, and in so doing hammer the Americans into so resigned a mood that only negotiation made sense, in spite of what he expected would be their towering rage.
    Perhaps, he thought shrewdly, that rage can be turned to our advantage. An opponent in cards, when losing, tends to become reckless in his desire to win back what he has already lost. I must play to that and must take the risks as well.
    Yamamoto stubbed out his cigarette and leaned over, looking at the charts spread out on the table. He traced his finger around the waters south and west of Oahu.
    “I am convinced that their three carriers,
Enterprise, Lexington
, and
Saratoga
, are somewhere out here,” and then he drew a vague outline across nearly a million square miles of ocean, the vast triangle from Oahu northwest to Midway, over 1,100 miles away, and then down to Wake, which stood sentinel over the approaches into the Japanese-held waters of the Marshalls.
    “Tomorrow we shall hunt for them there.”
    There was an uncomfortable stirring, and he looked over at Nagumo’s chief of staff, whom he had retained, at least temporarily, for this mission.
    “You object?”
    “Sir, though I expressed concerns about your third strike on Pearl Harbor, I now bow to your wisdom. But this?”
    “Go on.”
    “As Commander Genda already pointed out, we are down to less than three hundred aircraft. Their three carriers, which we know carry more planes than our carriers, might be able to marshal three hundred in reply. They might very well be anticipating even now our moving toward them and be ready, aided by what aircraft survived on Oahu to provide scouting reports. We could be at a serious disadvantage tomorrow. They can surmise where we are; we might not be able to do the same.”
    He paused.
    “We don’t know where they are; they can guess where we are.”
    “Not a single American scout plane followed us back from three strikes,” Fuchida said softly, voice hoarse from exhaustion, the hours of flying, and the smoke inhaled after crash landing. “On the island of Oahu they have, at best, a score of planes for scouting or any other purpose. We have annihilated their land-based aviation for the moment.
    Admiral Yamamoto nodded for him to continue.
    “I suspect they still do not know where we are, and their own radio broadcasts indicate panic on the island.”
    “If we present them with a challenge they cannot refuse,” Genda interjected,