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Summary: Great insight into Midway and The Japanese Navy
Review: A great book written in the first person by a Captain in the Japanese Naval Airforce. Footnotes by the American editors added interesting facts not known by the authors.Of particular interest to this engineer was how unsophisticated their capabilities were: none of the ships had radar, they usually had no idea were the enemy(that's us guys)were, their aerial recon was pathetic and they had no night fighting capability because they could never find the targets or return to their own ships in darkness! Their mentality that once a plan was made, it could not be changed or delayed, played a major role in their defeat. Of course Ike's version of that mentality damn near doomed The Normandy Invasion, what with a bunch of sea sick soldiers fighting their way ashore! But that's another story, with a happier ending. Adm Spruance didn't get the credit he deserved for launching a perfectly timed strike which arrived in the midst of refueling the returning Midway strike force. It is surprising that when the US, Great Britan and even Germany were throwing resources at gathering intel, breaking codes and trying to gain the slightest edge in force location, Japan was blundering forward with slight regard to Military intelligence and apparently no coordination of what they did have. A very good book!
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Summary: A must read for serious military history fans.
Review: A monumental work, in light of the fact that this is from the Japanese perspective. The book also details the essential events from Pearl Harbour leading to the Battle of Midway. Fuchida-san, being a key figure in Japanese carrier operations brings a unique first hand account whilst providing valuable strategic conclusions and explanations for the Japanese defeat.
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Summary: Fuchida's Mission
Review: Commander Fuchida Mitsuo, leader of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, along with co-author Okumiya Masatake, provide the most intimate Japanese account of the turning point at sea of World War II. Discussion of "victory" disease which lead to faulty dispositions and assumptions about what America would do rather than what she could do perceptively explains the disaster which the Nihon Kaigon (Imperial Japanese Navy ) experienced. The Kido Butai (First Striking Force) was destroyed as a unit at Midway, but Japanese naval airpower was not critically hurt until the Battle of Santa Cruz. This book is an absolute must for any student of the Pacific War. Even after 40 plus years, it has yet to be surpassed.
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Summary: Very Interesting book
Review: I Don't need to say much about this book that hasn,t already been said. Great book!
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Summary: Excellent Account
Review: I haven't quite finished reading this book but I wanted to do a review of it while it is fresh in my head. It was nice to read a book about the battle of Midway from the Japanese point of view. It was even nicer to read a book about how arrogance can blind you from doing things the right way. In reading this book you really start to realize how lucky the United States got at the battle of Midway. By all rights the force that the Japanese had amassed should have crushed the US Fleet that was gathered to meet them. The US was lucky that it broke the Japanese Navy code and had a pretty good idea of where the Japanese were while the Japanese were poking in the dark and had no idea of what was waiting for them. It is a good thing that Fuchida had an appendectomy right before the battle because if he hadn't we probably wouldn't have been able to read this little gem.
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Summary: Very educational
Review: I learned more about the Japanese during WWII reading this that I have in any other text about the war in the Pacific. If you want a better understanding of why the Japanese went to war, why they made the decisions that they made, I recommend that you buy this book. If the Japanese had conducted their war the we did, the war would have been a lot longer.
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Summary: History's Other Side
Review: I read "Midway" many years ago. This book gave a really nice rounded picture to the action at Midway. I enjoyed the style of writing. It was easy to understand and follow. It was nice seeing the Japanese side of the battle. A good book for students needing a history topic to report on.
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Summary: Hubris: The Price of Empire
Review: It is clear in "Midway" that, in the pursuit of Empire, Japan paid a terrible price. In its quest for the decisive fleet engagement, and in order to prevent another Doolittle raid, the Imperial Navy sought to draw out the United States Pacific Fleet by invading the tiny island of Midway. Until Midway, the Japanese were having a free hand in Asia. The Midway plan was thus tainted by hubris. First, believing in the utter invincibility of their fleet, Japanese naval planners opted for a plan which divided their forces, clearly a violation of one of the basic precepts of war. Second, they drew up an invasion plan which relegated their powerful carriers to a supporting role. This also had the effect of unmasking the battleship mentality so prevalent at the time. Third, they assumed that the enemy would act as anticipated. Fourth, in executing the plan, they somehow lost sight of their true objective: to lure the US Pacific Fleet, especially its carriers, into a vulnerable position and destroy it. Fuchida and Okumiya place the reader on the bridge of the Akagi as she prepares to launch her airborne armada. One can only watch helplessly as the bombs begin to fall on the Japanese carriers at the moment of maximum peril, when bombs were scattered along the decks and fuel lines snaked between planes and flight personnel.
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Summary: Hubris: The Price of Empire
Review: It is clear in "Midway" that, in the pursuit of Empire, Japan paid a terrible price. In its quest for the decisive fleet engagement, and in order to prevent another Doolittle raid, the Imperial Navy sought to draw out the United States Pacific Fleet by invading the tiny island of Midway. Until Midway, the Japanese were having a free hand in Asia. The Midway plan was thus tainted by hubris. First, believing in the utter invincibility of their fleet, Japanese naval planners opted for a plan which divided their forces, clearly a violation of one of the basic precepts of war. Second, they drew up an invasion plan which relegated their powerful carriers to a supporting role. This also had the effect of unmasking the battleship mentality so prevalent at the time. Third, they assumed that the enemy would act as anticipated. Fourth, in executing the plan, they somehow lost sight of their true objective: to lure the US Pacific Fleet, especially its carriers, into a vulnerable position and destroy it. Fuchida and Okumiya place the reader on the bridge of the Akagi as she prepares to launch her airborne armada. One can only watch helplessly as the bombs begin to fall on the Japanese carriers at the moment of maximum peril, when bombs were scattered along the decks and fuel lines snaked between planes and flight personnel.
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Summary: A Must Book for Serious Pacific War Buffs...
Review: Many accounts of the battle of Midway have been written from the American point of view and of the reasons for our success--code breaking and trickery to reveal the target, the amazing repair job done on the Yorktown, and American adaptation to battle conditions plus a little bit of luck. Little is known, however, of the Japanese view of the battle. A few years after Midway two Japanese Naval aviators, Mitsuo Fuchida and Masatake Okumiya, wrote a scathing critique of the battle, exposing Japanese overconfidence, the rigidity of Japanese decision-making, and tarnishing in so doing the reputations of Admiral Yamamoto and others. Fushica's views are particularly valuable in that he was aboard the Japanese carrier Akagi during the battle, though grounded because of a recent operation. His record of the terrifying few minutes when the Dauntless dive bombers came out of the clouds to destroy the heart of the Japanese carrier fleet are invaluable, including his rescue and eventual return to Japan. Okumiya was attached to the northern force, part of the Midway operation, that attacked the fog-bound Aleutians, but who gathered much information about the battle afterwards from survivors. The authors are harsh on the fecklessness of the Japanese naval forays into the Indian ocean which accomplished little of strategic value, the high-level conflicts in the Japanese decision-making process, and the over-confidence generated by their success at Pearl Harbor and elsewhere.
Tactics are also criticized, such as the perfunctory search plane missions to detect and locate enemy forces because the Japanese high command could not imagine that US forces might be within striking distance. The book, reissued some years back by the Naval Institute Press, also contains footnotes that adds information not known to the Japanese authors at the time of writing.
The book is highly recommended for filling out the blanks in the battle of Midway and of adding details to the failures of Japanese strategic planning and decision-making.
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