MIDWAY — The Battle That Doomed Japan, The Japanese Navy's Story

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The authors of the original Japanese edition of this book both had an active part in World War II. Mitsuo Fuchida, a Captain in the Imperial Japanese Navy, led the air assault on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, went through the entire Battle of Midway aboard the aircraft carrier Akagi, and was wounded during the action. Later, at the Japanese Naval War College, he made a special study of the battle. Masatake Okumiya, a Commander in the Imperial Japanese Navy, was in the light carrier Ryūjō, in the Aleutians area, during the Battle of Midway, and later served as a staff officer in a carrier division.

The editors of this book, both Japanese language experts, are Clarke H. Kawakami, who served with the U.S. Army in the China-Burma-India theatre during World War II and later with the Historical Section of General MacArthur’s Tokyo Headquarters; and Roger Pineau, who, as a Naval Reserve officer, served a tour with the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey in Japan and later worked with Samuel Eliot Morison in preparing the comprehensive History of United States Naval Operations in World War II.

Midway, the battle that doomed Japan, is one of the U.S. Naval Institute’s World War II history series, planned to give a full account of naval operations, by officers who were participants and actual eyewitnesses, both in Allied and Axis navies.

“The Battle of Midway was without question a turning point of the Pacific War,” says former Admiral Nobutake Kondo, IJN, in his introduction to this book. “So decisive was the Japanese defeat that the details were kept secret and made known only to a limited few, even within the Japanese Navy. Not until the Japanese edition of this book appeared in 1951 did the Japanese public learn for the first time of the disastrous naval defeat which turned the tide of the war in the Pacific.”