I. M. Esperto
7th Dec 2001, 16:33
http://vikingphoenix.com/public/JapanIncorporated/1895-1945/brbywatr.htm
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Viking Phoenix Book Review: Visions of Infamy: The
Untold Story of How Journalist Hector C. Bywater
Devised The Plans That Led to Pearl Harbor
BOOK REVIEW: Honan, William H. Visions of Infamy: The Untold Story of How Journalist
Hector C. Bywater Devised The Plans That Led to Pearl Harbor. St. Martin's Press. New York.
1991.
HTML version and commentary by Richard Rongstad for Sun Tzu Organization. (A dust cover review).
December 7, 1941. In one of the most devastating surprise [note] attacks in naval history, Japanese forces under the command
of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto delivered a crushing blow to the American fleet at Pearl Harbor. Yamamoto has been
perceived ever since as a naval strategist of great originality.
Yet Yamamoto did not invent the audacious plan, nor did any other Japanese. The man who first conceived of the great Pacific
war -- Japan's surprise attack, the siezure of the Philippines and Guam, and even the American island-hopping campaign that
dominated its course thereafter -- was a convivial, pub-crawling British naval correspondent for the New York Times and the
Baltimore Sun, who died under highly mysterious circumstances in 1940, a year before Pearl Harbor. Hector C. Bywater's
passion was naval strategy, and by the 1920s he feared that Japan's militaristic inclinations would lead to a long and deadly
war. In a series of brilliant books and articles written during the twenties and thirties, Bywater prophetically outlined naval
strategies that would read like a blueprint for the Pacific Theater during World War II and establish his reputation as the
successor to the great naval authority Alfred Thayer Mahan.
To the public, Bywater's ideas created an uproar and then were quickly forgotten. But in the ranks of the Japanese navy, a
rising captain named Isoroku Yamamoto adopted Bywater's ideas as his own. In one of history's strangest scenes, the two men
once met, discussing war and peace in an amiable fashion over a bottle of scotch. For Hector C. Bywater, that pleasant night
might have been fatal, for as William H. Honan suggests in this biography that overturns conventional twentieth-century military
theory, Bywater's death may have been ordered by Yamamoto as he planned the assault on Pearl Harbor, to rid himself of the
one man in the West who knew exactly what the Japanese navy would do when war broke out.
Bywater was not only a Cassandra-like voice on Japanese militancy and a brilliant naval strategist, he was also a fascinating,
robust, and exciting man, whose work as a journalist led him to dabble in espionage. Bywater was a man of contradictions who
could live easily in many worlds, from the Fleet Street Press Gang whose credo was "The three most beautiful things in the
world are a fighting ship, a nubile woman and a fast racehorse -- in that order," to a long-running debate over naval policy with
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to grand international naval conferences, to pulling Mussolini's leg when invited to inspect the Italian
navy.
Visions of Infamy is a major biography set against the grand stage of the forces that led to war. William H. Honan brilliantly
relates how one complex man's obsessions influenced the course of history. This is a book about genius, folly, and doom.
Notes
Surprise is the key element in decisive warfare. Surprise is achieved by secrecy and deception. The fifth century B.C. Chinese
general Sun Tzu [ link ] declared that; "All warfare is based on deception". Winston Churchill wrote that; "Secrecy is the
handmaiden of deception". Franklin Roosevelt's labeling of December 7, 1941 as a "day...of infamy", and frequent American
references to the "Japanese sneak attack" tell more about the political side of warfare than the real strategic and tactical
considerations faced by Admiral Yamamoto and Japan. The Japanese commanders would have been derelict in their duty to
not rely upon deception, secrecy and surprise to prevail at Pearl Harbor. Japan needed surprise and American commanders
conceded surprise. Talk of sneak attacks is just plain silly in the face of the facts (Richard Rongstad). back to review
Japan: References
Japan, Incorporated: References
History Timeline Links to Hector C. Bywater
Crisis in the Pacific
U.S. Pacific fleet based at Pearl Harbor
End of Saito's World
Stats
May 27, 1997: page established, 0 visitors.
Sept. 25, 2000: updated, counter reset.
visitors since 25 September.
[email protected]
| Japan, Incorporated | V-J Day | VikingPhoenix.com | Contact / Stats |
Viking Phoenix Book Review: Visions of Infamy: The
Untold Story of How Journalist Hector C. Bywater
Devised The Plans That Led to Pearl Harbor
BOOK REVIEW: Honan, William H. Visions of Infamy: The Untold Story of How Journalist
Hector C. Bywater Devised The Plans That Led to Pearl Harbor. St. Martin's Press. New York.
1991.
HTML version and commentary by Richard Rongstad for Sun Tzu Organization. (A dust cover review).
December 7, 1941. In one of the most devastating surprise [note] attacks in naval history, Japanese forces under the command
of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto delivered a crushing blow to the American fleet at Pearl Harbor. Yamamoto has been
perceived ever since as a naval strategist of great originality.
Yet Yamamoto did not invent the audacious plan, nor did any other Japanese. The man who first conceived of the great Pacific
war -- Japan's surprise attack, the siezure of the Philippines and Guam, and even the American island-hopping campaign that
dominated its course thereafter -- was a convivial, pub-crawling British naval correspondent for the New York Times and the
Baltimore Sun, who died under highly mysterious circumstances in 1940, a year before Pearl Harbor. Hector C. Bywater's
passion was naval strategy, and by the 1920s he feared that Japan's militaristic inclinations would lead to a long and deadly
war. In a series of brilliant books and articles written during the twenties and thirties, Bywater prophetically outlined naval
strategies that would read like a blueprint for the Pacific Theater during World War II and establish his reputation as the
successor to the great naval authority Alfred Thayer Mahan.
To the public, Bywater's ideas created an uproar and then were quickly forgotten. But in the ranks of the Japanese navy, a
rising captain named Isoroku Yamamoto adopted Bywater's ideas as his own. In one of history's strangest scenes, the two men
once met, discussing war and peace in an amiable fashion over a bottle of scotch. For Hector C. Bywater, that pleasant night
might have been fatal, for as William H. Honan suggests in this biography that overturns conventional twentieth-century military
theory, Bywater's death may have been ordered by Yamamoto as he planned the assault on Pearl Harbor, to rid himself of the
one man in the West who knew exactly what the Japanese navy would do when war broke out.
Bywater was not only a Cassandra-like voice on Japanese militancy and a brilliant naval strategist, he was also a fascinating,
robust, and exciting man, whose work as a journalist led him to dabble in espionage. Bywater was a man of contradictions who
could live easily in many worlds, from the Fleet Street Press Gang whose credo was "The three most beautiful things in the
world are a fighting ship, a nubile woman and a fast racehorse -- in that order," to a long-running debate over naval policy with
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to grand international naval conferences, to pulling Mussolini's leg when invited to inspect the Italian
navy.
Visions of Infamy is a major biography set against the grand stage of the forces that led to war. William H. Honan brilliantly
relates how one complex man's obsessions influenced the course of history. This is a book about genius, folly, and doom.
Notes
Surprise is the key element in decisive warfare. Surprise is achieved by secrecy and deception. The fifth century B.C. Chinese
general Sun Tzu [ link ] declared that; "All warfare is based on deception". Winston Churchill wrote that; "Secrecy is the
handmaiden of deception". Franklin Roosevelt's labeling of December 7, 1941 as a "day...of infamy", and frequent American
references to the "Japanese sneak attack" tell more about the political side of warfare than the real strategic and tactical
considerations faced by Admiral Yamamoto and Japan. The Japanese commanders would have been derelict in their duty to
not rely upon deception, secrecy and surprise to prevail at Pearl Harbor. Japan needed surprise and American commanders
conceded surprise. Talk of sneak attacks is just plain silly in the face of the facts (Richard Rongstad). back to review
Japan: References
Japan, Incorporated: References
History Timeline Links to Hector C. Bywater
Crisis in the Pacific
U.S. Pacific fleet based at Pearl Harbor
End of Saito's World
Stats
May 27, 1997: page established, 0 visitors.
Sept. 25, 2000: updated, counter reset.
visitors since 25 September.
[email protected]