Evans, David C. and Mark R. Peattie. Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887-1941. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997.

ISBN 0-87021-192-7
661 pages

Acknowledgments; Introduction; photos; diagrams; ship plans; charts; tables; Notes; Sources Cited; Index.

Appendix: Biographies of Prominent Naval Officers

With Kaigun ("Navy" in Japanese), Evans and Peattie have written a brilliant book certain to endure as a classic analysis of the development of the Imperial Japanese Navy up to Pearl Harbor.

While the early chapters reach back to the origin of the IJN and its earliest years and continue with thoughtful, highly readable accounts of the navy in the Sino-Japanese War, Russo-Japanese War, and World War I, those interested in the Second World War will find the chapters beginning with the inter-war naval limitation treaties most informative.

Although the Americans were permitted under the treaties a larger fleet, their seagoing vessels were spread over a vast area on two remote coasts, limiting the amount of naval strength which could be projected into the western Pacific. In those years the leaders of the IJN in lieu of quantitative parity sought qualitative superiority over the United States Navy, certain America would be eventually its enemy at sea and convinced the USN could be defeated by well-designed weapons and superbly trained crews. To that end the IJN demanded and received increasingly large shares of scarce national resources to build a world-class fleet, from 1922 through 1932 constructing more than twice the warship tonnage of the US.

Despite its advantages, the Japanese navy by the early 1930s was opposed to extension of the naval treaties. In 1934 the second London Naval Conference failed and Japan announced it would allow the provisions of the treaties to lapse when they expired in January 1937. When the United States subsequently announced the first Vinson plan -- aimed at building 102 ships between 1934 and 1942, just to bring the USN up to the size allowed within the treaties -- the IJN must have had second thoughts about the wisdom of a naval arms race with the world's leading industrial power.

Even so, Japan undertook a series of sequential and overlapping construction "Circles" (building programs) requiring more and more resources and straining the nation's economic underpinnings. The results were, in particular, impressive battleships, modern aircraft carriers, and the world's leading naval air arm.

Unseen by all but a handful of the most clear-headed Japanese leaders was the resulting spiral into inevitable war. As Japan built its ever-expanding fleet to guarantee its national interests in East Asia and the western Pacific against interference by China, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States, so it consequently required vastly increased overseas resources -- especially oil -- to maintain itself. The more it sought to guarantee access to those resources, the more the displeasure of its potential opponents. As relations worsened, Japan increased the pace at which it armed and pressed to ensure its own security. And so relations deteriorated more rapidly.

At the time of the American-British-Dutch oil embargo in 1940, the leaders of the IJN were acutely aware how quickly their reserve stocks would dwindle. Deprived of the precious petroleum required to sustain the Navy, it would no longer be possible to safeguard national interests. And so the IJN, previously less hawkish than the Army, decided to strike in order to protect itself.

   The navy took this course without seriously considering the vital questions that it should have pondered in the summer of 1940: whether a "southward advance" was worth risking an American embargo, whether there were reasonable alternatives to going to war over such an embargo, and whether the navy could actually win the sort of war that the United States would surely try to force upon it. The Japanese naval high command, against the better judgment of some of its most competent senior officers, undertook to enter into combat without considering these questions....

Against this background of grand strategy Evans and Peattie examine the critical interplay of Japanese technology, strategy, and tactics leading up to the Pacific war. Throughout this period the IJN prepared for the "single decisive battle" in which the US fleet would be lured into the western Pacific, ambushed by stalking submarines, weakened by repeated land- and carrier-based air strikes, and finally annihilated by the big guns of the Combined Fleet.

The authors review every element involved in this preparation in almost microscopic detail, from an emphasis on "outranging" weapons and night fighting to air power, the super-battleships, "the battle of the shipyards", intelligence, submarines, merchant shipping and its protection, amphibious capability, recruiting and training, tactical doctrine, and more. This kind of scholarly analysis is at the heart of the book, and every page contains thoughtful, cogent revelations about the evolution of the Japanese navy.

   To achieve the unprecedented protection to the central citadel, the designers of the Yamato class were obliged, of course, to make certain sacrifices in armor elsewhere in the ships. Specifically, this meant leaving the underwater bow and stern sections unprotected. To compensate for the lack of armor in these areas, however, they devoted a great deal of attention to increasing watertight compartmentalization and provided a remarkable reserve buoyancy (57,450 tons). This was believed to be sufficient to keep the ship afloat and fairly stable in damaged condition, and as long as the protected portions of the ship remained buoyant, the ship would maintain its stability up to a list of 20 degrees. Further, the flooding and pumping systems built into the ships of the class supposedly enabled a recovery to an even keel from a list of 18.3 degrees and allowed the ships to function even if the freeboard was reduced 4-5 meters by complete destruction and flooding of the forward part of the ship. Experience would show, however, that the stability and damage-control calculations were optimistic and that the armored citadel was not invulnerable.

In its concluding chapter, the book describes how the triumvirate of conservative senior admirals -- Yonai Mitsumasa, Yamamoto Isoroku, and Inoue Shigeyoshi -- finally succumbed to the influence of their aggressive subordinates and Army counterparts to plan a devastating and far-reaching assault on the possessions of America, Britain, and the Netherlands. Despite decades of preparation for the "single decisive battle" in the western Pacific, the IJN instead chose to open the naval war against the United States with a secret foray and surprise raid against Pearl Harbor.

In their epilogue, the authors compare the progress of the Pacific war to the pre-war planning and preparation of the IJN, evaluate the navy's performance, and reveal its fatal flaw in a lucid summation.

   This, then, was the Imperial Japanese Navy's ultimate failure to the Japanese nation: the failure to understand and prepare for modern naval war. The furious dedication to training, the obedience unto death, the tactical discipline, and the array of formidable weaponry were perfected for one great naval maneuver that, carried out with clocklike precision, was to insure Japan's triumph over its enemies in less than a week. Though its courage was unrivaled and its tactical skills undoubted, in its focus on battle and in its insistent claim on the nation's resources to prepare for that encounter, the Japanese navy showed how parochial were its interests and how shallow was its grasp of contemporary naval strategy.

An excellent book. Highly recommended.

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Thanks to NIP for providing this review copy.