War & StrategyBook note
The Reluctant Admiral
Description. A short description of a book from my bookshelf, not a review.
Agawa's biography of Isoroku Yamamoto, the commander of Japan's Combined Fleet, shows a man who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor while opposing war with the United States, which he knew from his years there to be industrially far stronger than Japan.
Written by a Japanese novelist who served in the navy, the book is a nuanced portrait of Yamamoto's personality, his gambling, his leadership and his death in 1943. It is an important view of the Imperial Navy's leadership from the Japanese side.
From the bookshelf · read 2019–2020