THE RELUCTANT ADMIRAL: YAMAMOTO AND THE IMPERIAL NAVY

by Agawa, Hiroyuki. Translated by John Bester

Price: $25.00
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Book description: Kodansha, New York, 1979, first U.S. edition.. 397 pp, 8vo (8 7/16" H), hard cover in dust jacket. ISBN 0870113550 B&w photographs. "This is a portrait both of an individual and of an organization. The individual is the Japanese admiral who, as architect of the Pearl Harbor raid and commande. r of the Combined Fleet throughout the first part of World War II, is one of the most widely known of Japanese wartime leaders. The organization is the Japanese Imperial Navy, whose 'gentlemanly' traditions and outlook contrasted strongly with tho. s e of the Japanese army and whose failure to check the latter in its headstrong course makes one of the sadder episodes of recent history. Here, for the first time, Yamamot emerges as the complex, sympathetic, and in many ways contradictory charac. te r that he was. A realist who foresaw the future importance of the airplane for the navy long before his contemporaries and who believed that Japan would inevitably be defeated in any war with America and Britain, he was also an inveterate gamble. r w ith an odd streak of superstition. A tough leader, he had at the same time a vein of sentimentality that would allow him to burst into tears at the funeral of a young subordinate. In public the very epitome of the dignified national hero, in p. riva te he often showed a schoolboyish playfulness that was sometimes endearing and occasionally embarrassing....The author, refusing the temptation to indulge in speculation or 'reconstruction' has gone straight to the original sources - accounts w. ritte n by those who worked with Yamamoto; scores of interviews with men and women who knew him personally; above all, letters written by Yamamoto himself. The latter range from his more circumspect, semi-official communications to intimate letters. addre ssed to his mistress or long-standing friends of both sexes, in which he bares his private doubts and pessimism. It is these presonal documents and reminiscences that make the character so human and, ultimately, give such a moving quality to. the ac count of his dramatic wartime death in the South Pacific." Book very slightly cracked at page 203, lightly erased ink Christmas gift inscription on free front endpaper, slight fading at bottom edge of book, tiny ink spot on top of text bloc. k. Dust jacket has been price clipped, has light edge wear/wrinkling, a few tiny edge tears. Very Good-/Very Good-.

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