What makes a nation launch an attack it cannot hope to win? Admiral Yamamoto, who planned the Pearl Harbor attack, warned Japan's leadership they would have only six months before America would mobilize its entire continent to destroy them. He was right, but his warning was ignored.
The episode starts with a discussion about the controversial Yasukuni Shrine and museum, where we gain insight into how Japan's military establishment viewed their expansionist ambitions. This museum is not just a collection of artifacts, but a repository of the attitudes that drove a nation to catastrophe.
From the initial stunning successes across Asia to the turning point at Midway, we trace how Japan's military philosophy of "better to be a shattered jewel than an intact roof tile" led to extraordinary casualties. The Japanese leadership's desperate hope that inflicting maximum casualties would force America and its allies to accept a negotiated peace collapsed under the weight of industrial warfare and, ultimately, atomic devastation.
We asked when the bitter feelings resulting from the conflicts that made up Japan's wars in the Pacific might fade. Jonathan suggest the following might help in trying to answer this. "Everyone periodizes history in their mind into three different categories: everything from Adam and Eve to my grandfather, what happened from my grandfather to me, and what happened in my own lifetime."
Join us for this conversation about the decisions that led to war, the mindsets that prolonged it, and the complex legacy that continues to influence international relations in East Asia today.