us navy changes course of pacific war in wwii

The first group consisted of officers who served during the Pacific War, as well as one journalist, all of whom wrote about the war during the 1950s from a cultural perspective. The following paper is a limited review of translated post-1945 Japanese naval accounts written by two groups of authors.

This viewpoint raises the question of whether or not the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) lost the Pacific War because of national characteristics supposedly “unsuited” to twentieth century naval warfare, if Japan was defeated by the Allies because of strategic, operational, and logistical factors over which it had little or no control, or if Japan lost because of the poor strategic decisions it made, especially the gap between planning and operations? 1 Race and culture versus strategy, operations, and logistics are the two opposing views expressed by Japanese naval officers who wrote about their nation’s defeat after the Pacific War. Much of the translated postwar literature on the Pacific War has been written from an Allied perspective which overemphasizes Japanese weaknesses, deemphasizes the strengths of the Japanese military, and places defeat in a cultural and even racial context. Japan’s naval defeat in the Pacific War, however, provides a highly arguable case.

Military historians say that military history is written from the perspective of the victor. The following article originally appeared in the International Journal of Naval History under the title, “Strategy, Language, and the Culture of Defeat: Changing Interpretations of Japan’s Pacific War Naval Demise,” and is republished with permission.

Us navy changes course of pacific war in wwii