JAPAN: 4,000 pages of Imperial Navy officers' private testimonials to be published

December 7, 2009

A large collection of testimonials from former Imperial Japanese Navy admirals that are held by an organization of former naval officers will be published next spring.

The records are made up of statements by so-called "silent admirals," such as Shigeyoshi Inoue, made privately in interviews with younger officers following World War II, and promise to shed light on the inner workings of the former Imperial Navy.

The testimonials -- originally collected from around 1956-1961 by former Vice-Adm. Tomiji Koyanagi and others and dubbed the "Koyanagi materials" -- are held by the Suikokai, a foundation run by former Japanese sailors. The materials take up about 4,000 pages of 400 character note paper in 44 books.

Former Adm. Shigetaro Shimada, one of the "silent admirals," is said never to have responded to information requests from outside the military, but did speak to Koyanagi.

After reporting to the Diet following the surprise attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 8, 1941, Shimada told Koyanagi that after seeing the legislators put on a show of rejoicing he thought, "It's going to get difficult from now on. I felt like I was carrying a heavy load on my shoulders, and something was caught in my throat."

Furthermore, Inoue -- who was close to Commander-in-Chief of the Combined Fleet Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto -- criticized Yamamoto, saying, "If he said that he had no confidence in the strategy against the United States, then even if it meant risking his job, he ought to have objected to the Pacific War."


Former Adm. Shigetaro Shimada. (Mainichi)Another contributor to the records was former Vice-Adm. Takeo Kurita, who was the commander of the Japanese fleet at the disastrous defeat at Leyte Gulf in 1944. Why Kurita first pressed forward with a bombardment of a U.S. supply ship flotilla but then withdrew has long been one of the great mysteries of naval history. In the documents, the vice-admiral is quoted as saying that, faced with daily air raids sent from the U.S. task force, "It was impractical to fight a naval battle when the enemy had complete air superiority." Furthermore, Kurita recalled the supporting air units in the Philippines turned out to be far weaker that he had anticipated.

The Suikokai foundation, which held the documents privately, decided to have them published as a resource for future research. Copies of the materials have been made public by the Defense Ministry's National Institute for Defense Studies one piece at a time since about 2001.

"They felt secure speaking to their own," says non-fiction writer and Showa-era history specialist Masayasu Hosaka, "so these former military men who never talked to people from the outside were startlingly voluble. These materials will shape the entire impression of the Japanese navy."