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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aaron2" data-source="post: 1811495" data-attributes="member: 1436">I used to be exclusively interested in the ETO myself, but two books, primarily Touch With Fire by Eric Bergerud and Campaign for Guadalcanal by Jack Coggins, got me interested in the PTO.In the October 1997 issue of Command Magazine, there is a great article called The Author and the Admiral. It talks about a book written in 1925 called The Great Pacific War about a war between Japan and America. In the book, Japan launches a simultaneous attack on the Philippines and the US Pacific fleet (based at the time in San Pedro CA). The Japanese also seized Truk, Guam, Yap and all the Marshall and Mariana Islands. At this point in the book, the Japanese try to negotiate a peace with the badly beaten US. However the US refuses, and decides instead to build of their fleet and counter attack. The US uses her superior industrial might to launch a two prong attack, one from Hawaii to Midway to Wake to Guam. The other is from Samoa to Truk to Anguar to the Philippines and finally Japan itself. The book ends with carrier borne US aircraft dropping leaflets over Tokyo advising Japan to surrender (which, it the book, it does). Yamamoto was such a fan of the book that in 1927, he gave started giving lectures about it to other in the IJN academies. It’s weird how close the book is to the actual war. The invasion of the Philippines is almost exactly as IRL except the landing on Mindinao was in Sindangan Bay instead of the Davao Gulf.The author talks about other things the Japanese could have done instead of attacking the US. One example was to quickly seize just the Dutch East Indies in 1940 while Britain was threatened with invasion and the US was mostly neutral. The US didn't have the power to stop them and probably wouldn't have declared war at the time. One of the reasons for Japans action (at least according to the article) is the Japanese concept of Wa (harmony). At the time, decisions were made by consensus and it was bad form to rock the boat. So, even though it might have made sense for Japan to drop the notion of the US as being their #1 enemy, no one, Yamamoto included, wanted to challenge the prevailing thought. I probably don't do this idea justice. The article spends several pages just on this point.Aaron</blockquote>

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