On April 18, 1943, isoroku Yamamoto, commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet of the Japanese Navy, was shot down and killed by A U.S. plane while inspecting troops. When the news reached Japan, Emperor Hirohito decided to hold a state funeral for him, and when the train with Yamamoto's fifty-six ashes slowly arrived at Tokyo Station, the first person on the train was responsible for holding the urn, while the second person was slowly walking forward with Yamamoto's sabre. After the state funeral ceremony, when the subordinate members were sorting out the relics for him, they inadvertently found a suicide note written half a year ago in the drawer of his office, and for a time, the conjecture that Yamamoto was actually "suicidal" spread throughout the Japanese Navy and even the whole country.
Suspicious suicide note - If ordinary officers and soldiers prepare suicide notes in advance when they go to the front, it is not surprising at all, because after all, the soldiers who charge forward tend to have the highest proportion of sacrifice, but Yamamoto Isoroku, as a general, prepares a suicide note for himself in advance, which is a bit "strange". Long before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Yamamoto, who was known as the "General of Constant Victory" in the casino, had always had an ominous premonition about the war with the United States, and for this reason he had said to the japanese Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe at the time: "After a year and a half of war, then Japan still has the hope of winning, but if it fights for two or three years, Japan will undoubtedly lose." "And it also left a prophecy: I will do my best in the war, hoping that I will finally die on the battlefield, and you will see Tokyo razed to the ground at least three times in the days to come, the people will be extremely miserable, and in their hearts they will have stabbed you with a thousand knives, and we will be in trouble, doomed to doom." Later, this prediction really came true, and the bombing of Tokyo also made all this happen to Konoe Fumimaro.
Due to the uncertainties about the future, Yamamoto's spirit has always been in a state of high tension, especially when the "Doolittle" air raid on Tokyo, his desire for a "quick victory" began to prevail. In June 1942, Yamamoto Wasoroku stubbornly threw the main force of the combined fleet into Midway Island in a vain attempt to launch a decisive battle with the US army and cut off the communication line between the United States and Australia in one fell swoop, but due to intelligence leakage, the Japanese fleet was ambushed by the US army, not only the main aircraft carrier was destroyed by a pot, but even a large number of pilots had to land on the surface of the sea or launch a suicide attack on the US fleet because they had no landing site, and sank into the deep sea together. After the Battle of Midway, Yamamoto was no longer able to organize a decent surprise attack, but instead fought his worst war of attrition with the Americans in the Solomon Islands, watching the japanese Navy's most elite aviation forces be depleted little by little.
Seeing that the defeat had been decided, Yamamoto Fifty-Six wrote a suicide note in the form of a "summary" and locked it in the drawer of his office, and later this suicide note was made public, and it was written with the following words: Tens of thousands of loyal and courageous soldiers have sacrificed, and I will have the face to see the holy lord, and I will rush into the enemy line, and I will be exposed to the wilderness. However, in addition to the suicide note, Yamamoto also wrote in a letter to the nobleman Harada Kumao: I am ready to dedicate the rest of my life to the next 100 days. From these two "letters", it is not difficult to see that when the Japanese army was seriously injured on the battlefield and needed the commander to boost morale, Yamamoto Fifty-six changed his thinking and tactics, so that his command style became more and more conservative, only daring to fight a defensive war with the United States, and did not dare to send precious aircraft carriers to surprise attack the US army, and this tactic was a "dead end" in the eyes of the clear-eyed people, because without the support of aircraft carriers, the combat scope of Japanese aircraft would be limited, and he could only take off to meet the enemy in the surrounding seas, thus losing it." Surprise attack" opportunity, combined with the national strength to compare, Japan and the United States are not at all a level of opponents, as the war time prolongs, the U.S. military will have more fleets put into use on the battlefield, and Japan will only fight more and more poorly, until the final total defeat.
Although Yamamoto's boldness had "shrunk" by this time, he often flew to the front line himself to boost morale, and at this point was the most suspicious place that caused him to "commit suicide". In the Battle of Midway, he was because of the leakage of intelligence to create the current irreversible situation, as the saying goes: eat a long and wise, Yamamoto will certainly keep this lesson firmly in mind, in the future pay more attention to the problem of intelligence, but he personally flew to the front If it is only to boost morale, it is a little too far-fetched, especially in the late stage of the war, the Japanese army not only lost to the US military in intelligence, but even the air supremacy in the areas occupied by himself can not be guaranteed. So when Isoroku Yamamoto, as commander-in-chief, chose to go to the front line at this particular time, it seemed a little unreasonable.
When the secret telegram recording Yamamoto's fifty-six travel plan was deciphered, Nimitz, as the commander-in-chief of the US army, did not dare to easily issue a "decapitation order", so he passed it upwards to Roosevelt, and Roosevelt did not immediately express his position, because since the First World War, all countries in the world have generally reached an "unspoken rule" - not to kill the head of the enemy country and the commander-in-chief by assassination, so Roosevelt also had to take the time to consider whether to implement this "decapitation plan", and later after careful consideration, And after seeking the advice of the accompanying bishop to completely remove moral obstacles, Roosevelt finally agreed to Nimitz's actions. On April 18, 1943, although his subordinates tried their best to persuade Yamamoto to abandon this "risky operation", he decided to take off as planned, and on the nearby Guadalcanal Henderson airfield, P-38 fighters full of fuel and ammunition also began to take off one after another, and finally the two sides met on time over the rainforest on Bougainville Island. Finally, Yamamoto's bomber was shot down by the American planes and planted in the dense rainforest of Bougainville Island.
After the end of the air battle, not only was the Japanese Navy looking for Yamamoto Fifty-Six, but even the Army sent a squad, and after two days of searching, it took yamamoto's body to find Near the wreckage of a dilapidated bomber, only to see that he still maintained a straight sitting posture, with a seat belt around his waist, without the slightest panic, as if he had known that all this would happen.
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