October 20th, 1940
Meeting of the Imperial War Council
October 20th, 15th year of Showa
An aide opened the heavy steel door to the war room for Yamamoto. He had never felt comfortable in this bunker, meters beyond Tokyo. The artificial light, the strange air which had passed dozens of filters which gave it that dead smell. The war room reminded Yamamoto of a bee stock. Generals, admirals and their aides made the last changes before they would present their plans to the civil government. Tojo was already there, chatting with the Field Marshal Hata, Grand Admiral Nagano and the minister for economics Yoshino Shinji. Yamamoto went over to them and heard that they talked about Kubuki, the traditional Japanese theatre. Tojo had noticed him now. “Konnichiwa, Yamamoto-san. We shall begin in two minutes.” Yamamoto stood silent next to them and listened to their critique of the newest play at one of Tokyo’s stages.
When Prime Minister Konoe and foreign minister Hachiro Arita had arrived, the men walked over to a big table with a map of East Asia and the Pacific.
Tojo turned towards Field Marshal Sugiyama Hajime, who stood at the table. “General Sugiyama, would you please introduce us to the preliminary plans now?”
“Hai, General Tojo. I’ll begin with the minor theatres. We will try to infiltrate British India over these passes from China to Burma here.” He pointed to the map. “Two divisions of elite troops stand ready and we hope that we’ll surprise the British Command with this move and can secure parts of Northern Burma before they can react. They won’t expect an attack over these mountain ranges.
Our main thrust southwards will go against Singapore and Borneo, later against the Dutch East Indies. We have assigned nineteen divisions to the southern theatre for now, among them highly specialized troops and motorized and armoured divisions. We expect to conquer the Dutch East Indies within half a year or less.”
Yamamoto noted that Konoe looked annoyed. He didn’t like to be presented an issue he couldn’t influence. But civilians had no role in warfare.
“We have assigned a fleet for this southern theatre and several air force units. The second theatre will be the Philippines. We need to conquer them in order to secure our shipping routes to Malaya and Indonesia. We have troops on Formosa and on the Chinese continent ready to be shipped to the northern Philippines and make a landfall there. They’ll be reinforced by troops who stand ready to attack Hong Kong immediately after the declaration of war.
Grand Admiral Yamamoto plans the attack against the United States
As that will most likely provoke a declaration of war by the United States, we have made plans how we can hamper the US ability to retaliate. We will attack Guam and Wake with naval landing forces. The American long-range bombers will than not be able to reach our home islands or China. Yamamoto-san, will you introduce us to the plans of the fleet?”
Yamamoto nodded and began to tell the civilians on how the fleet would strike against the Americans. Konoe was stunned when he heard the plan. “Do you think that’s wise? It will strengthen their will for resolve.” “We know that. But it is the best alternative.” “And when will you attack?” “Everything will be ready until the end of November. We have set the date for our attack on December 6th or 7th, depending on the time zone. All units will attack at the same time.”
more real.
