Similar Sayings
In The Reluctant Admiral, Hiroyuki Agawa gives a quotation from a reply by Admiral Yamamoto to Ogata Taketora on January 9, 1941, which is similar to the famous version: "A military man can scarcely pride himself on having 'smitten a sleeping enemy'; it is more a matter of shame, simply, for the one smitten. I would rather you made your appraisal after seeing what the enemy does, since it is certain that, angered and outraged, he will soon launch a determined counterattack."
The other common quotation attributed to Yamamoto predicting the future outcome of a naval war against the United States is: "I can run wild for six months … after that, I have no expectation of success". As it happened, the Battle of Midway, the critical naval battle considered to be the turning point of the war in the Pacific, indeed did occur six months after Pearl Harbor (Midway ended on June 7, exactly 6 months later).
Similar to the above quotation was another quotation that, while real, was widely misinterpreted in the US press. Yamamoto, when once asked his opinion on the war, pessimistically said that the only way for Japan to win the war was to dictate terms in the White House (which would have required them to eventually invade the United States and march across the country, fighting their way to Washington — i.e. Japan would have had to conquer the whole of the United States). Yamamoto's meaning was that military victory, in a protracted war against an opponent with as much of a population and industrial advantage as the United States possessed, was completely impossible — a rebuff to those who thought that winning a major battle against the US Navy would end the war. However, in the US, his words were recast as a jingoistic boast that he would dictate peace terms at the White House.
Read more about this topic: Isoroku Yamamoto's Sleeping Giant Quote
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