April 18, 1943: Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto is assassinated, as U.S. Army Air Forces planes shoot his plane down near the Solomon Islands. He was 59 years old.
Born on April 4, 1884 in Nagaoka, Niigata Prefecture (Japan calls its administrative divisions "prefectures" instead of "states"), Yamamoto had samurai training, and graduated from the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy in Hiroshima. (It was not destroyed in the atomic bomb attack, but it was closed when the American occupation force abolished the Imperial Japanese Navy. Japan's current Naval Academy, Etajima Base, was built on the site, and opened in 1956.)
He served in the Russo-Japanese War, including at Japan's biggest military victory up to that point, the Battle of Tsushima, losing the index and middle finger on his left hand. He taught at the Naval Staff College, and was a naval attaché to America, learning to speak fluent English.
He received his 1st command in 1928, and participated in the London Naval Conferences of 1930 (as a Real Admiral) and 1935 (as a Vice Admiral). He was a promoter of naval aviation, but opposed Japan's invasions of Manchuria in 1931 and China as a whole in 1937, and the Axis pact with Nazi Germany and Italy in 1940.
Due to his experience there after World War I, he opposed going to war with America. Despite this, and the enmity between him and Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, he was promoted to full Admiral, and placed in command of the Combined Fleet. (On October 18, 1941, Tojo was replaced as Prime Minister by Fumimaro Konoe, but was still in charge of Japanese military forces, answerable only to Emperor Hirohito and Konoe.)
On November 5, 1941, Yamamoto said, in his "Top Secret Operation Order no. 1," issued to the Combined Fleet, the Empire of Japan must drive out Britain and America from Greater East Asia, and hasten the settlement of China, whereas, in the event that Britain and America were driven out from the Philippines and Dutch East Indies, an independent, self-supporting economic entity will be firmly established.
Two days later, he set the date for the intended surprise attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. He chose December 7, for one simple reason: It was a Sunday, the day that American military personnel would be the least alert to an attack.
The 1970 film Tora! Tora! Tora! -- named for the code given that the attack was on -- is usually still considered the best film about the attack, more so than From Here to Eternity (1953, in which the attack is secondary to the story), The Final Countdown (1980, ditto), and Pearl Harbor (2001, in which the acting has been heavily criticized). Playing Yamamoto, Japanese actor Sō Yamamura said, "I fear that all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant, and fill him with a terrible resolve." Yamamoto may have believed this, but there is no record of him actually saying it.
The U.S. defeated Japan at the Battle of Midway in June 1942, and again at Guadalcanal in early 1943. (By this point, Tojo was again Prime Minister.) After this, Yamamoto decided to make an inspection tour throughout the South Pacific. On April 14, 1943, the U.S. naval intelligence effort, codenamed "Magic," intercepted and decrypted a message containing specifics of Yamamoto's tour, including arrival and departure times and locations, as well as the number and types of aircraft that would transport and accompany him on the journey. Yamamoto, the itinerary revealed, would be flying from Rabaul to Balalae Airfield, on an island near Bougainville in the Solomon Islands, on the morning of April 18.
It's not clear whether President Franklin D. Roosevelt personally ordered Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox to have Yamamoto killed. What is known is that Knox gave the option to Admiral Chester Nimitz, who authorized the decision. A squadron of U.S. Army Air Forces Lockheed P-38 Lightning aircraft were assigned, informed that they were intercepting an "important high officer," with no specific name given.
Yamamoto's plane, a Mitsubishi G4M bomber designated T1-323, had an escort of another G4M (as a decoy) and 6 Mitsubishi A6M Zeroes. They were no match for 16 P-38s. 1st Lieutenant Rex T. Barber is credited with firing the shot that brought down T1-323, which crashed into the jungle on the island of Bougainville. Yamamoto's body was found by a Japanese search party the next day. His staff cremated him, he was given a full state funeral, and his ashes were divided between the public Tama Cemetery in Tokyo and his hometown of Nagaoka.
Like the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the assassination happened on a Sunday. And it happened one year to the day after Colonel Jimmy Doolittle led the raid to avenge the Pearl Harbor bombing, the one that would be depicted in the 1944 film Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo.
Barber remained in the U.S. Air Force until 1961, also serving in the Korean War, rose to the rank of Colonel, and received The Navy Cross, the Silver Star, the Air Medal and the Purple Heart. He lived until 2001.
A 2002 episode of the NBC drama The West Wing was titled "We Killed Yamamoto." It included this exchange, written by series creator Aaron Sorkin, based on the fact that the Defense Minister, and brother of the monarch, of an alleged ally of America's, had plotted that universe's thankfully-prevented version of the 9/11 attacks, and debated whether the U.S. government could, or should, have him killed:
Admiral Percy Fitzwallace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (played by John Amos): Can you tell when it's peacetime and wartime anymore? (In other words, with the threat of terrorism being as bad as it is right now, can you tell the difference?)
Leo McGarry, White House Chief of Staff (John Spencer): No.
Fitz: I don't know who the world's leading expert on warfare is, but any list of the top has got to include me, and I can't tell when it's peacetime and wartime anymore.
Leo: Look, international law has always recognized certain protected persons who you couldn't attack. It's been this way since the Romans.
Fitz: In peacetime.
Leo: Yes.
Fitz: The Battle of Agincourt (October 25, 1415, in northern France, in the Hundred Years War): This was the French fighting against the British archers. This was like a polo match. The battles were observed by heralds, and they picked the winners. And if a soldier laid down his arms, he was treated humanely.
Leo: Yeah.
Fitz: And the "international laws" that you're talking about, this is where a lot of them were written, at a time, in a place, where a person could tell between peacetime and wartime.
Fitz then invoked William Pitt the Younger, who was Prime Minister of Britain at the height of the Napoleonic Wars, and did die young, at 46 in 1806, from a bleeding ulcer. His father, William Pitt the Elder, previously served as Prime Minister, but not during a war between Britain and France.
Fitz: The idea of targeting one person was ridiculous. It wouldn't have occurred to the French to try to kill William Pitt. That all changed after Pearl Harbor.
Leo: I don't like where this conversation's going.
Fitz: Leo...
Leo: In the Situation Room, Fitz?
Fitz: We killed Yamamoto! We shot down his plane!
Leo: We declared war!
Fitz: And if Dietrich Bonhoeffer had been successful...
Leo: And the plot to kill Hitler was an internal rebellion. (And Bonhoeffer, though accused and executed after the fact, had nothing to do with it. Sorkin had him confused with Claus von Stauffenberg.)
Fitz: ...there would've been statues built of an assassin. We'd have to explain that to our kids!
Leo: I'm going to get back to the office.
Fitz: We measure the success of a mission by two things: Was it successful? And, How few civilians did we hurt? They measure success by how many. Pregnant women are delivering bombs! You're talking to me about international laws/ The laws of nature don't even apply here! I've been a soldier for 38 years, and I've found an enemy I can kill. He can't cancel Shareef's trip, Leo. You've got to tell him he can't cancel it!
But since war had been declared by both sides, and Yamamoto was a military officer who had ordered the biggest attack on an American military installation since Fort Sumter, he was a legitimate target. Perhaps among the less evil men in the Japanese command, and by some measures an honorable man. But a legitimate target nonetheless.
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April 18, 1943 was a Sunday. Football was out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. Baseball season didn't start for another 2 days. And the NHL season ended 10 days earlier, when the Detroit Red Wings beat the Boston Bruins to win the Stanley Cup. So there were no scores on this historic day.
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