Isoroku Yamamoto

Isoroku Yamamoto was an admiral of the Imperial Japanese Navy, born in 1884 in Nagaoka, who graduated from the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy in 1904 and was wounded at the Battle of Tsushima, losing two fingers on his left hand. Appointed commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet on 30 August 1939, he became the principal architect of Japan's opening strategy in the Pacific War, having opposed war with the United States on the grounds of its industrial capacity but accepting the assignment once conflict began. He planned and orchestrated the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, intended as a preventive strike to neutralize American naval power, and directed Japan's rapid early victories across the Pacific in the months that followed. His strategic position reversed at the Battle of Midway in June 1942, where the loss of four Japanese aircraft carriers marked a decisive turning point in the war and trapped Japan in the prolonged war of attrition he had hoped to avoid. He was killed in action on 18 April 1943, when American P-38 fighters shot down his transport aircraft over Bougainville.