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His Person. The Admiral is an adversary who does not want underrating. Yamamoto means Base of a Mountain, and the Admiral is solid. He is deliberate, positive, aggressive. His passion for winning has made him the bridge, poker, chess, and go* champion of the Japanese Navy. Once an American asked him how he learned bridge so quickly. He explained: "If I can keep 5,000 ideographs in my mind, it is not hard to keep in mind 52 cards."
Admiral Yamamoto is wily as only the Japanese can be. When he crossed the U.S. in 1934, reporters noted that he was short on English, that he answered them through an interpreter. Actually he spoke excellent English then; he used the interpreter to brush off embarrassing questions.
At 57, he is at the top of his powers. He smokes, drinks with gusto, works like a dog, ashore lives a Spartan life in a modest house in Tokyo's suburbs. He has firm control of his heavy-lipped, firm-jawed face, and crops his hair short to look more like the man of action that he is.
His Wrath. The tasks which confront the Japanese Navy will not provide pleasant afternoon outings for Isoroku Yamamoto and his subordinates. But they will be sustained in them by a deep resentment, something which hurts down around the breastbone. The Japanese have not known an easy life, and they think that this is so because Britain and the U.S. have kept them from their ease.
This feeling is nothing new. It was over a decade ago that the Japanese General Kiokatu Sato wrote a credo to which Admiral Yamamoto would certainly lend his every nerve:
"If we do not break the ambitions of the American people and do not punish it for its unfairness, our souls will know no peace, even when they leave this world. We fought China for Korea. We fought Russia for Manchuria. The circumstances will oblige us to fight America. The war between Japan and the United States is the inevitable fate of our nation....
"The fury rises in our hearts...."
* This week Congress acted to expand the U.S. Navy by 150,000 tons. This amounts to more tonnage than was lost by both the U.S. and British Navies in the first disasters of the war.
* Actually, by no means all U.S. top naval commanders took a light view of Japanese power, especially under the conditions of a two-ocean struggle.
* A type of Japanese checkers in which the aim is to surround the enemy's pieces, called go-stones, of which as many as 200 may be in play at one time. It is considered great practice in tactics.