Thank You, Mr. Yamamoto

The Jap who looked forward to dictating peace to the U.S. in the White House is dead. Last week, in Tokyo's Navy Club, the ashes of Isoroku Yamamoto, who had been Naval Commander in Chief of Japan, lay in state. Tokyo reported that the Admiral had been killed, "in combat with the enemy," during April.

At an emergency meeting of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association this resolution was adopted: "We, the 100,000,000 people of Japan, have simultaneously expressed our deepest condolence and we are burning with a greater spirit to fight against our enemy, America and Britain. Let us march in line in one united body . . . so that the spirit of the late Fleet Admiral may be kept alive."

Said Rear Admiral Hideo Yano, Chief of the Navy's Press Section: "The Japanese Navy will stride forward with the profound will to destroy the enemy. The war is to be prolonged and I, with you, to make the spirit of the Fleet Admiral live, must preserve and fulfill his will. . . ."

The will of the late Admiral was well known: to smash the U.S. From boyhood, when his father told him of the American barbarians who had come to Japan to threaten the Son of Heaven, Isoroku Yamamoto hated Americans.

He chose the Navy as a career so that he could "return Commodore Perry's visit." After graduation from Japan's Naval Academy in 1904, he fought as an ensign in the Russo-Japanese War aboard Admiral Togo's flagship, the Mikasa. In 1925 he was naval attache in Washington; in 1934, Japan's delegate at the naval conference in London, where he urged the abolition of restrictions on naval building. While in London he was made a vice admiral; later he became Vice Minister of the Navy, then Chief of the Navy Aviation Department, finally Commander in Chief of the Combined Imperial Fleets. As Commander in Chief he plotted the Pearl Harbor attack.

When the name of the man who killed Admiral Yamamoto is released, the U.S. will have a new hero. Said one veteran of Pacific service: "The only better news would be a bullet through Hitler."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.