Japanese Planning for Pearl Harbor - Episode 515

The Unauthorized History of the Pacific War

Captain William Toti, USN

Naval History And Heritage Command, History, Imperial Japanese Navy, Sam Cox, Admiral King, Cruisers, Spruance, Fargo, Seth Paridon, Fighters, Pacific War, Stavridis, Cactus Air Force, December 7, Station Hypo, William Toti, Bombers, Bill Toti, Navy, Halsey, Submarines, Society & Culture, Education, Us Navy, Mush Morton, Cincpoa, Documentary, Guadalcanal, Imperial Japan, World War Ii, Midway, Aircraft Carriers, Cryptology, Wake Island, Nimitz, Cincpac, Macarthur, Pearl Harbor, Wahoo, Courses, Battleships, New Guinea

4.9 • 872 Ratings

🗓️ 12 August 2025

⏱️ 88 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week Seth Paridon and Jon Parshall dig into the Japanese planning for the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941. The guys get into the brain behind the idea, that being Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku, and his first ideas for the plan in April 1940. The guys discuss the growth of the plan from idea to reality through 1940, into 1941, including dives into the personalities involved including: Kuroshima, Kusaka, Genda, and Fuchida. Jon then gives us a masters class on the formation of Kido Butai as a striking force and the formation of the Japanese 1st Air Fleet. Make sure and check out this all-important episode on how the plan went from an idea to a full-fledged operation and its overall impact on Japan's grand strategy for war in the Pacific in 1941.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The
0:07.0	The The
0:23.6	The Hello, welcome to episode 515 of the unauthorized History of the Pacific War podcast.
0:47.9	My name is Seth Peridon, historian, and deputy director of the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum.
0:51.2	And with me, as always, is my co-host, esteemed author and historian
0:54.9	and his sartorial splendor. People liked that one last time, so I'm going to do it again.
0:59.2	My good friend, John Partial, how are you, John? I'm well. I think I'm just as tired as you are because
1:05.2	you and I were both up way too late last night watching the Nautilus dive on the USS Laffey and neither of us could tear ourselves
1:14.6	away from the monitors until it was far too late but yeah nevertheless here we are a little
1:18.8	crispy around the gills but ready to go and crispy around the gills yeah it was hard to peel
1:24.0	myself out of the rack this morning at 0 55.30, but such as it is,
1:28.5	here we are. Yes. But it was worth it. That was pretty damn cool. And it continues, too.
1:35.0	It continues. Yeah, they're on Yudachi even as we speak. And I'm like, no, must focus.
1:41.6	Yeah, I know I had to pull myself away as well. Yeah. All right, all right. So here we go. This is a very important topic this week. And I'm sure this one's going to appeal to a lot of people because I think they know the plans for Pearl Harbor, but they don't know the plans for Pearl Harbor. So we're going to get into that right now. So the road to Pearl Harbor was not a straight one. For years, the United States and Japan had danced
2:03.7	together along the road to war. War nearly came in 1937 when the Japanese supposedly, accidentally,
2:10.5	sank the gunboat USS Penay in the Yangtze River. Hawks in the United States government
2:15.7	screamed for war then, and while cooler heads did prevail,
2:19.0	things were never quite the same after that year. As the Japanese continued to push through China,
2:24.2	the U.S. sanctions against Japanese grew ever more confining. Initial sanctions on scrap iron,
2:29.2	Avgas, and the like were a slap on the wrist of Japan, and everyone knew it.
2:33.4	The war in China continued to rage,
2:35.3	and Japan continued to look for ways to end it, moving into French Indochina in 1940 and moving
	...

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