Word: shimada
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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These disasters could not be blamed on dull, purse-lipped little Admiral Shigetaro Shimada, then, as now, His Imperial Jap Majesty's Navy Minister. It was not he but Admiral Osami Nagano, Hirohito's Chief of Naval Staff and thus top Navy planner, who was the first big failure in Japan's once glamorous naval history...
...this week Shimada had to face the disconcerting fact that he, too, was a colossal failure. Shimada had met the U.S. fleet, tentatively and ineptly, in waters uncomfortably close to home between the Marianas and the inner bastion of the Philippines...
Against the massive armada commanded by the U.S.'s gimlet-eyed Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, little Shimada had thrown an inferior task force. He had planned the action so cautiously that his force did not come within hundreds of miles of Spruance's guns. But it did poke its nose within range of Spruance's naval aircraft. That was enough...
Tougher than Togo's. The reason Shimada had no one to blame this time but himself was that old Nagano was no longer in the whipping-boy post. Last February he had been kicked upstairs to the job of senior adviser to the Emperor, the kind of post that navies the world over like to hand out to failures with broad stripes. When Nagano left, Shimada took over his job as Chief of Staff, thus made himself responsible for Navy strategy and grand tactics while retaining the safer administrative duties of Navy Minister...
...mystery. So is the use of the Jap sub fleet. It has never very seriously menaced U.S. shipping. Jap subs have been used for supplying outposts in tight spots or for evacuation (e.g., Kiska). Probably the Japs use their undersea craft mostly for reconnaissance. One theory: Admiral Shimada is saving his torpedoes for the all-out battle with the U.S. Pacific Fleet...