Word: togo
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Isoroku Yamamoto had made a wonderful beginning. The four syllables of his name may in future be pronounced twice as reverently as the two of Togo. Japan's greatest previous naval hero, victor of Tsushima, humiliator of the Russians. But if they are, it will be because Yamamoto, like Togo, follows through and makes his wonderful beginning just a beginning...
...pretty sordid record in China, Isoroku Yamamoto's Navy displaces better than its own weight in pride, and he has grown up with that pride. He graduated from the Japanese Naval Academy in time to lose the first and second fingers of his left hand aboard Admiral Togo's flagship Mikasa in the great battle off Tsushima in 1904. Down the years he has absorbed and fostered the morale of Japan's Navy, the crafty conservatism of Japanese naval statesmanship, pride in such things as the superiority of Japanese Navy bombings over Army bombings of Chungking...
...midway of last week, things began to happen. It was plain that Japan's answer was being given, not in words in Washington, but in troop movements in the Far East. In Tokyo U.S. Ambassador Grew and Foreign Minister Togo were minding their diplomatic Ps & Qs, but Japanese troops were pouring into French Indo-China, threatening the Burma Road...
Said Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo: "The United States ... is trying forcibly to apply to East Asiatic countries fantastic principles and rules not adapted to the actual situation...
This tough talk was underlined by the House of Representatives' approval of a 3,800,000,000 yen ($874,000,000) extraordinary military budget. Thus Japan's Tojo, Togo and Diet had thrust the Empire into a warlike posture which, if it were to be abandoned for any reason, would require a fearful loss of face and alibis which would have to be masterpieces of Japanese verbalism. The Japanese were still fooling themselves into believing that the U.S. could be made to back down...