Sea-Power in the Pacific

During the three decades preceding the Pacific War, the United States placed no small amount of effort in gaming out what a such a conflict against Japan might look like. Ultimately, the Pacific War looked very little like the crystallization of these efforts expressed in War Plan Orange.

The Americans and the Japanese were both heavily influenced by the theories of sea power and decisive battle of Alfred Thayer Mahan, despite the lacklustre absence of any such climactic decision at sea in the Great War.

The Pacific War would bear even less resemblance to Naval War College preconceptions as battleships were sidelined by the carrier—initially out of necessity, though as planes improved, and the doctrine for their employment were clarified, the superior capability they provided to shape the battlespace would soon become as clear as daylight.

Sea-Power in the Pacific, published in 1921, is military writer Hector Charles Bywater’s prediction which in some respects – together with his 1925 novel, The Great Pacific War – hits far closer to the mark than any actual naval war planning of the interwar period.

The impact of these two books in the United States is questionable, but – according to a 1970 article by journalist William H. Honan from American Heritage – both books were translated into Japanese and circulated among naval officers during the interwar period.

Pictured on the cover is Yamashita Gentarō who was chief of the Navy General Staff at the time of this book’s publication. He was a member of the Fleet Faction opposed to the Washington Naval Treaty which was the hot coal of contention in the fight for supremacy between the Naval General Staff and the Navy Ministry. It was also the Navy General Staff which very quickly organised and circulated a translation of Sea-Power in the Pacific upon its publication.

To what extent this book influenced Japanese military thinking is uncertain, but it clearly did exert an influence on the critical political struggles at play within the Imperial Navy in the 1920s.
- Summary by Alister (10 hr 21 min)