Akatsuki no Midway

2. Operation MI

On December 8, 1941, the Empire of Japan went to war with the United Kingdom and the United States of America, but it was difficult to say that the war leaders had fully considered the specifics of how to bring the war to an end. The only war plan that Japan was able to codify prior to the outbreak of war was the "Draft Plan for Promoting the End of the War Against Britain, the U.S., the Netherlands, and China," which was decided on November 15, 1941, at the Imperial General Headquarters Government Liaison Conference.

This document, prepared by Colonel Akiho Ishii of the Ministry of War's Military Affairs Bureau under the direction of Akira Mutō, Director of the Military Affairs Bureau, under orders from Prime Minister and Minister of War Hideki Tōjō, was a war plan with the strategic objective of "quickly overrunning the British, American, and Dutch bases in the Far East to establish self-defense and further promoting the submission of the former regime through aggressive measures and working with Germany and Italy to first subdue Britain and then to break the will of the United States to continue the war."

The plan also set a specific operational goal of establishing a line of communication between Japan, Germany, and Italy in the Indian Ocean, while cutting off contact between India and Australia and the British mainland to force the British to surrender, and to gain the independence of Burma and India. In other words, at the outbreak of the war, the Japanese war leadership had a war plan to indirectly inflict a blow on the US by forcing the British to drop out of the war and to bring about peace with the US.

However, the Japanese war plan was based on the premise of German superiority on the European Front, and when the German invasion of Moscow failed and its momentum began to wane, the Japanese war plan itself began to waver.

On March 7, 1942, when the first stage of the operation to occupy the Southern Resources Area was progressing smoothly and the occupation of Java was just around the corner, the "Outline of War Guidance to be Adopted in the Future" was decided at the Imperial General Headquarters Government Liaison Conference. The policy for future war guidance stated the following goal: "In order to subdue the British and dissuade the Americans from their will to fight, we will continue to expand our existing war achievements and prepare for a long-term undefeatable position, while taking aggressive measures when the opportunity arises." However, the policy merely incorporated the Army's defensive and Navy's offensive operations, and Prime Minister Tōjō even complained about the inconsistency.

However, the Chief of Operations of the Army General Staff, Shinichi Tanaka, had the concept of future operations as the Army's traditional war against the Soviet Union and the Chongqing offensive to end the Second Sino-Japanese War, as well as the invasion of India, the attack on Ceylon Island, and operations in Western Asia (Iran and Iraq) and the offensive was to be directed toward the west. On the other hand, the Navy was completely divided internally in its offensive direction. The concept of operations was in direct conflict between the Navy General Staff, which was originally in charge of military operations, and the Combined Fleet Headquarters, which was the actual operational unit.

While Captain Sadatoshi Tomioka, Director of the 1st Section of the 1st Department of the Navy General Staff, who was in charge of planning the operation, and others were planning Operation FS, which aimed to divide the United States and Australia, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander of the Combined Fleet, was concerned about the invasion of Hawaii. Yamamoto himself was open to operations in the Indian Ocean, including the attack on Ceylon, but his main mission was the Hawaiian campaign.

Many of the chiefs of staff of the Combined Fleet Headquarters also wanted to see a decisive battle between Japan and the US in the Pacific Ocean. During the chart-based exercise for the Indian Ocean operation held on February 20-22, 1942 on board the Yamato, the Combined Fleet's flagship, Chief of Staff Matome Ugaki even scolded those who questioned the chart itself, saying, "The main policy is to first make the British surrender to us."