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of ships damaged at Pearl Harbor and await the arrival of new construction reinforcements prior to moving west? Why would they continue an advance if heavy losses were sustained in the approach?
    If Yamamoto’s attack on Pearl Harbor was a success it would work against the only strategy Japan had for victory. It would be a classic case of “win the battle, lose the war”—which was exactly what happened. The choices were never so dramatically illustrated than by a photograph of the battleship Wisconsin tied up alongside the salvaged hulk of the Oklahoma . The Japanese had the dilemma of either meeting Oklahoma at sea early in the war, or striking Pearl Harbor and sinking a few ships like Oklahoma , imposing a delay on the Pacific Fleet, and so later having to face the more modern and powerful Wisconsin and her consorts.
    Yamamoto substituted his vision of a short war coming to a negotiated end—based on the psychological shock of Pearl Harbor and the loss of the Philippines and southern resource areas—for the Naval General Staff’s vision of a short war culminating in Zengen Sakusen . This realization gives better context to Yamamoto’s statement, “If we fail [at Pearl Harbor], we’d better give up the war.” He clearly had no confidence in Zengen Sakusen . Failure had to be defined not in terms of the results of an attack on Pearl Harbor but in terms of achieving what was needed to bring the Americans to the negotiating tables. If the attack on Pearl Harbor succeeded but did not result in negotiations, the losses caused by a successful attack would force the Americans into a long-war strategy, the very war in which Japan had no hope of victory.
    It has been suggested that the strategies were actually complementary: a Pearl Harbor raid would reduce the effectiveness of the Pacific Fleet at the outset of the war, something like an early phase of Interceptive Operations, followed by the Decisive Battle that would convince the Americans that victory was not worth the necessary sacrifices. But Yamamoto did not believe that the Americans would behave in a manner to allow a Jutland-style battle at the outset, and there was no reason to believe that losses at Pearl Harbor would stir Americans into committing the fleet with inferior force ratios. Yamamoto had not thought ahead to consider a situation where the losses at Pearl Harbor did not bring the Americans to the negotiating table. The cobbled-together nature of the staff work and negotiations with the Imperial Army preceding the Midway Campaign was the result of Yamamoto’s lack of foresight, as he tried to improvise his way out of the strategic situation he had imposed through the success of the Pearl Harbor attack. At least in Yamamoto’s mind, there was no complementary connection between Pearl Harbor and Zengen Sakusen .
    The psychological aspect of Yamamoto’s objective (as opposed to material destruction) should not be dismissed. It played a significant role in how the Japanese would go about achieving their material objectives. In particular, the psychological aspect called for the attackers to prioritize the American battleships. Rear Admiral Onishi, Chief of Staff of the Eleventh Air Fleet, said Yamamoto believed that “Most Americans—like most Japanese—still believed battleships to be the mightiest weapons of war. The sinking of one or, better yet, a number of these giant vessels would be considered a most appalling thing, akin to a disaster of nature. Such destruction, Yamamoto reasoned, would paralyze the vaunted Yankee spirit.” 65
    Yamamoto was after headlines, front page photographs of destroyed battleships. The target was the American people, a people with a prominent and vocal pacifist contingent who were placing pressure on elected representatives not to involve American troops in foreign wars. Most Americans couldn’t find Luzon on a map. The Philippines were to be given their independence in five years. Why spill American blood to