Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto
Yamamoto was the Japanese admiral who designed and implemented the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The basic dilemma was how to do “Operation Vengeance” without the Japanese realizing that the US Navy by that point had broken their codes.
One element of the story is important for American public policy today: the role of future Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, and the impact of the Yamamato operation on Stevens’ future approach to death penalty cases. Key graph:
And back in the US, a young naval lieutenant who joined the service before Pearl Harbor and was working on the cryptological staff that broke the code was deeply disturbed at the process and sequence of events. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Chicago in 1941 and Bronze Star awarded for his cryptological work, he related much later in life that he had been much troubled by the fact that Yamamoto was shot down with so little apparent deliberation or humanitarian consideration. The experience, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens related in a 2007 interview, raised questions in his mind about the fairness of the death penalty. “There is a very different notion” he said “when you’re thinking about killing an individual, as opposed to killing a soldier in the line of fire.” A notion, he relayed in the interview, that later led him to narrow the category of offenders who are eligible for the death penalty and ensure it is imposed fairly and accurately. He has been the most outspoken critic of the death penalty on the court.
Associate Justice John Paul Stevens---one of the last WW2 veterans in high public office
Tags: Admiral Yamamoto, Justice John Paul Stevens, Operation Venegeance