After they left, Yamamoto had a pot of tea brought in. He felt the loneliness of command more than ever in these strange days. There would come a juncture very soon where he would have to confide in the members of the general staff and the cabinet. For now, though, they were as paralyzed by shock as anyone. They trusted the commander in chief of the Combined Fleet to fashion their immediate response to the sensational events of the past two weeks. But would they agree to his grand strategy? Would the Germans? He had no idea.

And what was worse, he had almost no confidence in the decisions he was making. He picked up the research report that had been prepared by Brasch and Hidaka. There, on the very first page, they had produced a comprehensive list of faults with both the Pearl Harbor and Midway operations. He detected the hand of Brasch in that. Hidaka would not have been so bold. But he understood that the German was testing the limits of their autonomy.

And much of the criticism he agreed with emphatically. He had raised all the same objections to war with America. He had foreseen with remarkable prescience the inevitable consequences of waking a giant. But he had not foreseen the result of Midway. He had been so confident of his choices in that matter.

His hands shook as he read the summary of what would have happened, had Kakuta not turned tail and run for home. The breaking of their naval codes meant Nimitz had known exactly what was heading his way. The repair of the Yorktown, which they had thought sunk or at least damaged beyond salvage, had added a crucial platform to the American order of battle.

The incredible sacrifice of wave after wave of American pilots—all of them knowingly flying to their deaths—touched him in a way he had not thought possible. They had died with great spirit, just to give their dive-bombers a shot at Nagumo’s carriers. In five minutes three of those carriers had been destroyed, and the war lost. The fourth soon followed. All because of a stupidly complex and wasteful plan for which he bore sole responsibility.

Yamamoto had to lean against his desk as waves of dizziness and nausea swept over him. He, and he alone, had brought unutterable shame upon the emperor and devastation on the homeland. He did not need to reread the brief account of the atomic blasts that would have devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nor did he need to examine the photographs again. The images would stay with him for the rest of his life.

He wondered bleakly how long that might now be.

Would his new grand strategic design change anything? Or were they all trapped in a cycle of predestination. Was Japan doomed to lose this war and face subservience to a Communist China in the next century?