CDR Salamander - Admiral Yamamoto’s Great Pacific War, with Ronald Drabkin, on Midrats

When Americans think about admirals in the Pacific in WWII, names like Nimitz, Spruance, and Halsey spring to mind.

You cannot fully understand the war in the Pacific if you don’t also look at the leaders on the Japanese side—men like Yamamoto, Kurita, and Nagumo.

On this week’s Midrats Podcast, we’re going to dive into the story of Admiral Yamamoto with our guest, Ronald Drabkin. We’ll tap into his research that led up to his next book, Admiral Yamamoto: The Gripping Story of the Legendary Japanese Naval Commander Who Planned and Executed the Pearl Harbor Attack.

We go live at 5 p.m. Eastern. You can join us live at this link and contribute your thoughts in the show chat while you’re there.

If you’re reading this after the show, check the Substack later Sunday evening for the podcast audio upload.

Ronald Drabkin is a popular author of books on World War II and espionage history. He initially learned Japanese while attending a Japanese University, before starting a career at Intel and other high tech companies.

He learned as an adult that his father had worked in counterintelligence for the US military. Curiosity about his father’s work drove him to do research that resulted in his first papers and book on Japanese naval intelligence.

He noted that the romanticized American view of Admiral Yamamoto as a “reluctant warrior” didn’t seem accurate. Furthermore, no new biography of Yamamoto had been published in a very long time, and substantial new information was available in Japan.

He has spent the last three years researching Yamamoto’s life across Japan and has even met and heard stories from Yamamoto’s family and some of his admirals, such as Kurita and Nagumo.

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