Book excerpt: Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, a brilliant admiral in the Japanese Navy was ordered to devise a devastating surprise attack on the American Navy. Always a realist and having spent years in America, warned that Japan could not win a war against the Americans; that Japan would do well for six months, but after that it would be ground down by American industrial might. Ordered by the Emperor to go ahead, he planned the aerial attack on Pearl Harbor with stunning success. But as he predicted, America in 1942, began to push Japan back to its homeland. Yamamoto died in late 1943.