Vice Admiral Nagumo's first attack wave commander had reported at 0700 hours that the airfield at Midway was still … Another attack would meet strong opposition. Enemy fire had been surprisingly prompt even though we took them by surprise. However, the head of the combined fleet, Isoroku Yamamoto, insisted that the operation go forward. Ironically, Nagumo was appointed to lead the attack due to his seniority.In the wake of Perry's exploits, Japanese authorities began a remarkable effort to develop a modern navy. The flight decks had to be kept clear of strike bombers in order to allow the combat air patrol Zeros to be recovered, refuelled, rearmed, and relaunched to defend their carriers.Another alternative was to hold the Japanese bombers on their carriers in readiness to repel a possible American naval counter-attack, and await the return of the first attack wave. The Japanese navy was also beginning to build its own modern warships.
They were assisted by European navies eager to sell their equipment and expertise. The conquest of the Netherlands East Indies would entail operations near the shores of the U.S. territory of the Philippines and British Malaysia. Without oil, Japan would have been unable to continue military operations in China. For Nagumo, the clinching argument against an immediate bomber strike was the lack of any readily available Zero fighters to escort them to the American carrier. All this changed overnight in 1854, when Commodore Perry sailed into Tokyo Bay and forced the Japanese to open their borders to international trade.Despite the success of the Japanese during the Pearl Harbor raid, the United States showed no intention of giving up. 3. Japanese success in the Russo-Japanese War marked Japan as a naval competitor with the major European powers for the first time in its history. He was promoted to the rank of admiral in 1935.Throughout the 1930s, Japanese involvement in China expanded steadily. Seeking a promising career, Nagumo entered the naval college at Etajima in 1904.
Chūichi Nagumo[a] (25 March 1887 – 6 July 1944) was a Japanese admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) during World War II. By the late 1920s, Britain and the United States were becoming concerned about the growth of Japanese naval strength and convened the first London Conference in 1930, in an effort to avoid a naval arms race in the Pacific. It was simply not possible for Nagumo to "spot" a bomber strike on his flight decks while the four Japanese carriers were under continuing attack by American aircraft. Nagumo served on the Japanese delegation to the conference, where he helped secure the right of the Japanese navy to build as many submarines and light cruisers as any other country. Nagumo, who became the naval general staff chief of operations in 1936, was staunchly in favor of expanding the war. Nagumo was born in the city of Yonezawa, Yamagata Prefecture in northern Japan in 1887. Continued Japanese expansion in China eventually led the United States to stop exporting oil to Japan on July 26, 1941. What became known as the "China Incident" also created a division within the Japanese armed forces between those who favored expanding the war in China and those who urged withdrawal. Therefore, Japanese military leaders decided to conquer the Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia), an oil-rich region, to supply its needs.