The Great Pacific War

The Great Pacific War was a 1925 novel by Hector Charles Bywater which discussed a hypothetical future war between Japan and the United States. The novel accurately predicts a number of details about the Pacific Campaign of World War II. Bywater was a naval correspondent for the London Daily Telegraph.

Plot

In The Great Pacific War, the war begins with a Japanese invasion of Manchuria, Formosa and Korea. Japan then stages a surprise attack which results in the nearly complete destruction of the Panama Canal, by exploding a freighter full of explosives in the Gaillard Cut.

Legacy

In Infamy, John Toland states that Isoroku Yamamoto was in the U.S. in 1925 and might have read the New York newspapers' reviews of this book. The book was translated into Japanese and read by senior officers of the Japanese Imperial Navy.^[1]

Bywater died in August 1940, before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Notes

1. William H. Honan (December 1970) "Japan Strikes: 1941", American Heritage, vol. 22, no. 1, pages 12-15, 91-95.

Further reading

• Honan, W. H. (1991), Visions of Infamy: The untold story of how journalist Hector C. Bywater devised the plans that led to Pearl Harbor, New York: St. Martin's Press, ISBN 0-312-08332-7

External links

• Reporter Predicted Japanese Attack - book overview
• Review of the book by William H. Honan