How Japan Plans to Win (1942)

"Now Japan and the United States Are Pregnant With Crisis in the Pacific!"

Matsuo, Kinoaki. How Japan Plans to Win. Boston: Little, Brown, 1942.

Octavo. Hardcover. 1st Edition.

First edition in English, translated from the original Japanese, of this in-depth, pre-war delineation of Japan's plans to succeed in a naval war against the United States. Allegedly, this book was originally written in 1940 for a home (i.e. Japanese) audience. Kilsoo Haan, a Korean nationalist operative working for the Navy, claimed to have stolen the book from two Japanese army officers. He swiftly translated it and the first editions in English were released simultaneously in Boston and London. The work details Japan's plans to invade Hong Kong, the Philippines, and the rest of the Pacific islands as well as to wage a full-scale attack on Hawaii and, eventually, the Panama Canal. At the time, U.S. Intelligence dismissed the work as delusional. While the threat of a West Coast invasion did not pan out, Kilsoo Haan's warnings about the communist threats in Korea did. Likewise, Japanese scholars have since argued that this work was merely a propaganda piece with little basis in fact. This is a work that deserves far more scholarship than it has been given. Early price on front endpaper. A few pencil annotations to interior. Book near-fine, with light rubbing to cloth. Dust jacket with small chip to spinehead and a bit of wear and toning to extremities.