15 Quotes by James D. Bradley

Japan had held 132,134 western POWs and 35,756 of them died in detention, a death rate of 27 percent. In contrast, only 4 percent of the POWs held by the Germans and Italians died.

The airmen were considered the most important passengers on the carriers.

Japan was a closed book. Western ignorance of Japan was not the fault of the westerners but the design of the Japanese. For two hundred years, Japan had been shut tight. By national law, a Japanese could not leave Japan and no outsider was allowed in. Death sentences were meted out to any who gave foreigners information about the land of the gods. Almost no maps and no books existed in the English-speaking world describing the closed land.

Japan was taming her own Wild West as the Americans had theirs: by bringing the light of civilization through divine war against a barbaric enemy.

True combat power is arms multiplied by fighting spirit. If one of them is infinitely strong, you will succeed. – Asahi Shimbun newspaper, quoted in Japan at War: An Oral History.

I didn’t fully comprehend world affairs,” but he remembered distinctly having “the typical American reaction that we had better do something about this.