′The Great Pacific War was a 1925 novel by Hector Charles Bywater

Hector Charles Bywater

Hector Charles Bywater was a British journalist and military writer.H.C. Bywater was the second son of a middle class Welshman. The family had emigrated into the United States in 1901...

 which discussed a hypothetical future war between Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

 and the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. The novel accurately predicts a number of details about the Pacific Campaign

Pacific War

The Pacific War, also sometimes called the Asia-Pacific War refers broadly to the parts of World War II that took place in the Pacific Ocean, its islands, and in East Asia, then called the Far East...

 of World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. Bywater was a naval correspondent

Correspondent

A correspondent or on-the-scene reporter is a journalist or commentator, or more general speaking, an agent who contributes reports to a newspaper, or radio or television news, or another type of company, from a remote, often distant, location. A foreign correspondent is stationed in a foreign...

 for the London Daily Telegraph.

In The Great Pacific War, the war begins with a Japanese invasion of Manchuria

Manchuria

Manchuria is a historical name given to a large geographic region in northeast Asia. Depending on the definition of its extent, Manchuria usually falls entirely within the People's Republic of China, or is sometimes divided between China and Russia. The region is commonly referred to as Northeast...

, Formosa

Taiwan

Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...

 and Korea

Korea

Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...

. 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

Gaillard Cut

The Gaillard Cut, or Culebra Cut, is an artificial valley that cuts through the continental divide in Panama. The cut forms part of the Panama Canal, linking Lake Gatún, and thereby the Atlantic Ocean, to the Gulf of Panama and hence the Pacific Ocean...

. The novel features numerous other accurate predictions, such as:

• a large role in the conflict for aircraft carrier
  Aircraft carrier
  An aircraft carrier is a warship designed with a primary mission of deploying and recovering aircraft, acting as a seagoing airbase. Aircraft carriers thus allow a naval force to project air power worldwide without having to depend on local bases for staging aircraft operations...
  
  -based aircraft,
• suicidal tactics
  Kamikaze
  The were suicide attacks by military aviators from the Empire of Japan against Allied naval vessels in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign of World War II, designed to destroy as many warships as possible....
  
   by Japanese aviators,
• an island hopping strategy as the U.S. retakes the Pacific.

In Infamy, John Toland

John Toland (author)

John Willard Toland was an American author and historian. He is best known for his bestselling biography of Adolf Hitler and for his Pulitzer Prize-winning World War II history of Japan, The Rising Sun.Toland was a graduate of Williams College, and he also attended the Yale School of Drama for a...

 states that Isoroku Yamamoto

Isoroku Yamamoto

was a Japanese Naval Marshal General and the commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet during World War II, a graduate of the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy and a student of Harvard University ....

 was in the U.S. in 1925 and might have read the New York papers review on this book. Admiral James O. Richardson warned Franklin Roosevelt about the danger of too many ships of the Pacific fleet in Pearl Harbor

Pearl Harbor

Pearl Harbor, known to Hawaiians as Puuloa, is a lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. Much of the harbor and surrounding lands is a United States Navy deep-water naval base. It is also the headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Fleet...

 on 8 October 1940, one month before election, which the President disregarded and replaced him early next year.

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

Attack on Pearl Harbor

The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941...

.

External links

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