What Yamamoto Said When His 4 Carriers Stopped Responding at Midway

What Yamamoto Said When His 4 Carriers Stopped Responding at Midway June 4, 1942. Yamamoto is aboard the Yamato, 300 miles behind the strike force, waiting for news of an American fleet being destroyed. The first reports are good. Then they stop making sense. One carrier hit. Then two. Then the messages become fragmented, then contradictory, then silent. By the time the full picture reaches him, all four of his fleet carriers are gone. The Akagi. The Kaga. The Sōryū. The Hiryū. The same ships that struck Pearl Harbor six months earlier, now burning on the bottom of the Pacific. The men around Yamamoto describe what follows as something close to collapse. He goes to his cabin. He doesn't speak. The man who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor, who warned that Japan had awakened a sleeping giant, now sits alone with the news that the war he predicted Japan would lose has just been decided. He was right. He just didn't expect it to happen this fast.