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From: vexpert!mst@relay.EU.net (Markus Stumptner)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Japanese Midway Wargame (Was Re: "Computer Models")
Message-ID: <1991Jan19.040549.4393@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 19 Jan 91 04:05:49 GMT
References: <1991Jan12.011223.23612@cbnews.att.com>
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From: vexpert!mst@relay.EU.net (Markus Stumptner)
>From article <1991Jan12.011223.23612@cbnews.att.com>, by neil@progress.COM (Neil Galarneau): 
> In _The Art of Wargaming_, Peter Perla has this to say about the incident
> referred to above:
> 		[...]
> 		[ref. by  Fuchida and Masatake deleted]
> 
> 	... Ignoring or changing the results of a few die rolls did not
> 	constitute the failure of Japanese wargaming in the case of Midway;
> 	ignoring the questions and issues raised by the play did.

There is a similar story about a later phase of the war in Morison's
_History of US Naval Operations in WWII_, volume VI (somewhere around
p. 15).  

I don't have the book at hand, but this is how the story goes:
Yokoyama, the Japanese military attache in Washington, was interned at
the beginning of the war, but hat free access to the US press.  He was
exchanged and arrived in Japan by ship in August, 1942.  He was led
away from the pier without being given a chance to see the latest war
news (this was a week after the US invasion on Guadalcanal).  The
General Staff intended him to play the commander of the US side in a
wargame that simulated the full next two years of the war, since they
assumed he would be familiar with the latest US strategy and doctrine.
The game assumed that the Japanese had secured Guadalcanal, so he had
to start from farther back (Hawaii and Espiritu Santo).  Morison
claims that he closely predicted the strategy of MacArthur and Nimitz
in the Solomons.  In the game, the US side retook the Philippines in
October, 1944.

When Yokoyama was asked after the war about the reactions, questions,
and comments of the Naval General Staff to the game-winning team at
the time, he said, "They told us to keep our mouths shut."

Markus Stumptner                                mst@vexpert.dbai.tuwien.ac.at
Technical University of Vienna                  vexpert!mst@uunet.uu.net
Paniglg. 16, A-1040 Vienna, Austria             ...mcsun!vexpert!mst