“YAMAMOTO.” The Story of America’s most Brilliant World War II Enemy – The Mastermind Behind Pearl Harbor and the Pacific Campaign. By Edwin P. Hoyt. When the Japanese carrier fleet struck with savage force against Pearl Harbor (in December 1941), the credit for the attack’s success went to one man: Admiral Isoroko Yamamoto. For the next two years, as the Pacific seas churned with war, Yamamoto dueled with American commanders in a naval war, whose rules he had virtually reinvented. In this extraordinary biography, noted historian Edwin P. Hoyt chronicles Yamamoto’s rise from poverty through the ranks of the Japanese military machine, his battles with political enemies, his personal opposition to a war against the United States, and F.D.R’s never-before-revealed decision to have him assassinated in 1943. From his pioneering development of naval aviation to his aggressive use of multiple carrier fleets and night navigation, here is the true story of a 20th century samurai, a man whose forces ran wild in the Pacific–until the tide turned at Guadalcanal. 1991 Paperback edition. 357 pages, No photos, large appendix and an index.
Good Cond. $5.95
The Author:
Edwin Palmer Hoyt was born in Portland, Oregon, on August 5, 1923, to the publisher Edwin Hoyt (1897–1979) and his wife, the former Cecile DeVore (1901–1970). Young Edwin, became an American writer who specialized in military history. Until 1958, Hoyt worked in news media, after which he produced some 200 works of non-fiction titles.
In 1943, Hoyt’s father, then the editor and publisher of The Oregonian, was appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as the director of the Domestic Branch, Office of War Information. The younger Hoyt served with the Office of War Information during World War II, from 1943 to 1945. In 1945 and 1946, he served as a foreign correspondent for The Denver Post (of which his father became editor and publisher in 1946) and the United Press, reporting from locations in China, Thailand, Burma, India, the Middle East, Europe, North Africa, and Korea.
Edwin Hoyt subsequently worked as an ABC broadcaster, covering the 1948 revolution in Czechoslovakia and the Arab-Israeli conflict. From 1949 to 1951, he was the editor of the editorial page at The Denver Post. He was the editor and publisher of the Colorado Springs Free Press from 1951 to 1955, and an associate editor of Collier’s Weekly in New York from 1955 to 1956. In 1957 he was a television producer and writer-director at CBS, and in 1958 he was an assistant publisher of American Heritage magazine in New York.
Starting in 1958, Hoyt became a writer full-time, and for a few years (1976 to 1980) served as a part-time lecturer at the University of Hawaii. In the 40 years since his first publication in 1960, he produced nearly 200 published works. While Hoyt wrote about 20 novels (many published under pseudonyms Christopher Martin and Cabot L. Forbes), the vast majority of his works are biographies and other forms of non-fiction, with a heavy emphasis on World War II military history.
After a prolonged illness, Edwin P. Hoyt died in Tokyo, Japan on July 29, 2005, he was 81 years old. Hoyt was survived by his wife Hiroko, of Tokyo, and three children, Diana, Helga, and Christopher, all residing in the United States.
Other books by Edwin Hoyt:
Leyte Gulf: The Death Of The Princeton
Other books of interest:
A Battle History Of The Imperial Japanese Navy (1941-1945)
Infamy, Pearl Harbor and it’s Aftermath
Wake Island – By James P.S. Devereux
