Yamamoto's English ability: any recordings?

[vienna]

The reason I doubt that there are any recordings is because in Japan in the years leading up to WWII(an during of course) there was a lot of propaganda to be anti western that the Japanese cloud do anything that a westerner could do better so a major military leader would not be keen on being recorded speaking English.Not surprisingly the inverse propaganda occurred in the US.

There is also the situation in Japan after the war; a very large portion of written, published, recorded, and filmed material made prior to the surrender was destroyed after the war as a means of stifiling possible dissent to US rule over Japan duriing the Occupation. Some of the material was destroyed by the Japanese themselves, but a larger proportion was ordered destroyed by the Allied Occupation HQ (OHQ). There are a lot of very classic Japanese films (some by people such as Akira Kurosawa) that vanished because the OHQ deemed the films to "martial" in nature. The move to 'demilitarize' the Japanese nation by OHQ caused the loss of many, amny treasures of Japanese culture, literature, and media...

<O>