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By Edward S. Miller. (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1991. xxiv + 509 pp. $34.95, ISBN 0-87021-759-3.)
Prior to World War I, American strategists, especially in the Navy Department, assumed that Japanese expansion in the western Pacific would eventually provoke a war with the United States. By 1912, war planners had outlined the three phases of that war. First, Japan (code name Orange) would overrun United States possessions in the western Pacific. In the second phase, the Americans would push back across the Pacific, tightening a noose around Japan until, in the third phase, the American blockade would force Japan to its knees. Planners agreed on what would happen in phases 1 and 3 but could not agree on the best strategy to follow during...