Yamamoto Isoroku (1884-1943) was Commander-in-chief of combined Japanese fleet, who was Japan's greatest naval strategist in World War II.

Yamamoto Isoroku, "the Nelson of the Japanese navy," was originally born Takano Isoroku, sixth son of an impoverished schoolteacher, Takano Teikichi, and his second wife Mineko, on April 4, 1884. Isoroku belonged to the Echigo clan, an old tough warrior people who had resisted the unification of Japan under the Meiji emperor. His father gave him the name Isoroku (meaning 56 in Japanese) as he was that age when his son was born in the small village of Kushigun Sonshomura on a bleak northern island that produced many Japanese sailors. Soon after his birth, his father became headmaster of the primary school in the nearby market town of Nagaoka.

At age 16, after taking competitive examinations, Isoroku enrolled in the Naval Academy at Etajima, off the shore of Hiroshima. There he spent three...