Yoshijiro Umezu Quotes
It is all very well to be cautious, but if we are too cautious we will miss our opportunity.
Yoshijiro Umezu 1882–1949, Japanese Chief the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff, Member of the Japanese Supreme War Council, Quoted in John Toland, "The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire", 2003
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Grant’s overall strategy of attrition of the Southern troops and interdicting supplies and targeting Southern manufacturing and transportation was taking its toll and the Confederates tried a desperate gamble. Robert E. Lee’s tried to attack the Union in the North—Pennsylvania and Maryland threatening Washington and hoping to force the Union to sue for peace. But that left the Eastern part of the Southern heartland relatively undefended. Grant and Sherman, noting the opportunity, then sent Sherman to take Atlanta and destroy all the factories, railroads, and warehouses of food, arms and munitions, then march to the sea and back up the Atlantic Seaboard, freeing slaves and destroying anything and everything that could support an Army and putting enormous pressure on the Southern men fighting with Lee to return home and prevent starvation as there were now few slaves to work the farms. It was the stroke that, as intended, crippled the Confederacy’s ability to wage war. But Grant and Sherman both credited the Southern strategy with opening the opportunity—hence it was the Confederacy that “planned” Sherman’s March. The details of the plan were worked out by Sherman and his staff.
Yoshijirō Umezu (梅津 美治郎, Umezu Yoshijirō) was a Japanese general in World War II and Chief of the Army General Staff during the final years of the conflict. He was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to life imprisonment.
