After interrogating Toyoda in Tokyo in November 1945, Rear Admiral Ralph A. Ofstie described him as highly intelligent and widely informed. Ofstie regarded those qualities as fitting an admiral and naval chief of staff. The brief judgment matters because it comes from an Allied officer questioning Toyoda soon after Japan's surrender rather than from Toyoda's own later memoirs. This watch point gives readers a postwar source against which to weigh the following criticism of Toyoda's late-war operations.
Notable Point · 16:32-16:56
Ralph Ofstie's postwar assessment of Toyoda
A November 1945 interrogator's description offers a concise contemporary assessment of Toyoda's intelligence and professional knowledge.