Mitsuo Fuchida

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Mitsuo Fuchida
3 December 1902 – 3 May 1976
Captain Mitsuo Fuchida
Place of birth	Nara Prefecture, Japan
Place of death	Kashiwara, near Osaka
Allegiance	Empire of Japan
Service/branch	Imperial Japanese Navy
Rank	Captain
Unit	1st Air Fleet
Commands held	Akagi:1st (flag), 2nd and 3rd air squadrons
Battles/wars	World War II (China, Korea, Attack on Pearl Harbor, Attack on Darwin, Indian Ocean raid, Battle of Midway)
Other work	Christian Missionary

Fuchida in training for attack on Pearl Harbor

Mitsuo Fuchida( 淵田美津雄)(3 December 1902 - 30 May 1976) was a Captain^[1] in the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service and a Imperial Japanese Navy flying ace^[2] pilot before and during World War II. He is perhaps best known for leading the first air wave attacks on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. Fuchida was responsible for the coordination of the entire aerial attack working under the overall fleet Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo.

After World War II ended with Japan's defeat he became a Christian and considered himself an evangelist until the end of his life.

[edit] Early life

Mitsuo Fuchida was born in Nara Prefecture, Japan. He entered the Naval Academy at Eta-Jima in 1921 where he met and befriended classmate Minoru Genda and discovered the interest of flying airplanes. Specializing in horizontal bombing, Fuchida gained such prowess that he was made an instructor. Considered one of Japan’s most skillful fliers, he had gained combat experience during air operations over China in the late 1930s. He was promoted to Lieutenant-Commander and was accepted into the Naval Staff College. Fuchida joined the aircraft carrier Akagi in 1939 as a flight commander. By that time he was an experienced pilot with over 3,000 hours of flight experience.

[edit] Service in World War II

On Sunday, 7 December 1941, a Japanese attack force under the command of Admiral Chuichi Nagumo consisting of six carriers with 423 aircraft was poised to attack the United States base at Pearl Harbor, Oahu. At 0600 the first attack wave of 183 Japanese bombers and fighters took off from the carriers located 230 miles north of Oahu and headed for the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor.

At 0720 Fuchida, commanding the air group, led the way down the island's eastern side then banked west and flew along the southern coast past the city of Honolulu. He believed his approach had not been detected by the U.S. Army radar station on Oahu. However, two U.S. soldiers manning the radar installation notified a superior officer of the discovery of a large incoming air formation, but the officer chose to ignore it believing the blips to be U.S. bombers arriving from California.

Meanwhile Fuchida had ordered "Tenkai" ("take attack position"). At 0740 Hawaiian Standard Time, seeing all peaceful at Pearl Harbor, Fuchida slid back the canopy of his Nakajima B5N2 Type 97 Model 3 torpedo bomber and fired a green flare, the signal to attack.

At 0749 hours Fuchida instructed his radio operator, Petty Officer 1st Class Norinobu Mizuki, to send the coded signal "To, To, To" (Totsugeskiseyo, or "charge!") to his aircraft. Fuchida’s pilot Lieutenant Mitsuo Matsuzaki guided the B5N in a sweep around Barber’s Point, Oahu.

At 0753, Fuchida ordered Mizuki^[3] to send back to the carrier Akagi, the flag ship of 1st Air Fleet, the code words "Tora! Tora! Tora!" (虎 tora is Japanese for "tiger" but in this case "To" is the initial syllable of the Japanese word 突撃 totsugeki meaning "charge" or "attack" and "ra" is the initial syllable of 雷撃 raigeki meaning "torpedo attack"). The three word message meant that complete surprise had been achieved in the attack.

The first Japanese assault wave, with 51 D3A dive bombers, 40 B5N torpedo bombers, 50 B5N carrying bombs for high level attacks and 43 A6M fighters, commenced the attack.

As the first wave of the attack made its way back to its carriers Fuchida remained over the target in order to assess damage and to observe the second wave attack. He returned to his carrier after the second wave successfully completed its mission.

Burning, sinking HMS Cornwall following Japanese dive bomber attacks, "dangerous moment" in the Indian Ocean, 5 April 1942.

Upon returning from Pearl Harbor Fuchida inspected his B5N and found 20 large antiaircraft holes and the main control wire barely held together by a thread. Although he was not in any sense "religious" this was the first of a series of near-death incidents that made him believe something was watching over him.^[4] The successful attack against the United States made Fuchida a national hero earning him an audience with Emperor Hirohito himself.

On 19 February 1942, Fuchida led the first of two waves of 188 aircraft in a devastating air raid on Darwin, Australia.

In April, he led another series of air attacks by carrier-based Japanese aircraft against the island of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), which was the headquarters of the British Eastern Fleet, in what Winston Churchill described as "the most dangerous moment" of the 2nd World War.

In June Fuchida was wounded at the Battle of Midway while on board the Akagi. Unable to fly while recovering from an emergency shipboard appendectomy a few days before the battle, he was present on the ship's bridge during the morning attacks. After the Akagi was hit by U.S. bombers, while escaping from the bridge during the fire fighting, Fuchida broke both of his ankles after he fell from a ladder.

After recuperation, he spent the rest of the war as a staff officer. Fuchida wrote that he was in Hiroshima the day before the atom bomb was dropped, attending a week-long military conference with the Army. He had received a long distance call from Navy Headquarters asking him to return to Tokyo.

[edit] Postwar Activities

After the war in 1949 Fuchida encountered a Free Methodist missionary named Jacob DeShazer, himself a former U.S. Army Air Force Staff Sergeant and bombardier of the famous Doolittle Raiders. Shortly thereafter Fuchida converted to Christianity. In 1951, he, along with a colleague, published an account of the Battle of Midway from the Japanese side. In 1952, Fuchida became a Christian missionary and toured the United States as a member of the Worldwide Christian Missionary Army of Sky Pilots. Fuchida was a Christian missionary for the rest of his life.

In February 1954, Reader's Digest published Fuchida's story of the attack on Pearl Harbor.^[5] He also authored and co-authored books including, From Pearl Harbor to Golgotha (aka From Pearl Harbor to Calvary) and Midway (aka Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan, the Japanese Navy's Story)

His story is told in God's Samurai: Lead Pilot at Pearl Harbor (The Warriors).^[6]

Fuchida died of complications caused by diabetes in Kashiwara, near Osaka on 30 May 1976.

His View: Once a nation got on upon war, it was obligated to go all out.

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