Mitsuo Fuchida

Published in 1975

Captain Mitsuo Fuchida died on 30 May 1976. His last public appearance was with Jacob DeShazer, one of Doolittle’s Raiders, on the Rex Humbard Show shortly before becoming ill and being hos­pi­tal­ized.

Below we reprint two articles: One is from a pam­phlet, authored by Fuchida, which briefly tells of Fu­chida’s life, how he came to meet De­Shazer, and how two former enemies became fighters for a single cause which they both came to believe in. The second is an article reprinted from the August 1975 issue of the West Michigan IPMS News.

I am grateful to Don Bratt for providing the two articles, the photos, and the permission to use them; and to Larry Provo for details of Fuchida’s passing.

From Pearl Harbor to Calvary

by Mitsuo Fuchida

I was born in Japan, 3 December 1902. While still a young boy, I was much interested in the armed serv­ices and aspired to be a military man. Upon graduating from high school at the age of eighteen, I en­rolled in the Japanese Naval Academy. Three years later I grad­u­ated and de­sir­ing to be an aviator, I joined the Jap­a­nese Naval Air Force.

During the next fifteen years I served mostly as an air­craft carrier pilot, and logged a flying record of ten thousand hours, which made me the most experienced pilot in the Japanese Navy at that time. Hence, I was chosen as the chief commander to lead the air attack upon Pearl Har­bor.

The year was 1941 and the day was December 7th. On that early morning I was leading the Jap­a­nese air squadron of 360 planes which took off from six air­craft carriers 200 miles to the north of Pearl Harbor, the base for the American Pacific Fleet. After seeing that the main force of the American Pacific Fleet was at anchor in the bay, I gave my first order: “All squad­rons, plunge in to attack!” The time was 7:49 a.m. and from that moment the terrible war was open in the Pacific.

Suddenly torpedo planes, dive bombers, level bomb­ers, and fighters struck with fury. My heart was ablaze with pride for our success in catching the entire main force of the American Pacific Fleet at anchor. I put my whole effort into the battle that followed which resulted in the misery now familiar to everyone today.

Having thus initiated the war in the Pacific, I di­rected all my energy, being a most patriotic sol­dier, for my mother country throughout the fol­low­ing four years. During the war I faced death a num­ber of times, but was miraculously saved every time. Thus I sur­vived to see the war’s termination. Looking back, I can see now that the Lord had laid His hand upon me so that I might be saved and serve Him. However, at that time I did not know who my Lord was since I had never heard the name of Jesus Christ during my forty-seven years.

When the war ended, the Japanese military forces were disbanded, and after twenty-five years as a Navy career officer, I retired to my native town near Osaka and took up farming. It was, indeed, a path of thorns for me. I had never in my life realized so keenly the unre­li­a­bil­ity of other men as I did during these years. Since Japan lost the war and I lost my occupation, I was very discouraged and was bitter about the occupation policy of the occu­pied forces. Then the war crime trials were opened, and though my name never appeared as being accused of any war crime, General Douglas Mac­Arthur summoned me on several occasions to be a witness of the war crime trials for the Japanese who did commit war atrocities against American prisoners of war.

One day, as I was summoned by General Mac­Arthur to his Tokyo headquarters, I went up, and when I got off my train at the Shibuya station, I saw there an American missionary handing out pam­phlets to the passersby. He gave me one. Even at first glance I became much in­ter­ested in the pam­phlet for the title was “I Was a Prisoner of Japan.” After all, I was involved in the affairs of war pris­on­ers. I became more interested when the story be­gan with the attack on Pearl Harbor.

While I was in the air over Pearl Harbor on Decem­ber 7th, an American soldier named Jacob DeShazer, was on KP duty at a U.S. Army camp somewhere on the West Coast. Suddenly it was announced over the radio that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. With this sneak attack on Pearl Har­bor, the hatred against the Japanese was born in his heart, and throwing the potatoes in his hand, he shouted, “Jap, wait and see what we will do to you!”

One month later he volunteered for a secret mis­sion to be carried out by the Jimmy Doolittle squad­ron … a surprise raid on Tokyo from the air­craft car­rier Hornet. On 18 April 1942, they bombed Tokyo. Sergeant De­Shazer participated as a bombardier. As he dropped the bombs, he was filled with elation for now he was getting his revenge for that Pearl Harbor at­tack. After the bomb­ing they flew on to China, but on the way when their bomber ran out of gas, the crew had to parachute into Jap­a­nese-occupied territory in China. The next morning he was captured and became a war prisoner of Ja­pan.

He was in prison for forty long months. He was cruelly treated. At one time he said that he almost went insane because of his violent hatred against the Japanese guards who treated him brutally.

However, one day during his imprisonment, he began to feel a strong desire to read the Bible. He begged for a copy of the Bible. His request was denied at first, but finally after asking again and again, he was given a Bible. He read the Bible ea­gerly every day, and while he was reading the Bi­ble, he found Christ and was saved in the Japanese POW camp.

The Bible says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Now Ser­geant DeShazer was a new creature. His hatred toward the Japanese was turned to love and he promised God to return to Japan after the war as a missionary.

When the war was over, DeShazer returned to the United States and he enrolled at the Seattle Pa­cific Col­lege to study the Bible. Immediately after his grad­u­a­tion, he went back to Japan and began working faithfully among the Japanese people telling them how to come to know Jesus Christ.

I marveled at this beautiful story. And I realized it was when he had read the Bible that his great expe­ri­ence had happened to him. This inspired me to get a Bible so that I could read this wonderful book for myself. I bought a Bible and I, too, read the Bible eagerly day after day.

One day when I was reading the Bible, I came to Luke 23:34 where Jesus said while hanging on the cross, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” Now there was Jesus Christ, Son of God, nailed to the cross of Calvary asking God to forgive those who cru­ci­fied him. Right at that mo­ment I met Jesus. He came into my heart and I understood clearly what Christ had done on the cross. He died for me, too. Right away I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Savior. How I praise God for sending His only Son, the Lord Jesus Christ to die for my sins, for he has truly changed my bitter and sinful heart into a cleansed and loving one. This is my testi­mony … how this typ­i­cal Jap­a­nese military man became a Christian, and it is no secret what God can do.

Since the love of Christ has transformed my life, I have dedicated the balance of my life to serve the Lord. Today I am doing full time in­ter­de­nom­i­na­tional evan­gel­i­cal work. I believe Jesus Christ is above all and this is the biggest calling for me … preaching the gospel of his wonderful salvation. You will forgive me for saying this, but whenever I spoke under the title “From Pearl Harbor to Cal­vary,” people came to hear what I had to say. I feel God has blessed me greatly to draw a great number of people so that I could tell them about Jesus Christ. Surely, I can say with my heart as did the Apostle Paul in Philippians 1:12, “I want you to know, brethren, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel.”

Fuchida

by Don Bratt

Clutching my Profile No. 141 (on the Nakajima B5N) and with a factory-fresh copy of Nichimo’s 1/48th scale “Kate” (price in Japan: $1.70) tucked in my flight bag, my missionary host and I entered the labyrinth that is To­kyo’s Grand Central train station. Even with his eighteen years of living in Japan and his complete fa­mil­iar­ity with the language, there was a prolonged search amidst the crush of people as we looked for the ticket window for the famed Bullet Train.

In time we found it … attended by our faithful three-man Japanese camera crew. I was in Japan on as­sign­ment to direct a documentary movie tracing twenty-five years of missions in Japan for my denomi­na­tion, the Christian Reformed Church, and our trip south was two-fold: to shoot some scenes at a sem­i­nary staffed by our church and to film and interview Commander Mitsuo Fuchida … the man who led the attack on Pearl Harbor and who had become a Chris­tian after the war. Fuchida had appeared at a Crusade with my missionary host some years earlier and now the arrangements were set for my historic meet­ing.

The kaleidoscope that is modern Japan rushed past our windows as we whizzed along at 130-150 miles per hour. Rice paddies. Factories. Blue tile roofed villages. Mount Fuji (shrouded in clouds). Schools. Fishing vil­lages. Urban sprawl. Traffic jams. Garish signs. And people. Everywhere you look you see people … all busily at work. Some of the passengers sit and doze in air-conditioned com­fort … everyone else is either reading or drinking green tea from a little spouted plastic pot sold at the station. Our crew is busy double-checking, cleaning and fine tuning the Ariflex. For days they could sense the importance of this day to me and the air of anticipation was electric.

The three-and-a-half hour trip to Osaka, Japan’s second largest city, passed in a flash. My host had tel­e­phoned from the train to the Avis rental car agency in Osaka. Yes, they had five cars(!) and one was avail­a­ble for us. Stowing all our gear we used up every square inch in the tiny Toyota and with all aboard, and our assistant cameraman at the wheel, we were off to Nara Prefecture through an absolute maze of un­i­den­ti­fied Japanese roads.

Our camera crew members were all in their early thirties and, by their questions, evidenced a sur­pris­ing lack of acumen about the Pacific War. Even our chief cam­er­a­man, Fumio Suzuki, who had been a member of the Japanese film crew on the “Tora! Tora! Tora!” movie, had only a cursory knowledge of the war. Yet, they were all most interested, talked freely, asked some penetrating questions, and were astounded that any American would ever want to meet the man who led the sneak attack which cast our country into total war.

Rounding the bend at the school playground in Kashi­wara City, we spotted the double-hung, wrought iron, latticework, residential gates. The remaining perimeter wall seemingly encompassed about an acre and a half … a ranch, by Japanese standards! We pulled up and tum­bled out of the car. We had been stuffed in it for two-and-a-half hours. Though stiff and cramped, it had seemed like min­utes.

Fervent bowing preceded our entry through the gates, opened by an elderly, smiling woman who had pattered down the crushed stone driveway sug­gest­ing we drive in with all our gear. We presented her with a basket of fresh fruits … then caught sight of a figure coming out of a cottage by the enclosed orchard.

He walks with a slow, measured step. Slightly bowed. But his eyes gleam. Sharp. Perceptive. Alert. Authoritative. He’s been expecting us and has chairs set up in his garden. While my missionary host exchanges pleasantries with him, our crew catches my eye and instinctively site themselves and their equip­ment in per­fect position … a peony patch! The hair on my arms straight­ens as the cameras whir. Commander Fuchida is telling my host of his conversion to Chris­ti­an­ity via a Gospel tract handed to him after the war by a man who had been shot down on Doolittle’s raid and brutally incarcerated in a Japanese POW camp. My missionary host still hands out tracts today. That’s the story and the filming is soon completed.

It turns out it was Mrs. Fuchida who met us at the gate and, during the filming, she had set up a table with green tea and rice cookies. This was my chance and, frankly, I was ready!

First question: “How did you know Officer Genda?” [The man who masterminded the sneak attack plan.] Commander Fuchida was rather star­tled. I guess he hadn’t expected an American Chris­tian to be knowl­edge­a­ble about Genda, a powerful but obscure in­di­vid­ual, overshadowed by the fa­mous Admirals Yamamoto and Nagumo. It was the right question, though, for it in­stantly established my credentials. Fuchida replied that he knew Genda well … then excused himself and, in a half-speed Oriental shuffle, headed toward his house.

Now what??!! With anguish in my voice I asked my missionary host if I had breached Oriental cour­tesy. He said “no” … but admitted he couldn’t explain the abrupt departure. Mrs. Fuchida caught my obvious concern and told my host that the Com­mander had gone to get “his book.” I thought, what book? I had read everything Fuchida had ever au­thored or co-authored.

And then he returned with a tabbed diary the size of a Manhattan phone book. It detailed all the events of his life: actual hand-written plans of the Pearl Har­bor attack; maps with penciled flight routes showing how the attack would proceed; other bat­tles; photos; and signed, full-dress portraits of Genda, and Nagumo, and … Yama­moto! I was thun­der-struck!! Here was a monumental. historical document that should, no doubt, become a prize possession in some museum or war college and he’s just hauled it off some shelf and showing me the whole thing! I guess I was obviously delirious be­cause my faithful crew, bless ’em, grabbed the still cameras and popped off a couple of rolls … a few of which I’ve shared.

For nearly an hour the questions, and straight an­swers, flowed freely. To my everlasting delight, the Commander spoke English rather well and we had a fantastic time together. As I’m sure you would have.

I can’t begin to capsulize our conversation (this arti­cle is already too long) but one question I wanted to clear up that has always bugged modelers like myself who specialize in Japanese aircraft, was this: “What was the actual color scheme of your plane at the time of the attack?”

You see, Profile No. 141, prepared with Fu­chida’s assistance, depicts an all-silver ‘Kate’ with unique stripped yellow-orange and red tailplane markings. But, for years, guys have searched every bit of movie footage and got eyestrain squinting at scores of still photos of the attack without once finding an all-silver plane. If the Profile is correct, where in the world was Fuchida? Certainly, he should show up someplace!

At last, the answer: Fuchida’s ‘Kate’ was cam­ou­flaged while aboard the carrier en route to Pearl!

Bratt: Why then?

Fuchida: All during pre-attack maneuvers and ex­ten­sive preparatory drills my very gleaming plane built spirit among our aviators. I participated. I led. I showed how. I tried to be everywhere… seen by eve­ry­one. I was their teacher/commander, you see. That’s why my tails were painted so brightly. High visibility. Great for practice and, we expected, great for the attack. My aviators would know I was there … just like in practice drills. Spirit! However, en route, the thought was raised that perhaps I would be too visible. Too much of a target. That was all right with me. But my countrymen said they did not want to lose their spirit. So their decision was made to camouflage my craft with available brown and green paint but to leave the tails untouched so they would know I was leading them in the conflict.

Bratt: What exact colors were they and how were they applied?

Fuchida: (Pointing to the ‘Kate’ kit lid, which he autographed for me) Greens and browns like that. But applied crudely, gleefully, and hastily. By brush.

I whipped out the Nichimo plans and asked, “Are any of these four schemes close?”

Fuchida: Yes … the second one. Very close … but mine was sloppier. (A hearty laugh.)

Bratt: What about the cowl?

Fuchida: As shown, but not a deep black.

The “deep black” threw me so I asked Reverend Maas Vander Bilt, my host, if he could clarify in Japanese. What I got back was that this was a matt charcoal black.

Bratt: Were the wings also painted in the same way?

Fuchida: Yes, but only the tops. The bottoms and the fuselage remained bright. Gleaming.

Bratt: Did you have yellow recognition mark­ings on the leading edges?

Fuchida: No.

Bratt: Did anyone else have them?

Fuchida: I don’t remember … that was a long time ago and I had other things on my mind at the time. (!!!)

Bratt: Were you pleased with the attack?

Fuchida: Every one of our planes had a specific target ship for which they were responsible, for which the crews practiced long. Very long. Our aviators were very skilled. And very well prepared. Each attack flight was logged for its own target. And we were very con­fi­dent of our success.

Bratt: Were there any surprises?

Fuchida: Yes … two big ones! The carriers En­ter­prise and Lexington were missing. Our latest reports showed them to be in port and they were to have borne the brunt of our attack … and surely would have been sunk. I was dismayed when they were gone and could have terminated our attack but our spirits were so high and our skills at such a peak of efficiency that I gave the order. [Tora! Tora! Tora! … which means ‘tiger’ and was the code word for “attack.” Actually, Fuchida, in his excite­ment at seeing all the sitting ducks at Pearl, repeated the code two more times than called for caus­ing a tizzy back aboard the monitoring car­ri­ers.]

Bratt: Then what?

Fuchida: Our attack was a bit muddled because the many planes assigned to carrier destruction flight routes had nothing to do but seek targets of op­por­tu­nity and there was much sallying back and forth trying to decide which ship to take. (He shows me the famous picture he took in which five ‘Kates’ are visible.) You can see we owned the sky but some of our aviators are off track here choosing plumes. (!)

Bratt: I understand you were Japan’s most expe­ri­enced pilot yet sat in the center seat for the attack.

Fuchida: Yes, as observer, I went along for the ride … and obeyed every minute of it!

A point of reference. I stand 5 feet 10 inches and the Commander was nearly as tall as me, so, back in 1941, he must have towered above his troops the way King Saul did in the Old Testament!

All photographs were made as the Commander was showing me his personal log book and diary. From a historical standpoint, the shot where he is showing me his own personal hand-drawn map of the Pearl Harbor anchorage is most important. Not visible are all the coded attack routes; he knew where every plane was supposed to be during the entire attack. Again, this was not some printed map from the Navy in­tel­li­gence section, rather, it was a special map Fuchida had drawn for his own use and it was loaded with copious notes, none of which I could read, of course, but what a treasure that map alone would make.

Another snapshot shows the page opened to Fu­chida in his “graduation” uniform. You’ll note these are in the back of his file, which is really the front … the Japanese begin their books at our “back.” These shots also give some indication of the girth of his diary … and the many tabbed indexes, some of which separate notes for each of the at­tack­ing flights. Fuchida literally sat in the center seat of the ‘Kate’ and cradled this book on his lap during the entire Pearl Harbor attack. Pure history, man, and what a thrill to have had the experience to see it and share it with this most gracious historical giant.

Mitsuo Fuchida with Don Bratt at his home in Japan, 1970s. Fuchida is holding the tabbed diary mentioned in Don Bratt’s article and they are examining a chart showing the attack plan for Pearl Harbor.

 

After the Pearl Harbor raid, Commander Mitsuo Fuchida prepared a report that offered grossly inflated numbers of successful hits by Japanese aircraft. In fact, during the second wave, only 17 out of 78 Vals had attacked their assigned targets, scoring a mere fraction of the hits for which they were credited.

Beginning in December 1927, Fuchida, far right, began flight school at Kasumigaura.

Lt. Commander Mitsuo Fuchida training for the Pearl Harbor attack, October 1941.

Mitsuo Fuchida.

Japanese pilot Mitsuo Fuchida, wearing the white cap, who led the attack on Pearl Harbor, stands with his men the day before the attack.

Fuchida’s B5N2 Kate landing on the Akagi in the Indian Ocean, 5-9 April 1942.

This Dec. 7, 1941 image provided by the U.S. War Department made from a Japanese newsreel shows Japanese planes over Hawaii during the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Jacob DeShazer.

Jacob DeShazer (center).