For That One Day: The Memoirs of Mitsuo Fuchida, Commander of the Attack on Pearl Harbor

by Tadanori Urabe

  After graduation from the Naval Academy, we both aspired to become aviators, and he was an expert on fighters. However everyone knew about his quarrelsome nature, and when he was an instructor, he never attended the squadron’s frequent meetings with the excuse that meetings could be dominated by a majority of fools. At that time, he developed the idea for a gun that could be installed on the fighter at an angle. He requested its test production and adoption. He was self-satisfied in his belief that the weapon would maintain the security of the nation. However, among the other squadron instructors and technical officers of the Yokosuka Naval Air Technical Arsenal, no one was in favor of his invention on the grounds that it was theoretically incorrect.

  However, he insisted that his invention was experimentally correct regardless of theory and had the guns installed on a night fighter, the J1N1 Gekko. In the air battle over Rabaul which served as a test trial for his gun, one of his men exaggerated his kill score to be 100 enemy planes. I heard about this achievement but remained skeptical, thinking that even a rifle shot at night can hit the target by accident.

  When he learned that I was assigned as Aviation Staff Commander of the Combined Fleet, he took advantage of our friendship to come to Combined Fleet Headquarters to pose difficult challenges. Whether he was pressing for the adoption of his slanted gun or yelling his opposition to the Combined Fleet’s policy of air and ground separation, I was at a loss about what to do with this crazy guy.

  Immediately after the broadcast of the Imperial Edict ending the war, Kozono sent the following message by wireless telegram to the entire Navy:

  “Retainers with evil motivations near the Emperor clouded the noble wisdom of His Majesty and acted unwisely to sell the Empire of Japan. However, there can be no surrender for the Empire of Japan. The Atsugi Naval Air Corps will never submit to any order challenging the fundamental sovereignty of the nation. From this point on, we will refuse to take any order from our superiors as an order from the Emperor. From this point on, the Atsugi Air Corps withdraws from the command of Yokosuka Naval District.”

  Starting from August 17th, he flew planes under his command throughout Japan to have them drop leaflets to major cities, from Hokkaido to Kyushu. The leaflet said:

  To All Japanese Citizens,

  Based on the intrigue of senior retainers with evil intentions, our Empire of Japan is accepting the Potsdam Declaration. Once surrendered, our Empire, with an uninterrupted succession of Imperial lineage, will be eliminated from the planet eternally, and the people will be controlled by other ethnic groups eternally. If you stand up, we have a winning chance. The Atsugi Naval Corps is undefeated.

  Commander of Atsugi Naval Air Corps

  Yasuna Kozono

  This went on through the 18th and 19th. The 302nd Naval Air Corps was a tinderbox, all members standing by at battle position.

  This situation triggered activity at the head of the Navy. In order to bring the situation under control, Rear Admiral Tomozo Kikuchi, the Deputy Chief of Staff, was dispatched from General Navy Headquarters. Earlier, when Kikuchi was Captain of the Hosho, Kozono was his Head of Aviation, and they knew each other well. However, Kozono refused to give in to Kikuchi’s pleas. The Deputy Chief of Staff came back with a depressed look that said he had given up.

  Then, they asked a mild and trustworthy person, Vice Admiral Kinpei Teraoka, Commander of the Third Air Fleet, to try to persuade Kozono to stand down. He refused to see the Vice Admiral, and guards at Atsugi Base pointed machine guns at him and refused to let him enter Atsugi Base.

  Consequently, our troubles at Atsugi Base remained unsettled. Commander-in-Chief Totsuka offered his opinion to Vice Admiral Ozawa, Commander-in-Chief of General Navy Headquarters. He wanted to put down the mutiny utilizing tanks of the Yokosuka Guard. However, Atsugi Base detected the move and positioned their Zero fighters to strafe the tanks if and when they approached. It had developed into a very grave situation, and I thought there should be no bloodshed between Japanese.

  At Headquarters, there was an argument about submitting a petition to the Imperial Household to send Prince Takamatsu to convey the royal will of His Majesty. However, in my view, this was a matter that should have been handled by General Navy Headquarters. I asked that we reject the option to trouble Prince Takamatsu for the time being as it would be settled by General Navy Headquarters in any event. However, I was not able to come up with any solution.

  It was already August 23rd. General MacArthur was scheduled to land at Atsugi in several days. As Aviation Staff Commander of General Navy Headquarters, I had no way out. So I decided that I had to have a sword duel with Kozono—because of my position and my long-standing and close friendship with him.

  Early in the morning on the 24th, I headed to Atsugi Base from Hiyoshidai by car. The front gate at Atsugi Base was closed, and a machine gun was pointed at us. When my name was announced as “Aviation Staff Commander of General Navy Headquarters,” the guards opened the gate slightly with an order, “Attention!” My car entered the base as the guards saluted and presented arms.

  As I arrived at the front door of Atsugi Base Headquarters, the officer on duty greeted me, and I asked him to call the Deputy Commander of the 302nd Air Corps, Hideo Sugawara, whom I knew well. He came out after a short while, and I asked him right away, “How is Commander Kozono?”

  Sugawara replied, “Commander Kozono is utterly exhausted. He has not had any sleep or rest for the past 10 days. In addition, the malaria he caught in Rabaul seems to have come back. He has a high fever, and he says weird things, almost like a mad person who has had too much to drink.”

  When I heard the words, “almost like a mad person,” an excellent idea popped into my mind. I decided to treat him as a mad man rather than duel with him until one of us stabbed the other. However, if I tried to handle this by myself, dissidents at the base would have created a situation. So I decided to pull strings from behind the scenes. I instructed Sugawara to take Kozono into custody using any means necessary.

  Kozono was leaning back in the sofa in the commander’s room, dead tired from a combination of malarial high fever and fatigue, but he was still holding his military sword between his legs. If we approached suddenly, he could slash us, but we saw that he was too tired to move against us. We all rushed in at the same time to hold him down. We called the chief doctor and had him inject Kozono with an anesthetic. Then, after he was unconscious, we sent him by ambulance to the mental ward of Yokosuka Navy Hospital.

  In the meantime, I authorized Sugawara to take over the command of Atsugi Base and had him assemble all the base members. Sugawara, in a dignified manner, announced to all those gathered: “Commander Kozono has been hospitalized at Yokosuka Navy Hospital because of a mental breakdown. On his behalf, I, Deputy Commander Sugawara, take command of this air corps and base. Now that we have reached our current state of affairs, there is no other choice for us but to accept the Edict declaring termination of the war and unconditional surrender. From this moment, we must decommission all weapons. All staff will remove machine guns and propellers from all planes.”

  Upon receiving this order from Sugawara, crews ran to the airfield. They were going to remove the machine guns and propellers from their planes with their own hands. It was really heartbreaking. Then, there was the sound of engines coming from the hangar. Zero fighters started to roll, one after another, taking off independently with no attempt to make a formation. I counted six in total. These young pilots, enraged by the order to disarm, escaped to the nearby Kodama Army Base or the Sayama Airfield. Thankfully, nothing further came of this incident.

  Somehow, the mutiny at Atsugi Base was suppressed. Then, on August 30th, MacArthur’s plane, called the Bataan, landed at Atsugi.

  Later that year, on October 17th, a court martial of the Yokosuka Navy District sentenced Kozono to imprisonment for life on the charge of disobedience. And the young officers who fled from Atsugi Base in their Zeroes all received jail sentences ranging from four to
eight years. Afterwards, they were all paroled following short periods in prison either by amnesty or special pardon. Kozono was paroled at the end of 1952 and released from Kumamoto Prison after serving seven years. He returned to his hometown, Kaseta City in Kagoshima Prefecture, where he lived in obscurity with his wife, Haruko. He died quietly on November 5th, 1960, of natural causes.

  My decision to treat him as mentally incompetent, injecting him with an anesthetic and sending him for forced hospitalization to Yokosuka Navy Hospital’s mental ward, was based on my intention to avoid having him face accusations of disobedience.

  However, in an article titled, “The Last Resistor,” that he contributed to the Bungei Shunju magazine in the summer of 1953, he wrote that when he regained consciousness at Yokosuka Hospital, he repeatedly insisted that he was not insane at the time and willingly accepted his imprisonment.

  When he was in Tokyo to work on the article for Bungei Shunju, I myself happened to be writing an article for the same magazine, “Commander of Pearl Harbor Attack Crossing to the US”. We had a chance to renew our acquaintance. At our meeting, he told me, “Fuchida, at that time, we should not have surrendered.” He was truly a man’s man of the century.

  40

  It Was a Long Road to Tokyo

  Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of Allied Occupation Forces, landed at Atsugi Base on August 30th, 1945. When he came out from his plane, Bataan, he was in informal uniform, wearing sunglasses and holding a corncob pipe in his right hand. He looked assured, and, uttering the famous words, “It was a long road to Tokyo,” he left for the New Grand Hotel in Yokohama by car.

  I was among the Japanese delegates to receive MacArthur at Atsugi Base and saluted him, all the while trying to suppress my urge to give him a double-slap on his face when I saw his provocative gesture.

  The sign for the Occupation Forces Headquarters had already been installed at the New Grand Hotel, and, as anticipated, I was summoned on the third day.

  As I entered the New Grand Hotel, three officers-in-charge were waiting for me. They were all smiling and friendly. First, each of them introduced themselves. I could not remember their names, but one was a Lieutenant Colonel and the other two were majors of the US Army. They said they were intelligence officers from G2 of General Headquarters (GHQ).

  Since I did not understand what they were saying in English, I asked them to provide an interpreter. The interpreter was a second-generation Japanese-American with the rank of second lieutenant. He was a good-looking young man, a genuine Japanese even if his nationality was American. He began interpreting. “First, we would like to ask about your career.”

  However, I stared at him as it was my first time to see a Japanese person in a US military uniform. It might have intimidated him a little, because he whispered in a low tone, “I am sorry that we have put you in such a situation. I only speak poor Japanese, but I will try to interpret for you.”

  Hearing these earnest words, I remember warming up to him, and I encouraged him by saying, “You do not have to worry. You may start now.”

  Thus, the interrogation proceeded.

  “What was your rank when the war broke out?”

  “Commander of the Navy.”

  “Your assigned position?”

  “Group Aviation Commander of the carrier Akagi.”

  “In what battles have you participated? Please tell us in order from the start of the war.”

  I was puzzled, but I could not avoid answering. “Air attack on Pearl Harbor.”

  “What was your position at that time?”

  “General Commander of the air attack squadron.”

  That caught the attention of the Lieutenant Colonel. He leaned forward and said, “So it was you. I happened to be at Pearl Harbor that day. It was a superbly executed attack. I apologize for being rude, but we underestimated you Japanese. We thought it was too good for the Japs to pull off. Back then, we were saying that the commander must have been German. Will you tell us more about the details of the attack?”

  He was so eager that he put a sheet of paper and a pencil in front of me. Then, we talked about the Pearl Harbor attack, including Q&A, for over two hours. When we finished talking, the Lieutenant Colonel picked up the paper on which I had scribbled rough sketches to help my explanation, and he asked for my signature. And he put it in his pocket as if this were an important item.

  After the interrogation, this Lieutenant Colonel must have proudly shown the paper to war correspondents. In the afternoon, these reporters came in droves to my place.

  At that time, I was using a room in the annex building of the former Naval War College in Meguro as my lodging. Now, it was overflowing with reporters. They showered me with questions on various matters.

  According to these war correspondents, they competed to be the first one to enter Tokyo after the war ended. And their objective was to get an exclusive story based on an interview with Tokyo Rose

  “What do you mean by Tokyo Rose?” It was my turn to raise a question to the reporters.

  “So you didn’t know? She was very popular on the front lines of the US Army. It was an anti-war broadcast from Tokyo to the American’s front lines. It was an attempt to lower their will to fight. The broadcast used her sexy, sweet female voice to melt the men’s minds, and she was very popular among the officers and soldiers. They gave her the nickname, ‘Tokyo Rose.’ And that’s why we’re all competing to get the scoop on her identity.”

  I said, “In that case, the lady’s broadcast was more like an entertainment program that boosted their morale instead of lowering it. She deserves a medal from the US government. By the way, do you know this lady’s name yet?”

  “What we’ve heard is that she is a second-generation Japanese-American born in Los Angeles, and she is a widow named Yuri Toguri or something like that.”

  Listening to this story, I thought that this must have been the work of the Imperial Army’s Information Department, but as I was moving around the front as an aviation officer, I had heard nothing about such a deceptive ploy.

  However, these war correspondents were losers in the competition to scoop the Tokyo Rose story, so, to make up for it, they wanted to be the first to send an article about my interview to their newspapers in the US. Such an article was printed the next day in the Stars & Stripes, the Occupation Forces newspaper, with a big photo of my face.

  41

  The Surrender Ceremony

  The surrender ceremony was held on September 2, 1945 aboard the US super-battleship, USS Missouri, and the battles of World War II were effectively put to an end.

  The USS Missouri was 888 feet long, with a beam of 108 feet, and a displacement of 45,000 dead weight tons. She was armed with nine three-turret 16-inch guns, 20 10-turret 5 inch-guns, and 80 40mm multiple machine guns. With a crew of 3,000, she was imposing. The Missouri was hastily built by the US Navy along with her sister ships, the USS New Jersey and others, in order to challenge the Japanese super-battleships, the Yamato and Musashi. She was launched on January 29, 1944 and commissioned on June 11th later that year. However, by the time she was commissioned, the age of battleships was already over, and she barely managed to have her moment of glory as the historic site of the surrender ceremony. Around that time, I teased a US Pacific Fleet aviation staff officer with whom I had become acquainted. I told him that it was incredible that the U.S Navy spent such a huge amount of money to build such a huge ship just for the surrender ceremony. He replied that he was an aviation officer himself and that, “Just like the Yamato, she was one of the three bakas [“dummies”].”

  Later, the Missouri fought in the Korean War but was decommissioned on February 26, 1955. She has since been maintained as a memorial ship in Bremerton Naval Port across from Seattle.

  In any case, though not of much use as a military force, she was impressive as the site of the surrender ceremony. The ceremonial site was prepared on the shelter deck on the front starboard side. Looking up, there was a soaring w
atchtower that reached up to the sky. Next to it, there were enormous 16-inch guns. The imposing appearance of this ceremonial site was perfect, more intimidating to the representatives of the allied nations than to the Japanese side, however.

  Representing Japan were Mamoru Shigemitsu, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and General Yoshijiro Umezu, Chief of Staff General on behalf of Imperial Headquarters.

  In my role as Staff of General Navy Headquarters, I was assigned miscellaneous tasks to help the Japanese side’s preparations. Since I was not an official attaché, I was watching the signing ceremony from the upper deck along with the crews of the USS Missouri.

  At 9:04 in the morning, the Japanese representatives signed the surrender treaty first—Shigemitsu, then Umezu. Then, at 9:08, Field Marshal Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of the Allied Nations, signed on behalf of all allied nations which had been in a state of war with Japan. By his side were Lieutenant General Jonathan M. Wainwright, the US general who was defeated at Corregidor and had been a prisoner of war from 1942, and Lieutenant General Arthur E. Percival, the defeated British commander of Singapore at the time of the Japanese conquest. MacArthur gave each one a fountain pen that had been used for the signing ceremony. It was a beautiful, dramatic moment.

  However, I felt strange watching this scene unfold. At the outbreak of the war, it was General MacArthur who was the supreme commander of the American forces in the Philippines. Despite this, he left the Corregidor Base and his officers and soldiers in the hands of Lieutenant General Wainwright shortly before Corregidor fell. MacArthur himself escaped from Corregidor to Australia with his wife and children in a fast boat accompanied by his close staff. His farewell words were, “I shall return.”

  Wainwright lost Corregidor shortly after. He became a prisoner of war of the Japanese Army along with his officers and soldiers and spent four years in prison. Meanwhile, Field Marshal MacArthur fulfilled his promise of “I shall return” to the Philippines four years later. And when he landed at Atsugi Base, he triumphed with his pretentious gesture, “It was a long road to Tokyo.” And now, he was giving a pen as a token of appreciation to the poor Lieutenant General Wainwright who had suffered so many hardships on the Supreme Commander’s behalf? Is this what they call their chivalry? It did not make sense that our bushido—the way of samurai—should have lost to such a low level of chivalry. I was still bursting with pride as an officer of the Imperial Japanese Navy. As they say, “What is learned in the cradle is carried to the grave.”