On a Sunday, I departed, pulling a cart. It was like a family picnic. We had lunch boxes. My wife pushed from behind, my son—in his second year of junior high—pulled the cart, and my daughter—a fifth grader of elementary school— had a good time riding on top of the cart.
However, pulling a cart was something new for me, and it was not easy to learn how to do it properly. I was quite tired just getting to our destination with the empty cart. Finally, we reached the mountain to cut down some trees and carry them out. Trees are simple materials, but one day was not enough time to accomplish much—especially for first-timers. Besides, we were on a picnic, too. Before long, night was falling. We stopped working and headed home, leaving the cart at a nearby farmhouse. We decided we would try to come back the following Sunday. As we were not in the Soviet Union, we did not have to worry about a strict quota.
After repeating our journey many times, we finally had enough building materials in our field. Then, I had to try to imitate the carpenters. I did not have any carpentry skills, but I had wisdom and time to think. Everyday, I devoted myself to the carpentry work with total concentration in the middle of our solitary field. I really enjoyed it.
Before long, I raised the framework, and the hen house—although it was quite small—was soon built. Half of my life had been dedicated to destroying things with bombs, but now I managed to put together a building, no matter how small it was, on this planet. I was delighted with myself. Just then, I felt someone’s presence. I looked behind. It was a farmer working in the next field.
“Is the Admiral a carpenter?”
“No, I ‘m not.”
“That’s what I thought. It’s not so good for a carpenter, but it’s OK for a layman.”
My title was Captain, but in the countryside, everybody called me Admiral. “Admiral, are you going to live in that house?”
“No, this is a hen house.”
“For a hen house, it’s pretty good.”
As he was praising me, the farmer looked at me suspiciously. His eyes seemed to ask,”Why will he raise hens in this deserted field when he doesn’t even have a house?”
“The Admiral must be a repatriate from China. You have just begun farming, haven’t you?”
I gave in. I must be a failure as a farmer to professional eyes. “That’s right. Can you teach me from time to time?” Here I was, absorbed in chatting with this artless and honest farmer during his break from his farm work.
By building the hen house, I learned how to handle basic carpentry work. I extended my efforts to the hut that we lived in, a barn for farm work, a kitchen, a bathroom and a study for the children and so on—all by myself. As it was the work of an amateur carpenter, everything looked shabby, but I think it sufficiently reflected my wisdom, and there was no problem getting enough sunshine or ventilation. At three-quarters of an acre, it was small as a farm, but it was spacious as a housing site. I lived comfortably with a lot of affection around me.
During this time, I was becoming accustomed to dealing with soil, plants, domestic animals and natural phenomena. Strangely, my mind came to believe in the mystery of life as well as the mystery of the universe and the existence of God as the creator of all the things in it. As a consequence, I was ashamed of my arrogance, my former self who believed that I could rely solely on my own efforts. While all the friends I had in the world abandoned me, I felt deeply that God alone, as the creator, accompanied me with his never-changing grace, and I was alive because of his blessing.
Everywhere in the world, most people tend to think that the natural phenomena that happen around them are commonplace, daily occurrences. On the other hand, those farmers who believe that these phenomena are all thanks to the sun, worship the sun every day, but they do not think of the creator who made the sun. It was my greatest delight that I came to learn to live in awe of God.
In the past, I knew nothing about revering God, as I was always dealing with men. I was brought up in an ordinary Japanese home, which had both a household Shinto altar and a Buddhist altar. The Shinto altar was to honor Amaterasuomikami [the Sun-Goddess], and the Buddhist altar was for the Jyodo-Shinshu sect of Buddhism. However, there was not much of a religious atmosphere in my childhood. Therefore, I became an adult with no particular religious faith. After I joined the Navy, the Military Code became my faith, rather than a belief in God. After I was ostracized as an agent of the military clique, it was a ray of hope that I came to learn to revere God while I was living in seclusion with my snobbish and obstinate attitudes about life.
These words from the Bible describe my situation very well: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28).”
At the time, I did not yet know about Jesus Christ.
44
Same-Year Baby Born in
the Year of the Tiger
When the war ended, what amazed me most of all was the fact that I had survived. As I mentioned earlier, I staked my life as I burned with loyalty for my beloved nation and committed my all when I fought in battles in the Pacific. I swear that I never, even once, held back in order to survive.
I accepted that death is part of war. However, to die is not the objective of war. Unless you remain alive to fight, you cannot achieve victory in war. Therefore, you should not act hastily to meet death, but neither should you turn away from a deadly situation solely for the sake of survival.
This is the difficulty of extreme opposites. In summary, your behavior on the battlefield will be confused and inconsistent insofar as you consider “to live” and “to die” as two different things. You must attain a heightened state of mind in which life and death are inseparable. As a military officer, I desired and worked to reach such a state of mind—and to make it part of my daily life. As part of my effort to discipline my mind, I often practiced Zen at Enkakuji Temple in Kamakura.
Back in those days, I had a hazy concept of my destiny. It was based on the superstition that babies born in the Year of the Tiger had good fortune. I was born on December 3rd of the 35th year of the reign of the Emperor Meiji [1902]. The 35th year of the Meiji Era was the Year of the Tiger.
In my native place, the older people believed in the superstition that those born in the Year of the Tiger would live a life of good fortune and, moreover, that same-year babies of the Year of the Tiger would have particularly good fortune. By same-year baby, they meant a baby who was conceived and born within the Year of the Tiger. I fell into that category as I was born on December 3rd.
I did not pay much attention to such superstitions. In fact, it was only after my marriage that I came to know about it. I was a pilot and consequently did not get married until I was 30 years old. In those days, planes crashed often, resulting in a substantial number of fliers who died on duty. Many of my classmates died in crashes, and seeing the young widows at the Naval funeral services choked my heart with sorrow. Therefore, I rationalized my situation by remaining unmarried with the thought that, sooner or later, if I were to follow the same destiny as my deceased classmates, it would be better not to leave behind a widow.
However, by a curious turn of events, I ended up getting married when I turned 30 years old. Ironically, soon after the marriage, I had to go to the front because of the China Incident. More than my wife, it was her mother who was upset by this.
My mother-in-law was eager to prepare a senninbari [1,000 stitches] for her dear son-in-law. Around the time of the China Incident, it became fashionable to prepare a talisman called senninbari for soldiers going to the front. Senninbari is a piece of folded white cloth on which 1,000 stitches are sewn with red thread by 1,000 women. There was a superstition that if you put the cloth around your belly, you would not be hit by a shell.
While my mother-in-law was busy asking around for 1,000 stitches, I visited my wife’s parents’ home for her first return after marriage, according to Japanese custom. When we talked about the senninbari, her mother asked me
, “By the way, when is your birthday?”
“It was December 3rd of the 35th year of Meiji [1902].”
“Then, you are a same-year baby of the Year of the Tiger.”
It was my first time to hear the words “same-year baby of the Year of the Tiger,” and my mother-in-law said, “A same-year baby of the Year of the Tiger is born to have a very good fortune. You don’t have to carry such a senninbari.” And she threw away the half-finished senninbari into a wastepaper basket.
It was not that I believed in the superstition about a same-year baby of the Year of the Tiger or senninbari, but I was impressed by her quick wit. In an attempt to encourage her dear son-in-law, she mentioned the story about the very good fortune behind my birth, then threw away the senninbari.
Following this visit, I went to the war in China and participated in the central China operations as lead commander of the 13th Air Squadron. As the days went by, I found myself to be quite fortunate. No bullet ever hit me. Based on repeated experiences of good fortune, I felt that it might be because of the fortune of being a same-year baby of the Year of the Tiger.
Before long, the situation in China developed into the Great East Asia War, and I was assigned to take general command of the air attack squadrons that would attack Pearl Harbor as our first act of war against the US. From that point in time, I dedicated myself totally to preparing for the attack, and foremost in my mind, whether awake or asleep, was the surprise attack. There was no chance of success if the attack was not a surprise.
However, whether we would succeed in our surprise attack depended exclusively on the enemy’s response. All that we could do was keep our intentions absolutely secret. In a sense, the attack’s success depended on the gods’ will or the grace of heaven. As part of our plan, the Nagumo Task Force Fleet was assembled at Hitokappu Bay in the Kurile Islands. During this time, concern about a leak of our operations plan was greatly diminished, and we announced to all our crews that our target was the enemy at Pearl Harbor. Aviation codebooks were delivered to the air squadrons.
I took one of the codebooks to study. I had a wish that the moment would come when I would send a message indicating that, “We have succeeded with our surprise attack.” I found the corresponding abbreviated code: “Repeated Tora.” I smiled as “tora” also meant tiger, which I took as a most fortunate sign.
I assembled all the flight crews and told them, “Each one of you should be concerned about the success of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, but your Commander believes the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor will succeed—without fail.”
They naturally asked me in return, “Why do you think so?” I responded, “Because of “Tora, Tora, Tora.”
The crews did not understand, and some even thought that something was mentally wrong with their commander, who was overly obsessed with the idea of the attack’s success. One of them approached and pinched the back of my hand asking, “Commander, does this hurt?”
I responded, “It hurts.” It was his way of diagnosing my sanity.
As events unfolded, the attack on Pearl Harbor was a success, and I dispatched the message, “Tora, Tora, Tora.” At Hiroshima Bay, a distant 3,000 nautical miles away, the Combined Fleet’s flagship, Nagato, received this message—“Tora, Tora, Tora.” Later, when I learned about this, I thought about the story of a tiger which traveled 1,000 ri [more than 2,000 nautical miles] and felt that it also must have actually returned 1,000 ri.
Likewise, the same-year baby born in the Year of the Tiger continued to have good fortune during the war, coupled with luck in actual combat situations. At Pearl Harbor, my plane was hit by fragments from shells fired by the enemy’s antiaircraft guns. The left side of the fuselage had a huge hole, and one of the control wires was almost completely severed, held together by only one strand. Still, we continued to fly over Pearl Harbor for three more hours until we completed our mission. When we made it back to the mother ship, the noncommissioned officer in charge of maintenance checked his commander’s plane. He turned pale but said with admiration, “It’s incredible how you managed to stay in the air for three hours with this damage.”
45
War Crimes Tribunal
Before long, what became known as the War Crimes Tribunal started in accordance with the Potsdam Declaration. Someone actually called the tribunal a “barbarians’ festival of heads.”
In ancient times, conflicts between barbarians were fought on a tribal basis. Once the conflict was decided, the victors brought back the heads of the losers, hung them from their ceilings and celebrated in order to vent their feelings of hatred. The War Crimes Tribunal after the end of the Pacific War was very much like the barbarians’ festival of heads.
Under international law, there was no legal basis to justify the War Crimes Tribunal. As far as Japan was concerned, the only conceivable legal basis derived from the unconditional acceptance of the Potsdam declaration which stated, “We do not intend that the Japanese shall be enslaved as a race or destroyed as a nation, but stern justice shall be meted out to all war criminals, including those who have visited cruelties upon our prisoners.”
However, despite all the platitudes that this was being done “for the sake of humanity,” the war criminal trials were nothing more than unilateral revenge of the winners against the loser.
When the Occupation Forces advanced into Japan, everything done by the allied nations was endorsed in the name of justice, while everything done by the Japanese side was branded as evil. In addition, the Occupation Forces implemented a policy of strict news censorship with strong enforcement powers. They pressured Japanese media—newspapers, magazines and radio stations—to release conveniently fabricated news that put the allied nations in a favorable light. “News” about how the war started and about the war itself were released with titles that began, “This Was the Truth About…” The Japanese media gave in to the power of the Occupation Forces, wagged its tail without criticism, discarded notions of freedom of the press and circulated false information.
Consequently, manipulated by this false broadcasting during the early post-war years, the public was led to believe that the Japanese side was all wrong and that the leaders responsible for planning and triggering the war, like Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, deserved the death sentence by hanging.
While it was logical to think that justice is not the sole domain of the victor, it was the nature of the War Crimes Tribunals that the loser would be unilaterally punished under the beautiful pretext of humanity.
I could see from the start of the trials of the Class A war criminals at Ichigaya in Tokyo that the objective was to hang, more or less, seven defendants. I could also see that most of the Tribunal’s effort was focused solely on the appearance that it was conducting a fair trial and that the penalties, let alone the decision of guilt or innocence, had not yet been decided.
My view was corroborated by one of the judges, Dr. Radhabinod Pal of India, in his written opinion that the sentences of the Tokyo trials gave only the politically predetermined conclusions that were decided before the trials began.
While all the other judges favored a verdict of guilty, Judge Pal alone insisted on not guilty, having announced a single sentence of innocence. In explaining his decision, Judge Pal described the results of his study, on which he spent two years and eight months, of events between 1928 and 1945. According to his study, he declared that, while Japan’s invasion of Asia was to be abhorred, the Western nations themselves were the most responsible for events leading to Japan’s actions. Furthermore, he wrote, they were taking advantage of their power as the war’s victors to set up the war criminal trials in an attempt to ignore historical facts and to brand every aspect of the past 18 years of Japan’s behavior as criminal.
Then, concerned about the following generations in Japan, Judge Pal appealed that, “I cannot afford to look over calmly to see Japanese children driven to an obsequious and degraded condition, burdened with a distorted guilty consciousness, being taught
that Japan committed crimes or that Japan dared to commit the violence of invasion. Wrongly written history must be rewritten. Japanese children, I want you to study well the true history from the incident in Manchuria to the outbreak of the Great Asia War through my sentence.”
However, the attitude of Chief Judge Webb, of Australia, prevailed: it was sufficient to convene the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal based on the commitment of war crimes without pursuing the true causes of the war. He declared that their duty was, “to administer justice for what Japan did and not to judge the behavior of the allied nations.” As a consequence, they turned their backs on the inhumane atrocities of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. No evidence of political intrigue or potentially criminal behavior on the victors’ part was considered.
War is not a crime. However, the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal declared that a war initiated by invasion was, in fact, a crime. Judge Pal of India was against this interpretation, purely from the standpoint of international law.
It was anticipated that the Pearl Harbor attack would be the central theme of the war crimes issues. As expected, the prosecutors argued strongly that the attack on Pearl Harbor was a deceptive attack. Then they went on to insist that since Pearl Harbor was attacked without prior notice before hostilities were initiated, it should be treated as a crime of murder, not as an act of war.
Additionally, the Tribunal established the principle that it would apply the same charges to individual perpetrators of criminal actions. Prior to this Tribunal, those who had simply carried out their orders were exempted from responsibility of the consequences of their acts—in any country. However, at this War Crimes Tribunal, this principle was amended so that, “executors of unlawful orders will not be dismissed.”
For That One Day: The Memoirs of Mitsuo Fuchida, Commander of the Attack on Pearl Harbor Page 23
