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

by Tadanori Urabe

  On Sunday, June 4, 1950, from 9:30 in the morning, the Sakai Peace Prayer Convention was held in a theater in front of Sakai City Hall. Delegates from seven nations—Japan, Korea, Taiwan, the US, Germany, Norway and Sweden—participated. The convention was hosted by the Sakai Oshoji Church. The main theme was “Pray for Eternal Peace at This Critical Point of History.” I was invited by Saito to give testimony of my conversion.

  Saito delivered a sermon titled, “Christ is the Peace of the World.” Then, it was my turn to give testimony. Saito chose the title of my piece, “How I was Able to Become a Believer in Pacifism.” Feeling that this solemn title would be more suitable for such a great figure like Kanzo Uchimura, the legendary Christian evangelist, I stood on the platform to talk about my conversion with a wry smile. This was followed by peace messages, a vocal solo and a hymn sung by the missionaries, their wives and the choir.

  I came to know Saito during my conversion, and I admired his fighting spirit to achieve peace through God. There was no other way, and Saito devoted his entire life to missionary work.

  Then, I joined the Sakai Oshoji Church. It had been relocated to the former regimental office of the military police in Kanaoka, Sakai. Before long, I made a confession of my faith and submitted an application for baptism to the church.

  It was Easter Sunday, March 25, 1951. During the morning prayers that day, Missionary Saito performed my baptism. As it was in a Presbyterian church, the baptism ceremony involved sprinkling water over my head. After the morning prayer, Saitao gave a sermon titled, “Jesus, Who Was Resurrected from Death.”

  With James Doolittle of First Air-raid on Japan—March 9, 1953

  Easter Sunday with Reverend Toshio Saito—March 25, 1951

  Fuchida’s Inscription in Bible from Chapter of Luke

  51

  Pearl Harbor is Alive

  It was December 3, 1951, my 49th birthday, when a reporter from the Associated Press visited my shabby home near Kashiwara Shrine in Nara Prefecture.

  “Mr. Fuchida, in a few days it will be December 8th, just 10 years after you attacked Pearl Harbor. So, we would like to interview you for an article for newspapers in the States for the 10th anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day.”

  He was quick to ask his first question. “How did you feel in your plane when you sneaked up to Pearl Harbor early morning that day, leading the formation of 360 planes?”

  As I looked at the reporter’s face and saw his expression, I had a hunch that he was expecting me to answer that I felt treacherous, sneaking up stealthily on Pearl Harbor, acting as the instrument of an insidious attack.

  My spirit of defiance rose, and, after a long pause, I decided to challenge his attitude.

  “On that day, I felt very honored and extremely happy to be born as a Japanese man. You see my point, don’t you? It was a sacred war to liberate Asian nations that had been suffering enormously under the rule of the whites for 200 long years. As I was going to annihilate our long-standing enemy, the US Pacific Fleet, at the beginning of the war, I was high-spirited and put my whole heart and soul into the command of the battle that day.”

  The reporter was taken aback, took some notes, then smiled and asked his second question. “How did you live after the war ended? Have you experienced some change of mind because of the defeat, as a person who went through the war?”

  I replied, “Here is my point. This is something I wanted to tell you, whether you asked me or not. Please write it down carefully.”

  With that introductory remark, I told him how I ended up converting to Christianity. This reporter probably was not a Christian as he did not seem to have any interest in my story of conversion, and he changed the subject to the third question.

  “Already six years have passed since the end of the war, and we smell a movement for rearmament in Japan again. Are you willing to wear a military uniform again?”

  “That’s the question I want to throw back to you. Who on earth is giving off the odor of rearmament? It is your country, the United States. The US is a selfish country that dissolved the Japanese forces and eradicated all our military power so that Japan would never challenge the United States again. Now, seeing that the international situation has changed, you recommend Japan to rearm to make us your bulwark in the Far East. I am not a monkey. I don’t want to take this risk for the sake of your country.”

  The reporter left rather disappointed, shaking his head.

  While I did not know how this interview would be treated, I received an airmail letter several days after December 8th from a missionary, Mr. Koide, who had been studying in the US. I had become acquainted with Mr. Koide when I was traveling in Mie Prefecture doing evangelical missionary work to save the nation. He was a missionary at Owase Church. He later went to the US as a student.

  Mr. Koide’s father was also a missionary, but he probably belonged to the Pentecostal Holiness sect. He was put in jail, charged under the provisions of the Maintenance of the Public Order Act and found guilty of attempting to change the structure of the state. He died in prison. The son, my acquaintance, was enlisted in the Imperial Navy as a Sailor, Third Class. He served under a depraved petty officer who was the discipline team leader, and the petty officer, knowing that he was a missionary, asked, “Koide, who created the heaven and earth?” Unless Koide responded, “Amanominakanushi-nomikoto”—the Japanese Lord of the Center of Heaven—he was repeatedly slapped. Therefore, Koide hated military people, but it probably depended on the person. He was friendly to me, an ex-Navy man.

  In his letter, Koide wrote:

  “Mr. Fuchida, the article about your interview with the AP reporter was treated as a big item in the newspapers here. The headline is, “Has Pearl Harbor Been Forgotten?” This is in direct contrast with the general move to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day with the usual slogan, “Remember Pearl Harbor.” So far, this has not been a big issue, but we Japanese living in the States are put in an embarrassing situation by your strong and indiscreet statements.”

  I felt sorry if I had put them in an embarrassing situation, but my spirit of defiance emerged again. My desire to go to the US only grew bigger, to see with my own eyes if Pearl Harbor had really been forgotten in that country.

  Around that time, the Strategic Bombing Survey Team of the United States visited Japan. The leader, Rear Admiral Ralph Andrew Ofstie, patted me on my shoulder and told me, “Captain Fuchida, we’ve been studying your air attack on Pearl Harbor. It was extremely well thought out. In its planning and execution, there were no defects. If Japan had conducted its operations like this one for four years, we could now be in a position of being summoned before you today.”

  I replied, “That’s a funny way of giving praise. Since the game is over, let’s stop joking.”

  “No, I don’t mean that. Pearl Harbor is still alive. Strategically, the lesson of Pearl Harbor provided a good example of a surprise attack at the start of a war. The world has since shifted to the nuclear age. It is common thinking nowadays that a surprise attack with atomic bombs will occur at the very inception of the war. Your surprise attack on Pearl Harbor was accomplished beautifully, taking advantage of our lack of preparedness. While you accomplished the objectives of your initial operation, we finally won with the slogan, ‘Remember Pearl Harbor.’ However, if the next ‘Pearl Harbor’ is carried out using atomic bombs, we shall not be able to counterattack.”

  Later, I was listening to Ofstie give a passionate speech, and I smiled drolly at his expression, “Pearl Harbor is still alive.” He continued by relating the following episode as an example of how the world was nervously awaiting the Second Pearl Harbor.

  According to him, 24 reporters with special passes always stay overnight at the White House in Washington D.C.. Their rooms are installed with a device that enables instantaneous communication about major emergencies from the Presidential Secretary’s office. However, its use is limited to significant emergencies, and it had been used only once since its inst
allation in 1930, at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack.

  Early in the morning, at 10 minutes after midnight, on April 11th last year, the loudspeakers blared out, “Report immediately to the news room. There is big news.” Reporters, hurrying to the room, speculated that, “it could be the outbreak of WWIII! Where is the second Pearl Harbor?” However, it turned out to be an announcement of General MacArthur’s dismissal. It was certainly big news, but they were all relieved that it was not the second Pearl Harbor.

  This story seemed more like a joke or fiction, but it underscored the nuances of the world crisis at the time. I felt very depressed to learn that the memory of Pearl Harbor was still alive in that fashion. I prayed that I would be sent to the US at least once for missionary work in order to erase the memory of Pearl Harbor.

  52

  Wings for Christ

  One day, I received an overseas letter. It was from Elmer B. Sachs of Sky Pilots International in San Jose, California. It was a long letter.

  Missionary Layman W. Ketcham was involved in how the letter reached me. After his job at the Pocket Testament League in Japan, Ketcham returned to the United States. Upon his return, he held a meeting in San Francisco to report on his Japan missionary work. Elmer Sachs attended that meeting.

  Sachs was born in Chicago in 1906. He was a big man, 6 feet 5 inches tall, weighing 230 pounds, and when he was in high school, he was an uncontrollable bad boy with great physical strength.

  After graduating from high school, he worked for six years as a taxi driver, but during that time, he became involved with gangsters. One day, he decided to split with them, and they beat him up badly. He was left lying unconscious overnight at the edge of Lake Michigan.

  Fortunately, he survived and, with a vengeance, decided that he wanted to become a policeman. Thanks to his stature, he was accepted immediately and assigned as a detective in the Evanston Police Department, in the suburbs of Chicago. There is a saying, “Set a thief to catch a thief,” and he took full advantage of his new authority to arrest all of his former gang members, showing no mercy.

  For him, it was revenge for the beating they gave him, but revenge begets revenge. In return, the gangsters paid him back by shooting him in the leg. Once again, he survived.

  He quit the police force and moved halfway across the country to the safety of Long Beach, a suburb of Los Angeles. He took a job selling vacuum cleaners. He married and, because of his wife, started to go to church. At first, he did not show any interest in church, but eventually he accepted Jesus in response to a prayer by Mrs. Sachs. Once he experienced conversion, he could not sit quietly as he was a man of passion and energy.

  Before long, he entered the Bible Institute in Los Angeles to learn more about the Bible. After graduation, he started preaching in the Los Angeles suburb of La Puente. It started as a small church based on pioneering missionary work, and it grew to 200 people over the next seven years. During this time, he realized the importance of missionary work for boys. When he was a policeman, it was his job to catch juvenile delinquents, but he realized that before catching them for their crimes, he must ask Jesus to catch them before they commit any crimes. He expressed his idea as a slogan, “It is better to build boys than to mend men.”

  For this reason, he left his church and life of mending men to establish the Christian Missionary Army of Sky Pilots to begin building boys. The targets of the Sky Pilots Army were boys between 8 and 14 years old, mostly elementary school boys. According to Sachs, there were fewer organized activities for children of this age group compared with other groups. While junior high students had the Boy Scouts, and senior high students had Youth for Christ, elementary school kids were forgotten. However, this age group was the most important because, as the Bible put it, “Learn your Savior when you are an infant.”

  Therefore, he studied child psychology and observed that boys liked regimentation and wearing uniforms. Consequently, he designed an air-force-like uniform and a system in which a first-year primary school boy joined the Sky Pilots as an Air Soldier, 3rd class with gradual promotions based on achievements related to building model airplanes and memorizing Scripture. The air squadron was the basic unit, and junior high boys who graduated from the boys’ section of Sky Pilots were assigned as the “flight leaders” to take care of approximately ten primary school “pilots” as his “men.”

  Also, to foster the boys’ interest in airplanes, he gathered them every Tuesday to make model airplanes using rooms at a Sunday School. They flew the model planes outdoors on Saturdays. By building on their interest in aviation, he encouraged them to read the Bible and to believe in Jesus Christ. He tried to turn into a reality: “Learn about your Savior when you are an infant.”

  This movement, which had started in Los Angeles seven years earlier, spread throughout the western states, and Reverend Sachs relocated the Sky Pilots headquarters to San Jose. Around the same time, he wanted to spread the movement throughout the United States and, eventually, to extend the organization’s influence internationally, to the Far East, including Japan, Korea and Taiwan. And he was looking for someone who could assist him in this endeavor.

  By coincidence, he knew about Captain Fuchida’s conversion, the lead commander of the air attack on Pearl Harbor, and his choice fell on me. His long letter described his motivation, but his main point was to ask me if I was ready and willing to go to the United States to help with his Sky Pilots activities. To be honest, initially, it was not the Sky Pilots movement itself but the words on the letterhead, “Wings for Christ,” that attracted my attention.

  As a former flier, I had a strong interest in aircraft. After the war, the Occupation Forces prohibited Japanese from flying airplanes. Former pilots brooded, and we called ourselves “pilots without wings.” However, I continued to be keenly interested in the advances in the world of aviation, which were moving civilization forward. However, the most significant advances were already stretching the limits of human intelligence, and all were for military use. I was thinking of the possibility of using planes for missionary work to spread the word of Jesus Christ that would please God—namely, “Wings for Christ.”

  And this opportunity was already waiting for me in the United States. Attracted by the slogan,” Wings for Christ,” I felt the urge to go and see it with my own eyes. I sent my answer to Sachs and accepted his offer, and that was how I went to the United States, under the sponsorship of the Sky Pilots.

  53

  Billy Graham’s Crusade

  Thursday, November 27, 1952, was Thanksgiving Day. The day before, Sachs and I flew from San Jose in our Luscombe to head for Albuquerque, New Mexico’s capitol.10 We were supposed to join the Billy Graham Crusade, scheduled to be held on Thanksgiving night. The Luscombe was a light plane with a short cruising capacity and required frequent refueling. In the United States, there were airfields for light planes in every city, and they all supplied fuel.

  We took turns flying the plane, making two stops to refuel—at Reno and Elko in Nevada. We crossed the Salt Lake and arrived at Ogden, where we stayed overnight. The next day, the 27th, we departed Ogden early in the morning. The altimeter indicated 6,000 feet, but because we were flying above the ridges of the Rocky Mountains, we were actually not far above the ground. The east slopes of the Rocky Mountains extended across three states—Nevada, Utah, and New Mexico. We flew over undulating high plateaus, and the sight of this primeval landscape, where it seemed no human being had ever set foot, eroded by wind and rain, gave me an impression that we were flying on the moon. We landed at Carbon in Utah to refuel, and we finally reached Albuquerque in the evening.

  In Albuquerque, temporary facilities had been set up for our assembly. It was a huge tent that accommodated 8,000 people. There was no snow, but the night air on the plateau was cold. Inside the tent, it was comfortable as the temperature was kept at 65 degrees Fahrenheit with stoves installed everywhere, along with 8,000 folding chairs. A podium was set at the front of the stage; behind, the
re were tiers for the choir of 600, and band seats for 200 at the front. At the rear of the stage, there was another tent prepared to receive and accommodate those who decided to convert that night.

  Looking around, I was surprised to know that all the facilities had been set up for just one night, this night. I might be stingy, but when I said it was too gorgeous to serve just for one night, a man called Usher said, “Captain, what is splendid is to acquire a soul, not the facilities.”

  He was of the mind that if a single person could be saved, the entire facilities were cheap. He was quite right.

  The Salvation Army Band, 200 members strong, played music to fill the time. At 7:30, as scheduled, the event started, and the 600-member choir began to sing. The conductor was Cliff Barrows.

  I was shown to the stage with Sachs and sat next to Billy Graham. Mrs. Graham was also present, and I greeted her when we were introduced.

  Next, George Beverly Shea, a well-known bass baritone, performed a solo. He had a very good voice, and his song moved my heart. In this manner, the gathering’s atmosphere was prepared, and the souls of the people in the audience were made ready to receive the night’s message.

  Then, Sachs stood up as he was being introduced as a guest, but 10 minutes later, the moderator asked him to finish as he had spent so much time talking about the Sky Pilots. He passed the baton to me saying, “Now, Captain Fuchida, please.”

  I stood on the stage. I delivered a testimony that lasted approximately 15 minutes, pronouncing each word slowly and clearly. There was dead silence as everyone inside the tent tried to catch every word I said. I did my best as a speaker, and the audience listened most attentively. Then, something very inspirational happened. It was the grace of the Holy Spirit.