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

by Tadanori Urabe

  “This is my story. This is my song…”

  Then, the President, at my side, also sang with a loud voice. He had commanded all the military forces of the Allies, so his voice was powerful. After prayer, the sermon and offering, it was time for reporting. The minister asked me to stand up as a new guest. He introduced me as the former Commander of the Pearl Harbor attack—but now a member of the family of God. This was greeted with thunderous applause, including the President next to me. Then, the minister announced that the Captain would give a testimony at a missionary assembly that night and that everyone in the audience was invited to attend. This again received a big hand.

  After a prayer session of approximately 30 minutes, the minister closed with a benediction, and amidst a chorus of amens by the choir and ringing chimes, the President shook hands with me before he left. The entire audience was standing as they saw him off.

  After all this, Sachs failed to take a picture, but I admired the warm-hearted Eisenhower. I thought, “What a man of God he is.”

  57

  Annapolis Naval Academy

  As I was in Washington D.C., I made a courtesy visit to the Japanese Embassy to see Ambassador Eikichi Araki. Ambassador Araki was unmarried, and he looked like a saint with a mature and vice-free appearance. When I greeted him and told him my impression of the tours in the United States, he praised me a lot, causing me to feel embarrassed.

  “You are doing a very good thing. You are enhancing a friendly atmosphere between Japan and the United States through private diplomacy. If we ambassadors should spend 10 years doing what we do, we still would not be able to match you.

  “I admit it’s true that an affinity towards Japan prevails nowadays, but it is not specifically with Japan that they maintain friendly terms. They are friendly to any country in the free world. Anyway, this country knows, as you have seen, to revere God. Japan used to declare respect for the heavens, but it did not become part of our nature. We continued to deal only with persons, and our nation collapsed.”

  On the day after my visit to the Japanese Embassy, I went to see Vice President Richard M. Nixon on Capitol Hill. Nixon had been a Navy Lieutenant Commander during the war and my counterpart fighting in the South Pacific. As we shook hands, Nixon told me, “We fought to our very limit in the war. That is why we can be good friends just by shaking hands.” Then he introduced me to people at the Pentagon.

  At the Pentagon, I delivered a speech in a separate building called the Naval Annex, followed by a service in a chapel at the Pentagon. After the service, the Chief Chaplain of the Department of the Navy asked me to go to the Naval Academy in Annapolis. As I had wanted to visit the Naval Academy, I accepted the chance invitation with delight. I was taken to Annapolis by car, and my host was the Chief Chaplain, Lieutenant Commander John Craven.

  As we arrived just before lunch time, I was ushered first to the students’ dining room. The officer on duty, a lieutenant, introduced me to the students.

  “We have a guest today. I would like to introduce Captain Fuchida of the former Imperial Japanese Navy. This is the person who was the lead commander of the Pearl Harbor bombardment...” His introduction was followed by a big applause from approximately 3,000 students.

  When the officer said, “In honor of Captain Fuchida, we serve you today Japanese food,” there was again thunderous applause. Then, the officer on duty gave an order: “Seat.”

  Up to this point, it was the same at the Etajima Naval Academy. A bugle call signaled a meal, students ran into the dining room, but they stood at the table waiting for the order, “Seat,” from the officer on duty. At the order, they all sat at their table and started to eat together voraciously. But it was different at Annapolis.

  Those who sat on the order, “Seat,” were only third-year senior students; the first- and second-year junior students were still standing. As I watched in wonder, the senior students who were the leaders at each table gave the next order, “Seat,” and all the junior students sat down. I understood then that the educational discipline of junior students by senior students was far more complete than it ever was at Etajima.

  While the Japanese Naval Academy also placed importance on educational discipline to junior students by their seniors, when it went too far, it often resulted in punishment with a punch. It was quite common, but before I joined the Naval Academy, Vice Admiral Kantaro Suzuki, who was the school’s Superintendent until the year before I entered, had prohibited such punishment. This rule was strictly enforced, and any student who violated the rule was dismissed from the Academy. Thanks to him, I was never hit by senior students during my stay at the school, and I never hit junior students. However, the other disciplinary practices were quite strict.

  I entered the school in late August, in the heat of summer. As it was hot, I was cooling off after dinner at the beach near the parade ground. I had my hands raised to my waist. Just then, a senior student approached from behind in silence and, without warning, hit both of my hands very hard. As I lowered my hands in surprise, he left, scowling at me. I learned later that first-year students were always supposed to keep their hands low at Etajima. It was when they became second-year students that they were allowed to raise their hands. Then, when you became a third-year student, you could cross your arms at your chest. It was such a cumbersome disciplinary system.

  Post-war comments from the media bitterly criticized the system, saying that because regular officers had been disciplined by such rigid educational practices, they became undesirable persons, who should be expelled by General MacArthur. However, back in MacArthur’s country, the military academies were giving much stricter educational discipline, limiting the freedom of students. Otherwise, soldiers with a strong backbone could not be developed.

  There was one difference from Etajima: the first thing you see as you pass through the gate of Annapolis is a big chapel. I asked the chaplain who accompanied me, “Do students regularly attend the prayer service on Sundays?”

  The chaplain responded, “Most of them do, but they can also leave before the prayer. But usually those students who go out attend morning prayer in some church in the town.”

  I could sense that students at Annapolis were brought up to live in awe of God. Meanwhile, at Etajima, they were brought up learning to confront other men with a sort of animosity.

  Now Japan has emerged from the ashes. What should we do for the reconstruction of our mother country? First of all, live in awe of our God. And believe in Jesus Christ, who was sent to us by God.

  58

  New York

  On March 8th, early on Sunday morning, we departed from Philadelphia and spent the sacred day delivering my service in Baltimore. We entered New York late that night and stayed at the Times Square Hotel. New York City surely is the capital of the world.

  The next day, I had an appointment to see Jimmy Doolittle at 1:00 PM. Doolittle was then Shell Oil’s General Manager of Public Relations, and Sachs and I were heading to a tall building where Doolittle had an office on the 20th floor.

  Sachs himself intended to use the interview for publicity for the Sky Pilots, and he had contacted several mass media companies.

  “Captain Fuchida of Pearl Harbor, responsible for the first air-raid on the United States, and General Doolittle, leader of the bomber squadron which made the first air-raid on Japan, will have an interview. You can probably make a good story out of this.” He told them the time and place for the interview. The mass media flocked to Doolittle’s office, which was crowded and cluttered with people and TV cameras.

  This was my first encounter with Doolittle. We enjoyed talking about a number of different topics, all in a friendly manner, and the name of one of his men, DeShazer, was mentioned. Then, he invited me to attend a commemorative reunion, if I had the time, of American combat survivors of the Tokyo air-raid. It was held on April 18th every year. Doolittle was also a Christian who revered God.

  That night, I was invited to dinner by General MacArthur. In t
he latter half of his stay in Japan as Supreme Commander of the Occupation Forces, I collected and provided information from Japan’s archives to back up his memoirs that he was writing. I was invited to have meals with him three times in Tokyo. This time, I gave him a call as he had told me to contact him if I had a chance to visit New York. Consequently, I was invited to dinner. I went alone as Sachs was not invited.

  MacArthur lived in an apartment that occupied an entire mid-level floor of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel Building on Park Avenue. In the living room, there were many items, decorated with the emblem of the chrysanthemum. These had been presented by the Japanese royal family. What surprised me at our reunion was that he looked quite different and older than when he was in Japan.

  However, he still had a deep interest in Japan. The following is a summary of what he said to me.

  “I don’t think everything I did as Supreme Commander of the Occupation Forces was good. There may be some resentment against me. But I meant to carry out the occupation in line with Washington’s policy, but always bearing in mind how to make Japan a better nation.

  “I overheard that in the May Day Incident last year (1952), anti-American sentiment, other than background agitation by Communists, was also prevalent among the younger generation. It is against all my wishes that a wave of anti-Americanism should have occurred as a reaction to my occupation policy. I feel the urge to go to Japan to do something about it.

  “Looking back now, it was premature to have them add a clause to denounce war in the Japanese Constitution. At that time, I thought that there would be no winner or loser in future wars based on the deployment of the atomic bomb. Both sides, the enemy and our side, would be destroyed. The end result would be nothing but the total annihilation of all human beings. Based on my thinking at that time, I felt that the world was nearing a stage where nations would denounce war.

  “There was also a policy of the allied nations to nullify Japan militarily with the intention of letting Japan take the initiative in denouncing war to the world. However, the actual situation that has developed around the world has been quite the opposite of the denunciation of war, and peace has been barely maintained by a system we call the balance of power—responding to power with power. Therefore, I was obliged to reconsider that Japan also needs power for self-defense.”

  These were the reminiscences of Field Marshal MacArthur in his late years as a disarmed soldier after his dismissal as the Supreme Commander of Japan’s occupation.

  After the visit to New York City, we crossed the heartland of the United States in Sachs’ car and held assemblies in many towns and cities. We finally made it back to the Sky Pilots headquarters in San Jose. During our journey, which lasted roughly three months and covered nearly 40,000 miles of driving, we held close to 100 assemblies.

  59

  Yesterday’s Enemy is

  Today’s Friend

  Back in Berkeley, California I performed a service at a Methodist Church for Japanese in that city. After the assembly, I was having a chat with the minister, Masahiro Omi. He asked me if I was interested in visiting Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, former Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet, who happened to live in Berkeley. It had been a while since I saw Nimitz, and I wanted to know how he was. I asked Reverend Omi to give a call to the Admiral to ask when it would be convenient to meet, and the answer was that he was more than pleased to see me. The next morning, Omi drove me in his car.

  Admiral Nimitz’s residence was halfway up a hill behind Berkeley, and as we drove up the winding road, we saw an old man, holding his hands together and watching the cars as they passed by. It was like a father waiting impatiently outside the gate for his son, who was returning home from his study away. After we approached the house and parked the car, Nimitz opened our car door and invited me into his house, telling me, “Welcome, Captain!”

  As he ushered us into the living room, Nimitz pulled the sofa to the center of the room, and told us that from there, we would have the best view. From where I was sitting, there was certainly a fantastic view with the Golden Gate Bridge framed by the glass window.

  After serving us tea, Nimitz wanted to show us his bonsai miniature trees that he was taking care of. He was very proud of them. In the garden, we saw plenty of bonsai pines, lined up throughout the garden, from Takamatsu on Shikoku Island. After that, Mrs. Nimitz wanted us to see her oil paintings, sketched while she and her husband were stationed in Japan. They were hanging in each room, and they were all beautiful paintings of Japanese sights.

  As we talked frankly, I found out that Nimitz was a Protestant and that Mrs. Nimitz was a Unitarian. Usually, faith in the Christian God is based on the Holy Trinity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Unitarians believe in the Father and the Son, separating the Holy Spirit. And they said their daughter was a Catholic.

  With a smile, I told him, “Then, your family can be regarded as ecumenical.”

  To my statement, he muttered, “I don’t care if we are ecumenical or not. My headache is that my daughter wants to devote her life as a Catholic nun.”

  Thus, when we started to talk about faith, he told me the following story.

  When the war ended and he returned from Japan, the Admiral retired as Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet. The US Congress then honored him with the title of Permanent Fleet Admiral. Following that, based on many requests, he conducted lecture tours all across the US.

  One day, when he arrived at a university in the east to give a lecture, he saw a small church bell hanging in the corridor. As he approached, he found Japanese letters inscribed on the bell. He asked about the bell and learned that a student who had been a GI brought it back from Japan as a souvenir. The Admiral got very angry about this.

  “What a disgrace that a Christian from the States has brought back a church bell from a Christian church in Japan!”

  Then, it was agreed that the bell would be returned to the church in Japan where it came from. General Headquarters of the Occupation Forces in Tokyo was able to identify the church based on the name inscribed on the bell. It was safely returned to a tiny church in the suburbs of Fukuoka City, on the coast of Kyushu Island.

  Then, sometime later, Admiral Nimitz received letters of appreciation from children who attended that church. He treasured the letters which he showed me. They were written with childlike letters and sentences.

  According to the letters, children belonging to the church wanted to have a bell as they had heard many stories about the significance of a bell. There was a blacksmith in the village who told them to pick up junk metal of copper or brass, then he could make one for them. Every day, they went to all the nearby firebombed ruins to pick up scrap metal, and when they had collected enough, the blacksmith eventually made the scrap into a bell.

  They were all happy and proud of the bell. But one day, soldiers from the Occupation Forces came to the beach for some leisure time and took a rest at the church. One of them found the bell and, listening to the proud children with their mixed smattering of English and Japanese, learned that it was made of scrap metal from incendiary bombs dropped on Fukuoka City. The soldier took the bell by force, telling them that it belonged to the US. Now that the bell had been returned, thanks to Admiral Nimitz, they were very happy, writing in their letters, “Thank you, Mr. Nimitz.”

  As I laughed at the end of his story, he seemed to be a bit startled. He said that, with regards to souvenirs, he himself had a souvenir. And he was aware of its significance because when he received it, the souvenir’s background was explained by a Japanese interpreter.

  Nimitz was presented a military sword belonging to Admiral Soemu Toyoda, former Commander-in-Chief of Naval Headquarters as well as the Combined Fleet. Now, he was telling me that he would like to return the sword to Admiral Toyoda because it was not something he ought to own personally. Then, he asked me to take it back with me when I returned to Japan. I was going to remain in the US for another two months, so I asked the Japanese Embas
sy to take care of the sword’s return. The sword should have been returned to Admiral Toyoda without fail. In this manner, Fleet Admiral Nimitz showed that he was also a person who revered God.

  While I was staying in Berkeley, I paid a visit one day to Admiral Raymond Spruance in Monterey, a beach area on the central coast of California. Spruance was the well-known Commander-in-Chief of the Fifth Fleet of the US Task Force, and he was the General Commander of the enemy at the Battle of Midway. For this reason, I asked him to write the preface for the English version of my book titled, Midway, which was published by the Naval Institute in Annapolis. As a token of my appreciation, I presented him my family treasure, two masks of the traditional Noh theater. He was very pleased and gave me a courteous letter expressing his appreciation, but I had never had a chance to see him until this visit to his home.

  Admiral Spruance lived at a country club in an area that juts out to the Pacific Ocean like a fist. The place, near the City of Monterey, is called Pacific Grove. Since the place had a mild climate all year round and spectacular scenic beauty, many admirals of the US Navy had their second homes there.

  As I entered Spruance’s house, I could see the two Noh masks which I gave to him. They were hanging on the hallway wall leading from the entrance to the second floor. Mrs. Spruance thanked me as she pointed to the masks. From the living room, I saw an old pine tree with a thick trunk, extending in the garden like a dragon. As I was watching the fine tree, Spruance told me that the old pine tree was a constant source of trouble with his wife. While Mrs. Spruance wanted to cut down what she called an obstacle, Spruance himself wanted to keep it. Then, he turned to me and asked me what he should do. By nature, I did not like to cut live trees, and I responded that it would be better not to cut it. Spruance was very content as this was the exact answer he wanted, but Mrs. Spruance was rather sulky.