Mitsuo Fuchida, Lead Pilot at Pearl Harbor

MITSUO FUCHIDA

Lead Pilot at Pearl Harbor

With an Appendix on The A-bomb and a Miraculous Find

by Mitsuo Fuchida, Tom McMullen, and Others

Abstract

The high point of Mitsuo Fuchida's military career was leading the Japanese air attack on Pearl Harbor. He providentially survived the war and became a Christian as a result of reading the Bible. He purchased that Bible because he had been given a pamphlet written by Jacob DeShazer, a participant in the Doolittle raid. DeShazer had been captured and tortured by the Japanese. He became a Christian as a result of reading the Bible while in prison. He returned to Japan as an evangelist. The high point of Fuchida's spiritual career was becoming a Christian and then an evangelist.

FROM PEARL HARBOR TO CALVARY

by Mitsuo Fuchida (1970)

I must admit I was more excited than usual as I awoke that morning at 3:00 a.m., Hawaii time, four days past my thirty-ninth birthday. Our six aircraft carriers were positioned 230 miles north of Oahu Island. As general commander of the air squadron, I made last-minute checks on the intelligence information reports in the operations room before going to warm up my single-engine, three-seater "97-type" plane used for level bombing and torpedo flying.

The sunrise in the east was magnificent above the white clouds as I led 360 planes towards Hawaii at an altitude of 3,000 meters. I knew my objective: to surprise and cripple the American naval force in the Pacific. But I fretted about being thwarted should some of the U.S. battleships not be there. I gave no thought of the possibility of this attack breaking open a mortal confrontation with the United States. I was only concerned about making a military success.

As we neared the Hawaiian Islands that bright Sunday morning, I made a preliminary check of the harbor, nearby Hickam Field and the other installations surrounding Honolulu. Viewing the entire American Pacific Fleet peacefully at anchor in the inlet below, I smiled as I reached for the mike and ordered, "All squadrons, plunge in to attack!" The time was 7:49 a.m.

Like a hurricane out of nowhere, my torpedo planes, dive bombers and fighters struck suddenly with indescribable fury. As smoke began to billow and the proud battleships, one by one, started tilting, my heart was almost ablaze with joy. During the next three hours, I directly commanded the fifty level bombers as they pelted not only Pearl Harbor, but the airfields, barracks and dry docks nearby. Then I circled at a higher altitude to accurately assess the damage and report it to my superiors.

Of the eight battleships in the harbor, five were mauled into total inactivity for the time being. The Arizona was scrapped for good; the Oklahoma, California and West Virginia were sunk. The Nevada was beached in a sinking condition; only the Pennsylvania, Maryland and Tennessee were able to be repaired. Of the eight, the California, West Virginia and Nevada were salvaged much later, but the Oklahoma, after being raised, was resunk as worthless. Other smaller ships were damaged, but the sting of 3,077 U.S. Navy personnel killed or missing and 876 wounded, plus 226 Army killed and 396 wounded, was something which could never be repaired.

It was the most thrilling exploit of my career. Ever since I had heard of my country's winning the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, I had dreamed of becoming an admiral like Admiral Togo, our commander-in-chief in the decisive Battle of the Japan Sea.

Because my father was a primary school principal and a very patriotic nationalist, I was able to enroll in the Naval Academy when I was eighteen. Upon graduation three years later, I joined the Japanese Naval Air Force, and served mostly as an aircraft carrier pilot for the next fifteen years. So when the time came to choose the chief commander for the Pearl Harbor mission, I had logged over 10,000 hours, making me the most experienced pilot in the Japanese Navy.

During the next four years, I was determined to improve upon my Pearl Harbor feat. I saw action in the Solomon Islands, Java, the Indian Ocean; just before the Battle of Midway on June 4, 1942, I came down with an attack of appendicitis and was unable to fly. Lying in my bed, I grimaced at the sounds of the firing all about me. By the end of that day, we had suffered our first major defeat, losing ten warships altogether.

From that time on, things got worse. I did not want to surrender. I would rather have fought to the last man. However, when the Emperor announced that we would surrender, I acquiesced.

I was in Hiroshima the day before the atom bomb was dropped, attending a week long military conference with the Army. Fortunately, I received a long distance call from my Navy Headquarters, asking me to return to Tokyo.

With the end of the war, my military career was over, since all Japanese forces were disbanded. I returned to my home village near Osaka and began farming, but it was a discouraging life. I became more and more unhappy, especially when the war crime trials opened in Tokyo. Though I was never accused, Gen. Douglas MacArthur summoned me to testify on several occasions.

As I got off the train one day in Tokyo's Shibuya Station, I saw an American distributing literature. When I passed him, he handed me a pamphlet entitled I Was a Prisoner of Japan. (Published by Bible Literature International, known then as the Bible Meditation League). Involved right then with the trials on atrocities committed against war prisoners, I took it.

What I read was the fascinating episode which eventually changed my life. On that Sunday while I was in the air over Pearl Harbor, an American soldier named Jake DeShazer had been on K.P. duty in an Army camp in California. When the radio announced the sneak demolishing of Pearl Harbor, he hurled a potato at the wall and shouted, "Jap, just wait and see what we'll do to you!"

One month later he volunteered for a secret mission with the Jimmy Doolittle Squadron - a surprise raid on Tokyo from the carrier Hornet. On April 18,1942, DeShazer was one of the bombardiers, and was filled with elation at getting his revenge. -After the bombing raid, they flew on towards China, but ran out of fuel and were forced to parachute into Japanese-held territory. The next morning, DeShazer found himself a prisoner of Japan.

During the next forty long months in confinement, DeShazer was cruelly treated. He recalls that his violent hatred for the maltreating Japanese guards almost drove him insane at one point. But after twenty-five months there in Nanking, China, the U.S. prisoners were given a Bible to read. DeShazer, not being an officer, had to let the others use it first. Finally, it came his turn -for three weeks. There in the Japanese P.O.W. camp, he read and read and eventually came to understand that the book was more than an historical classic. Its message became relevant to him right there in his cell.

The dynamic power of Christ which Jake DeShazer accepted into his life changed his entire attitude toward his captors. His hatred turned to love and concern, and he resolved that should his country win the war and he be liberated, he would someday return to Japan to introduce others to this life-changing book.

DeShazer did just that. after some training at Seattle Pacific College, he returned to Japan as a missionary. And his story, printed in pamphlet form, was something I could not explain.

Neither could I forget it. The peaceful motivation I had read about was exactly what I was seeking. Since the American had found it in the Bible, I decided to purchase one myself, despite my traditionally Buddhist heritage.

In the ensuing weeks, I read this book eagerly. I came to the climactic drama - the Crucifixion. I read in Luke 23:34 the prayer of Jesus Christ at His death: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." I was impressed that I was certainly one of those for whom He had prayed. The many men I had killed had been slaughtered in the name of patriotism, for I did not understand the love which Christ wishes to implant within every heart.

Right at that moment, I seemed to meet Jesus for the first time. I understood the meaning of His death as a substitute for my wickedness, and so in prayer, I requested Him to forgive my sins and change me from a bitter, disillusioned ex-pilot into a well-balanced Christian with purpose in living.

That date, April 14, 1950 - became the second "day to remember" of my life. On that day, I became a new person. My complete view on life was changed by the intervention of the Christ I had always hated and ignored before. Soon other friends beyond my close family learned of my decision to be a follower of Christ, and they could hardly understand it.

Big headlines appeared in the papers: "Pearl Harbor Hero Converts to Christianity." Old war buddies came to visit me, trying to persuade me to discard "this crazy idea." Others accused me of being an opportunist, embracing Christianity only for how it might impress our American victors.

But time has proven them wrong. As an evangelist, I have traveled across Japan and the Orient introducing others to the One Who changed my life. I believe with all my heart that those who will direct Japan - and all other nations - in the decades to come must not ignore the message of Jesus Christ. Youth must realize that He is the only hope for this troubled world.

Though my country has the highest literacy rate in the world, education has not brought salvation. Peace and freedom - both national and personal -come only through an encounter with Jesus Christ.

I would give anything to retract my actions of twenty-nine years ago at Pearl Harbor, but it is impossible. Instead, I now work at striking the death-blow to the basic hatred which infests the human heart and causes such tragedies. And that hatred cannot be uprooted without assistance from Jesus Christ.

He is the only One Who was powerful enough to change my life and inspire it with His thoughts. He was the only answer to Jake DeShazer's tormented life. He is the only answer for young people today. [This ends Fuchida's account.]

Providence

Fuchida wrote above that "fortunately" he was called away from Hiroshima the day before the atom bomb was dropped. For a Christian like Fuchida, "providentially" would have been a better term, because he had encountered God's providence several times in his life. One was in November, 1929, flying in the South China Sea. It was foggy and he and his subordinate became lost. They circled aimlessly at 1,500 feet, looking for their aircraft carrier. With ten minutes of fuel left, Fuchida heard an inner voice which seemed to say "Climb up!" They did so and ran out of gas at 8,000 feet. Through a break in the clouds, Fuchida, scanning the ocean with his binoculars, spotted a Chinese junk on the horizon. They glided toward it and splashed down along side. The plane flipped over on its nose, and Fuchida gashed his right cheek, but he and his flying companion were saved.

After the Pearl Harbor attack, Fuchida found twenty-one large holes in his plane and the control wire was held together by a whisker-thin thread. His plane was hit worse in a later attack in the Celebes and he and his crew crashed trying to get home. Again Fuchida survived, but this time his radio operator died instantly. For three days he and another crewman were lost in the jungle and actually wandered in a circle, ending up at their crash site. Discouraged, starved, maddened by the insects, it looked like the end. Fuchida carefully surveyed the terrain, and when he saw a certain valley, he heard an inner voice say "Come," and the voice seemed to come from the direction of the valley. As earlier, this voice led him to safety.

His comrades were being killed as the war progressed, but Fuchida continued to survive in one way or another. Against all reason, he left sick bay and struggled topside during the Battle of Midway. Otherwise he would have been trapped below decks when his carrier went up in flames (Picture #16). Another time two end-of-the-war operations that amounted to suicide missions were canceled, probably saving his life. Finally, he had been ordered to inspect the atom bomb damage at Hiroshima. One by one, members of his inspection team sickened and died. But in spite of walking among the radioactive rubble of Hiroshima for three days, he was one of the few that survived. Fuchida considered this miraculous. (For another miraculous story, see the Appendix.)

Peggy Covell

The war-crime trials bothered Fuchida. He was certain the Americans were as guilty as the Japanese concerning treatment of prisoners of war (P.O.W.'s). He met a boat of returning Japanese P.O.W.'s to get the dirt. The next time he was called to testify, his plan was to throw it in the judges' faces. He saw a person he knew and questioned him. Yes, it had been no bed of roses, but there had been no atrocities, either.

As a matter of fact, a young woman, Margaret, "Peggy" Covell, lovingly ministered to the Japanese P.O.W.'s as a volunteer social worker. When one of them asked her why she was so kind to them, she answered "Because Japanese soldiers killed my parents." She explained to the astonished P.O.W.'s that her parents were missionaries in Japan before the war, and then moved to the Philippines after hostilities broke out. There they were eventually captured by the Japanese, tried as spies and beheaded. Peggy was stateside when she received the news. At first she hated the Japanese. Then she realized that her parents had forgiven their executioners and that she could do no less.

Upon hearing Peggy's beautiful story, Fuchida was dumbfounded for two reasons. First, he had come hoping to find out evil, but instead had found good. He was ashamed at himself. The second reason is that Japanese consider revenge a great moral, Katakiuchi. A captive awaiting death never forgives his executioners, but instead prays to be born again seven times to exact revenge in each life. Also, his sons and daughters lived to take revenge. Some Japanese might think Peggy Covell was weak and lacking in filial duty. But Fuchida came to realize that Peggy was right and Katakiuchi was wrong. He also realized that Peggy's love had to have a supernatural source.

Conversion

One day Fuchida arrived at Shibuya train station in downtown Tokyo to visit G.W. Prange, a member of General MacArthur's staff. An American was handing out a pamphlet, I was a Prisoner of Japan. The war crimes trials had been going on and Japanese treatment of P.O.W.'s was very much in the news. As Fuchida related above, he took one and read it. The story had similarities to Peggy Covell's, except that DeShazer was a tough airman. Intrigued, Fuchida bought a Bible but delayed reading it. He was prompted to begin in earnest by Hakucho Masamune, a Christian and a famous novelist. In a newspaper column, Masamune had challenged his countrymen to read the Bible, even just 30 pages anywhere in it; he said there was no book in the world to compare with it. As a result of reading the Bible, Fuchida committed his life to Jesus Christ. Eventually he met DeShazer.

Epilogue

After becoming a Christian, Fuchida became an evangelist and traveled the world. He visited my hometown of Spokane, Washington four times (probably because of the large Japanese-American community there). On one visit he spoke in the auditorium of my high school - on Pearl Harbor Day, no less! Another time Billy Graham invited him to share the platform in a West Berlin crusade. He died of diabetes on 30 May 1976, at the age of 73.

Appendix

A MIRACULOUS FIND

Howard Hamlin, M.D., a WWII veteran and then a Christian missionary doctor, visited Hiroshima soon after the atomic blast as part of the U.S. Military Occupation of Japan following the surrender. He was Chief Orthopedic Surgeon and Consultant for the Public Health and Welfare Department for

Gen. MacArthur's Headquarters in Tokyo, 1946-48. When he went to Hiroshima, he was amazed at finding the sole remaining identifiable book in the great Asano Library - a Bible translated into Japanese. Overcome with emotion, he wrote this prayer in his journal:

"I don't know God, whether it was accidental or providential, but I do know that here today I have before me the concrete tangible evidence that the only thing here which withstood the atomic bomb is the Word of God. Out of thousands of volumes in this great heathen library ... [only] the gospel of Jesus Christ [survived].

"Oh Lord, forgive me for worrying. For why should I fret, even though we are in a new era? The blessed Rock upon which my faith is built is all the defense I need for even the atomic age. Not even a deluge of atomic bombs, yea not even the falling of stars from their place in the firmament can

change the permancy of that precious Book. "I shall go out of this place today knowing that the Word of God is the only sure foundation in the age when all else is transient and unstable. It is the message of hope which we need to give to a frustrated and frightened world. Amen."

(from The Challenge of the Orient, by Howard Hamlin. As quoted from the cabinet display in the First Church of the Nazarene of Kansas City. Among the artifacts in the display are the Bible pages that Dr. Hamlin found and writes about. Dr. Craig Roell saw this display on a visit to Kansas City.)

Acknowledgments

The first picture and picture #16 are courtesy of Stan Stokes. pictures of the Pearl Harbor attack are from the U.S. Navy. The picture of Fuchida and DeShazer and From Pearl Harbor to Calvary are from Bible Literature International. For further reading, I recommend God's Samurai by G.W. Prange (1990). Dr. Craig Roell supplied the information on A Miraculous Find.