WWII JAPANESE POSTCARD SIGNED by CAPTAIN MITSUO FUCHIDA - ATTACKED PEARL HARBOR

Description

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This vintage Japanese World War Two postcard is signed in ink "Capt. Mitsuo Fuchida." His name is also written in ink in Japanese. The postcard is unposted and with the exception of some bumped corners is in very good condition!
Mitsuo Fuchida
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Mitsuo Fuchida
淵田 美津雄
Captain Mitsuo Fuchida
Born
3 December 1902
Nara Prefecture
,
Japan
Died
30 May 1976 (aged 73)
Kashiwara
, near
Osaka
, Japan
Allegiance
Empire of Japan
Service/
branch
Imperial Japanese Navy
Years of service
1924–45
Rank
Captain
Unit
1st Air Fleet
Commands held
Akagi
: 1st (flag), 2nd and 3rd air squadrons
Battles/wars
World War II
Second Sino-Japanese War
Attack on Pearl Harbor
Bombing of Darwin
Indian Ocean raid
Battle of Midway
Other work
Christian
evangelist
Author
Mitsuo Fuchida
(
淵田 美津雄
,
Fuchida Mitsuo
, 3 December 1902 – 30 May 1976) was a Japanese
captain
[1]
in the
Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service
and a bomber aviator in the
Japanese navy
before and during
World War II
. He is perhaps best known for leading the first wave of air
attacks on Pearl Harbor
on 7 December 1941. Working under the overall fleet commander,
Vice Admiral
Chūichi Nagumo
, Fuchida was responsible for the coordination of the entire aerial attack.
After the war ended, Fuchida became a Christian
evangelist
and traveled through the United States and Europe to tell his story. He settled permanently in the United States (although he never became a U.S. citizen).
[2]
Early life and education
Mitsuo Fuchida was born in what is now part of
Katsuragi
,
Nara Prefecture
, Japan to Yazo and Shika Fuchida on 3 December 1902. He entered the
Imperial Japanese Naval Academy
at
Etajima
,
Hiroshima
, in 1921, where he befriended classmate
Minoru Genda
and discovered an interest in flying.
[3]
He graduated as a midshipman on 24 July 1924, and was promoted to ensign on 1 December 1925 and to sub-lieutenant on 1 December 1927. He was promoted to lieutenant on 1 December 1930.
[
citation needed
]
Specializing in horizontal bombing, Fuchida was made an instructor in that technique in 1936.
[4]
He gained combat experience during the
Second Sino-Japanese War
, when he was assigned to the aircraft carrier
Kaga
in 1929
[5]
and then to the Sasebo Air Group,
[6]
He was promoted to
lieutenant commander
on 1 December 1936 and was accepted into the
Naval Staff College
.
[4]
Fuchida joined the aircraft carrier
Akagi
in 1939 as the commander of the air group.
[7]
Fuchida was made commander in October 1941.
[
citation needed
]
World War II
[
edit
]
Pearl Harbor
[
edit
]
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does not
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any
sources
.
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Fuchida in training for the attack on Pearl Harbor
On Sunday, 7 December 1941, a Japanese force under the command of Vice Admiral
Chūichi Nagumo
—consisting of six carriers with 423 aircraft—was ready to attack the United States base at
Pearl Harbor
, Hawaii. At 06:00, the first wave of 183
dive bombers
,
torpedo bombers
, horizontal bombers and
fighters
took off from carriers 250 mi (400 km) north of
Oahu
and headed for the
U.S. Pacific Fleet
at Pearl Harbor.
At 07:40 Hawaiian Standard Time, Mitsuo Fuchida, who by this time had achieved the rank of
commander
, arrived with the first attack wave on Oahu's north shore near Kahuku Point. The first attack wave then banked west and flew along the northwest coast. Fuchida ordered "
Tenkai
" (Take attack position), and upon seeing no U.S. activity at Pearl Harbor, Fuchida slid back the canopy of his
Nakajima B5N
2 torpedo bomber, tailcode
AI-301
, and fired a single dark blue flare known as a "black dragon", the signal to attack.
Passing Waimea Bay at 07:49, Fuchida instructed his radio operator, Petty Officer 1st Class Norinobu Mizuki, to send the coded signal "
To, To, To"
(
totsugekiseyo
—"to charge") to the other aircraft. Fuchida, thinking Lt Cmdr Shigeru Itaya's Zeroes had missed the signal, fired a second flare. Lt Cmdr Kakuichi Takahashi, overall leader of the first wave dive bombers, saw both flares and misunderstood the signal. Thinking the dive bombers were to attack, he led his dive bombers into immediate attack position. Lt Cmdr Shigeharu Murata, overall leader of the torpedo bombers, observed both flares and saw Takahashi's planes gliding into attack formation. He knew there was a misunderstanding which could not be rectified, so he led his torpedo bombers into attack positions. At this point, Cmdr Fuchida's pilot, Lieutenant Mitsuo Matsuzaki, guided their bomber along with the remaining horizontal bombers in a formation sweep around
Kaena Point
and headed down the western coast of Oahu.
At 07:53, Fuchida ordered Mizuki to send the code words "
Tora! Tora! Tora!
"
[a]
back to the carrier
Akagi
, the
flagship
of 1st Air Fleet. The message meant that complete surprise had been achieved.
[8]
Due to favorable atmospheric conditions, the transmission of the "
Tora! Tora! Tora!
" code words from the moderately powered transmitter were heard over a ship's radio in Japan by Admiral
Isoroku Yamamoto
, the naval commander, and his staff, who were sitting up through the night awaiting word on the attack.
[9]
As the first wave returned to the carriers, Fuchida remained over the target to assess damage and observe the second-wave attack. He returned to his carrier only after the second wave had completed its mission. With great pride, he announced that the U.S. battleship fleet had been destroyed. Fuchida inspected his craft and found 21 large
flak
holes: the main control wires were barely holding together. The successful attack made Fuchida a national hero who was granted a personal audience with
Emperor Hirohito
.
Other actions
[
edit
]
On 19 February 1942, Fuchida led the first of two waves of 188 aircraft in a devastating
air raid on Darwin, Australia
.
[10]
On 5 April, he led another
series of air attacks
by carrier-based Japanese aircraft against
Royal Navy
bases in
Ceylon
, which was the headquarters of the British
Eastern Fleet
, in what
Winston Churchill
described as "the most dangerous moment" of World War II.
[
citation needed
]
On 4 June 1942, while onboard
Akagi
, Fuchida was wounded at the
Battle of Midway
. Unable to fly while recovering from an emergency shipboard
appendectomy
a few days before the battle, he was on the ship's bridge during the morning attacks by U.S. aircraft. After
Akagi
was hit, a chain reaction from burning fuel and live bombs began the destruction of the ship. When flames blocked the exit from the bridge, the officers evacuated down a rope, and as Fuchida slid down, an explosion threw him to the deck and broke both his ankles.
Staff officer
[
edit
]
After spending several months recuperating, Fuchida spent the rest of the war in Japan as a
staff officer
. In October 1944, he was promoted to captain. The day before the first
nuclear weapon
was dropped on
Hiroshima
, he was in that city to attend a week-long military conference with
Japanese army
officers. Fuchida received a long-distance phone call from Navy Headquarters asking him to return to
Tokyo
. The day after the bombing, he returned to Hiroshima with a party sent to assess the damage. All members of Fuchida's party later died of
radiation poisoning
, but Fuchida exhibited no symptoms.
[11]
Fuchida's military career ended with his demobilization in November 1945 during the American-led
occupation of Japan
.
[
citation needed
]
Postwar activities
[
edit
]
This section
needs additional citations for
verification
.
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After the war, Fuchida was called on to testify at the trials of some of the Japanese military for
Japanese war crimes
. This infuriated him, as he believed this was little more than "victors' justice". In the spring of 1947, convinced that the U.S. had treated the Japanese the same way and determined to bring that evidence to the next trial, Fuchida went to
Uraga Harbor
near Yokosuka to meet a group of returning Japanese prisoners of war. He was surprised to find his former flight engineer, Kazuo Kanegasaki, who all had believed had died in the Battle of Midway. When questioned, Kanegasaki told Fuchida that they were not tortured or abused, much to Fuchida's surprise, and then went on to tell him of a young lady, Peggy Covell, who served them with the deepest love and respect, but whose missionary parents had been killed by Japanese soldiers on the island of
Panay
in the
Philippines
.
For Fuchida, this was inexplicable, as in the
Bushido
code revenge was not only permitted, it was "a responsibility" for an offended party to carry out revenge to restore honor. The murderer of one's parents would be a sworn enemy for life. He became almost obsessed trying to understand why anyone would treat their enemies with love and forgiveness.
[
citation needed
]
In the fall of 1948, Fuchida was passing by the bronze statue of
Hachikō
at the
Shibuya Station
when he was handed a pamphlet about the life of
Jacob DeShazer
, a member of the
Doolittle Raid
who was captured by the Japanese after his
B-25
bomber ran out of fuel over occupied China. In the pamphlet, "I Was a Prisoner of Japan"
[12]
DeShazer, a former
U.S. Army Air Forces
staff sergeant and
bombardier
, told his story of imprisonment, torture and his account of an "awakening to God."
[13]
This experience increased Fuchida's curiosity of the Christian faith. In September 1949, after reading the Bible for himself, he became a Christian. In May 1950, Fuchida and DeShazer met for the first time.
[14]
Fuchida created the Captain Fuchida Evangelistical Association based in Seattle, Washington and spoke full-time of his conversion to the Christian faith in presentations titled "From Pearl Harbor To Calvary".
In 1951, Fuchida, along with a colleague, published an account of the Battle of Midway from the Japanese side. In 1952, he toured the United States as a member of the Worldwide Christian Missionary Army of Sky Pilots. Fuchida remained dedicated to a similar initiative as the group for the remainder of his life.
In February 1954,
Reader's Digest
published Fuchida's story of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
[15]
Fuchida also wrote and co-wrote books, including
From Pearl Harbor to Golgotha
, a.k.a.
From Pearl Harbor to Calvary
, and a 1955 expansion of his 1951 book
Midway
, a.k.a.
Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan, the Japanese Navy's Story
. His autobiography, titled "Shinjuwan Kogeki no Sotaicho no Kaiso", was published in Japan in 2007. This was translated into English by Douglas Shinsato and Tadanori Urabe and published in 2011 under the title, "For That One Day: The Memoirs of Mitsuo Fuchida, Commander of the Attack on Pearl Harbor". Fuchida's story is also recounted in
God's Samurai: Lead Pilot at Pearl Harbor
by Donald Goldstein, Katherine V. Dillon and Gordon W. Prange.
In 1959, Fuchida was among a group of Japanese visiting the tour of
U.S. Air Force
equipment given by General
Paul Tibbets
, who piloted the
Enola Gay
that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Fuchida recognized Tibbets and had a conversation with him. Tibbets said to Fuchida that "[y]ou sure did surprise us [at Pearl Harbor]" in which he replied "what do you think you did to us [at Hiroshima]?" Fuchida further told him that:
You did the right thing. You know the Japanese attitude at that time, how fanatic they were, they'd die for the Emperor ... Every man, woman, and child would have
resisted that invasion with sticks and stones
if necessary ... Can you imagine what a slaughter it would be to
invade Japan
? It would have been terrible. The Japanese people know more about that than the American public will ever know.
[16]
According to Fuchida's son, his father had a green card allowing
permanent residence in the U.S.
but he never obtained U.S. citizenship. This is contrary to the assertions of several authors.
[
quantify
]
[17]
Fuchida died of complications caused by
diabetes
in
Kashiwara
, near
Osaka
on 30 May 1976 at the age of 73.
Published works
[
edit
]
Fuchida was the author of three books: one on
the Battle of Midway
, one a
memoir
, and one on his conversion to
Christianity
.
Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan, the Japanese Navy's Story
(
Naval Institute Press
, 2000) was coauthored with
Masatake Okumiya
. In a section entitled "Five Fateful Minutes", Fuchida (as translated) writes "Five minutes! Who would have believed that the tide of battle would shift in that brief interval of time? ... We had been caught flatfooted in the most vulnerable condition possible—decks loaded with planes armed and fueled for attack."
[18]
Later scholarship (Parshall et al.) dispute Fuchida's description. (Edited by Clarke H. Kawakami and Roger Pineau;
ISBN
9781557504289
)
For That One Day: The Memoirs of Mitsuo Fuchida, the Commander of the Attack on Pearl Harbor
(eXperience, Incorporated, 2011) was his memoir. In it, Fuchida makes a claim that has not been corroborated by others: "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
."
[19]
(Translated by Douglas T. Shinsato and Tadanori Urabe;
ISBN
9780984674503
)
From Pearl Harbor to Calvary
(Pickle Partners Publishing, March 28, 2016,
ISBN
9781786259066
), originally published as
From Pearl Harbor to Golgotha
, is the story of Fuchida's Christian conversion.
Historical controversy
[
edit
]
Fuchida was an important figure in the early portion of the Pacific War, and his written accounts, translated into English and published in the U.S., were highly influential.
[20]
However, the veracity of Fuchida's statements on a variety of topics has been subsequently called into question. This process began in Japan in 1971, with the publication of the Japanese official war history volume on the
Battle of Midway
, which explicitly contradicted Fuchida's version of events.
[21]
In 2001, historians H.P. Willmott and Haruo Tohmatsu in their
Pearl Harbor
, dismissed Fuchida's rendition of having demanded a third-wave against Pearl Harbor's fuel tanks as "blatant and shameless self-advertisement" regarding "an episode which never took place."
[22]
These criticisms were repeated by historian Jonathan Parshall
[23]
and Mark Stille's
Tora! Tora! Tora! Pearl Harbor 1941
.
[24]
Alan Zimm's 2011
Attack on Pearl Harbor: Strategy, Combat, Myths, Deceptions
, reinforced and enlarged these earlier criticisms
[25]
and added new charges, including Fuchida having fabricated a battle damage assessment that was presented to Emperor
Hirohito
.
[26]
Zimm subsequently accused Fuchida of lying about important decisions and signals he made as strike leader immediately prior to the attack, while blaming others for his own errors.
[27]
With respect to the
Battle of Midway
, Fuchida's account of the readiness of the Japanese counterstrike aircraft during the American dive-bomber attack has been disputed by historians Parshall and Anthony Tully in their 2005 work
Shattered Sword
,
[28]
as well as Dallas Isom's
Midway Inquest
,
[29]
Craig Symonds
The Battle of Midway
.,
[30]
and Evan Mawdsley,
[31]
with Mawdsley noting "Parshall and Tully compellingly contradict Fuchida."
[32]
Parshall also disputed Fuchida's uncorroborated claims of attendance on the battleship
USS
Missouri
during the
Japanese surrender ceremony
in 1945,
[23]
these criticisms being later amplified by Zimm.
[33]