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  Three days earlier, the Imperial Japanese Navy had their answer when fifteen American battleships began hurling tens of thousands of two ton shells day and night onto Saipan.

  Fuchida entered a smoke-filled room, glanced at the blackboard “scoreboard,” then looked at a wall map as radio traffic sounded out from speaker boxes. Communication men with headsets scribbled notes as some marked tallies on blackboards and others pushed models on the sprawling map table. A wall clock showed 0905.

  As Fuchida studied the Marianas Islands on the map of the world, his eyes drifted across to France. Two weeks earlier, the Allied forces turned loose a breathtaking assault on the coast of France involving 360,000 men and 5,000 warships. His eyes drifted over to Russia. That spring, the Russians had leapt onto the Germans with bloody vengeance, rolling over them with thousands of T-34 tanks. Japan’s hopes had always presumed a German victory, now a discarded dream.

  In the previous 26 months, Japan had lost a full third of its entire air fleet, over 26,000 aircraft. Not only that, when Fuchida had recently sent for a hundred of his best pilots from Halmahera in Indonesia to fly to the Marianas, fewer than ten arrived. Ten! Fuchida shook his head in anger. The rest were immobilized with malaria. Fuchida’s eyes wandered to the floor and he mumbled under his breath, “God is not on our side.”

  Fuchida proceeded to the blackboard beside the Commander in Chief of the carrier forces, Vice Admiral Ozawa, who stood six feet seven inches, the tallest man on the ship. Privately among the shipmates, his less than stellar looks had earned him the ignominious nickname of “the Gargoyle.” Fuchida gave a quick glance. He didn’t think he was that ugly.

  Examining the numbers on the board of airborne fighters and bombers, Fuchida lit up a cigarette. He knew this was their best chance to do serious damage to the American fleet, bring them to a halt, and allow an opportunity for a compromise for peace, a thought on the minds of all, but spoken by none. If the Marianas fell, it was all over. The Americans would load the islands with long range bombers and pound the homeland into the sea.

  “Admiral,” Fuchida said over the din of the room, “what have we heard from Vice Admiral Kakuta on Tinian?”

  An officer on a headset turned and shouted, “Second attack wave of one hundred ten aircraft en route to the American task force. All aircraft airborne.”

  “He’s already sent out two waves with excellent results,” Ozawa replied. “Early reports are several carriers on fire, perhaps two sunk. Severe damage to cruisers and other vessels.”

  “Good!” Fuchida was relieved – and amazed. Their only ace in the hole was Kakuta’s planes, the second prong of their own frontal attack, giving them an advantage. Without him, it would be a one-sided battle. Scouting reports indicated that the Americans had three or four battle groups of carriers with perhaps four or five more carriers than the Japanese.

  Taking another long drag, Fuchida examined the board. Their three battle groups had launched the first wave of 69 aircraft at 0745 that morning and they should be shortly arriving at the American fleet. The second wave of 110 planes had just been sent off. Kakuta was already engaging the enemy. Hundreds more aircraft were being readied for the third and fourth waves and there’d been no sign of American detection of their fleet.

  As Fuchida took a puff of the last of his cigarette, he raised his eyebrows and gave a slight grin as a ridiculous thought crossed his mind – We might even win this battle. He folded his arms, nodded, and blew the smoke out through his nostrils.

  A massive shockwave thundered from below, dimming the lights for a second and ending all chatter. The bridge radio blared out, “Torpedo hit. Fore starboard!”

  Ozawa looked grimly at Fuchida. He didn’t have to say the words. Fuchida knew the commander wanted a damage report he could trust, so he nodded to Ozawa and made his way down the passageway to the upper hangar, dodging through the maze of dive bombers and engineers to the forward elevator, now jammed about fifteen feet below the flight deck. Hurrying down ladders to the lower level he saw seawater mixed with aviation fuel bubbling up. After further investigation, he learned that the fuel tanks were ruptured but the steel plates leaking seawater showed minimal damage. The hit seemed completely survivable. The new, heavy plating had done its job. American torpedoes, Fuchida thought, were no match for Japan’s Type 93, the best in the war. Many of the enemy torpedoes failed to explode and once a Japanese sailor was rescued from the water while clinging to an American torpedo dud.

  He located the nearest phone and rang the command center. “Admiral, no serious damage. I advise we immediately board over the forward elevator and direct all aircraft to the aft elevator and continue flight operations.” The admiral agreed. Within thirty minutes, carpenters had dismantled galley tables and benches, covered the gaping hole in the flight deck, and the ship resumed flight operations.

  Returning to the command center, Fuchida continued to study the blackboard and monitor air reports. At 1000 that morning, forty-seven more aircraft sortied as the fourth wave of eighty-two planes prepared to launch by 1130. But the information being radioed back troubled Fuchida along with everyone within earshot of the radio speakers.

  Fuchida watched as white chalk marked out the growing tallies of downed Japanese aircraft. Of the first wave of sixty-nine aircraft, forty-two were shot down. Of the second wave of one hundred ten planes, seventy-nine were downed. Few were even getting past the outer defense perimeters of the American battle groups and fewer still had actually landed a hit on any ship – none of significance. The new American Grumman F6F Hellcat fighters were shredding every wave of inexperienced Japanese fliers. The Pacific was soaked with Japanese blood.

  Even though the Japanese fleet hadn’t been attacked by enemy aircraft, the carrier Shokaku took four torpedoes from a submarine and was engulfed in flames.

  Fuchida went to a phone and called down to the engineer in charge of stemming the ruptured fuel tanks. “What’s the status of the tanks?”

  “Commander,” the engineer responded, “we’ve been able to stop the entrance of further seawater but we’ve been unable to seal the fuel storage tanks. When we tried to transfer fuel to the rear tanks, we discovered the lines were ruptured. We’re operating all ventilators to disperse the fumes the best we can.”

  “Very well,” Fuchida said. “Keep me posted on developments.”

  Over the ocean near the American fleet, Hellcats continued to decimate the Japanese fighters and bombers, streaking the sky with countless smoke trails ending in the water below. The elite aircraft and pilots the Japanese possessed at the start of the war had now been eclipsed in both areas by the Americans, and in numbers as well. Hundreds of aircraft filled the sky, dancing in fierce combat, and now hundreds of planes were in the water below, nearly all Japanese. Fuchida scanned the table map as Japanese flight groups were being swept off the board like table scraps to the dogs.

  All at once, the air in the room was sucked out with a deep woosh and a tremendous blast roared through the ship, smashing open the doors of the control room and blowing papers across the room. Ozawa grabbed a support pole and looked at Fuchida.

  “Fuel vapors!” Fuchida yelled. The entire ship had turned into a bomb when the vapors found a source of ignition. He rushed out and up to the flight deck. Opening the door, clouds of acrid, jet black smoke blew over him, billowing from flames sweeping out both sides of the front runway and up from the elevator shaft. He froze. The remains of their rebuilt air power was being shredded, one plane after another, in a humiliating one-sided battle. While the rumbling thunder of the gas-fueled fire raged, Fuchida looked up and behind him as the sky filled with clouds of smoke and the hangars below his feet crackled and popped in the inferno. He’d finally been promoted to the position of Air Operations Officer of the Combined Fleet. He hung his head. What fleet?

  Vice Admiral Ozawa and Fuchida stood on the deck of the heavy cruiser Haguro as she powered away from the conflagration of what was once part of the hopes for a victor
ious Japan, the Taiho. Forced to transfer his flag, Ozawa and evacuees packed the deck.

  “She was our newest, most powerful carrier,” Ozawa said, staring. Multiple, small explosions burst and rumbled through the flaming wreck. “The best!”

  Fuchida was likewise mesmerized by this sadly familiar sight, but knew that the battle was still very much under way. “Admiral, we must immediately proceed to command quarters.”

  Ozawa adjusted his hat, nodded, and turned to walk with Fuchida when a distant rumble of thunder exploded into a horrific shockwave that cracked across the water and formed into a colossal fireball mushrooming into in the sky above the Taiho reflecting in the ocean below. Ozawa looked at Fuchida ominously. As another dying carrier sank lower in the waves, so did the aspirations of the Imperial Navy.

  Chapter 92

  Two weeks later. Saipan.

  V ice Admiral Nagumo, in his filthy, torn uniform with unbuttoned collar, leaned against the wall of his concrete reinforced command cave and looked out into the open sky, beyond the heaps of dead soldiers piled beside a smoldering machine gun. Clouds of smoke drifted inside the stale air. Echoing guns rattled and pounded away as the feint calls of American commanders urged their men forward. He wiped the sooty sweat of his face onto his sleeve and let out a slow sigh. The heroic commander of the Pearl Harbor attack had become little more than a cornered animal.

  After days and nights of earsplitting bombardment from battleships and from the air, the Americans had overwhelmed the Japanese on Saipan, pouring 66,000 men onto the island from a seemingly endless supply of ships. The 150 aircraft Nagumo had on the ground were pulverized before ever having a chance to get into the air. His 31,000 men fought ferociously, yet hopelessly, to the death. Fewer than 2,000 were now scattered around the tropical wonderland turned into hell, some in bunkers, others firing their last rounds from behind the dead bodies of their fallen comrades.

  While gazing into the daylight, Nagumo mindlessly opened the leather flap of his holster and drew his Colt 1903 .32 pistol to his waist and racked it. His story would not even have the dignified ending of the defeated noble samurai of old, dressed in white and surrounded by his peers as he committed seppuku.27 The children of future generations would never be told his humiliating story. He gently brought the steel barrel to his temple. As the endless chatter of machine gun fire and mortar rounds churned outside, a single, loud shot cracked from within the cave.

  Chapter 93

  July 14, 1944. Northern Honshu, Japan.

  A black sedan rolled through a countryside of flooded fields, green with rice shoots as the morning sun broke over the horizon on the big island of Japan. Fuchida, in his green uniform, sorted papers in the back seat beside another officer as while his aide drove toward the airfields of Misawa.

  “I was tired of my desk job,” Fuchida said without looking up, “so I decided to lead the mission myself.” He glanced up at the officer beside him. “Our navy is all but gone, our carriers have no planes or pilots, and what attack planes we have left on the ground are fueled by vodka and wood alcohol.” Fuchida shrugged with resignation. He’d been in and out of meetings for days as plans were made, remade, and made again. Circumstances changing for the worse perpetually whittled down their options.

  “You said the mission is for twenty-five attack planes and two hundred fifty men? Is that enough?” the officer asked.

  Fuchida nodded. “It has to be. It’s all I could get.”

  “And you’re confident of this plan?” the officer said while drawing out a cigarette from a gold case.

  “No, but I know we can’t stop the American bombers in the air. Genda’s been given the newest fighters and best pilots for home defense, but it’s still not enough. We need to destroy them on the ground, so I’ve ordered a night attack to land on the American airstrips in Saipan and attach explosives to the B-29 bombers by hand.”

  “And escape?” The officer lit his cigarette and blew the smoke out the top of the slightly rolled down window.

  Fuchida looked back down and shuffled his papers together and shoved then into a slot of the folder. “The objective is the destruction of the B-29s and the protection of our homeland.”

  Passing the entry gates of the air base, the driver came to a skidding halt and looked over his shoulder back toward Fuchida. “Lieutenant?”

  Fuchida glanced up to see fire trucks and workers directing arcing streams of water over the smoldering carcasses of aircraft. Every plane had been blown to pieces on the ground by an American raid that morning. Deeply disappointed, he lowered his eyes.

  Chapter 94

  Fall, 1944. Nanking, China.

  “Hayaku! Hayaku!”28 the guard impatiently shouted from behind Jake as he headed for his cell. Jake couldn’t understand what the big rush was. All anyone did every day was sit around, from the prisoners to the guards. “Hayaku shiro!” he yelled again and whacked Jake across the back of his head. Jake stumbled forward as he cringed from the stinging pain.

  Opening the heavy cell door, the guard shoved Jake and slammed the door on his heel, wedging it between the door and frame. Jake grunted in pain as he tried to pull his foot in, but the guard only leaned against the door tighter and started kicking Jake’s bare heel with his boot. In desperation, Jake hammered his shoulder against the door, releasing enough pressure for him to scrape his heel free, and collapsed onto the floor clenching his bleeding foot.

  The guard bolted and locked the door with an extra cold clank, and clumped away down the hallway.

  Jake’s head and heel throbbed. Some people say they can get rid of your headache by stomping on your toe. It just doesn’t work that way, he thought. After getting the courage to look at his foot, he wiped off some of the blood. His flesh was torn, but it seemed like it would heal. He clenched his teeth in anguish and panted. He’d come to hate this Jap guard. Hated him!

  While seething, his thoughts were rudely interrupted by words rolling through his mind: “Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you.” “Hah!” he mumbled as he massaged his foot. “Friends? Yeah. Strangers?” He cocked his head. “Maybe. Enemies? No - possible – way!” Jake looked up at the peep hole in his cell door and shouted, “I’ll be damned if I’m gonna ...” He stopped mid-sentence. His eyes drifted back down to his aching, bleeding foot.

  The next morning, Jake stood in his cell peering through the opening in his door as the same guard made his rounds. A single shaft of sunlight from the vent above lit his usually dark cell. Jake waited until the guard came near his cell, then smiled and said, “Ohayo gozaimasu!”29 Bewildered, the guard stopped and blinked, then turned around and walked away briskly, glancing one last time back at Jake’s cell.

  The following morning, as the same guard approached, Jake smiled and said in Japanese, “How are you today?”

  The guard was stoic and walked past Jake’s cell.

  This went on each day, until the sixth day. He waited for the guard to approach in the morning, smiled, and in Japanese said, “Good day, sir!” The guard said nothing, but at least looked at Jake through the opening for a moment, pausing to catch Jake’s eyes, then moved on.

  Toward afternoon, as Jake daydreamed about his mom’s cooking, fried chicken with biscuits and gravy, he heard the sound of a tin plate slide in the food slot at the bottom of his door. It was a whole, freshly cooked sweet potato. He’d never seen one the whole time he was in prison. Peering down on him through the door was the same guard, who looked at Jake without emotion, then walked on.

  Jake sat and stared at the potato, unable to reach for it. He began to nod as if he just solved a puzzle and whispered under his breath, “This is the way to go.” He kept nodding. “This is really the way to go.”

  A few days later, the guard stood near Jake’s door, like a cautious bird perched on a railing, wondering if it was safe. Jake didn’t know much Japanese, but he’d been forced to learn enough in the past two and half years to get by.

  “Do you have any brothers?�
�� Jake said in Japanese.

  The guard waited a long moment. “Two.”

  Jake allowed himself the smallest smile. “Sisters?”

  The guard walked up to the wooden door and looked at Jake’s face, dimly lit by the opening against his dark cell. “One sister.” He paused again. “She’s the oldest one.”

  “I have three sisters. Really two and a half. My mother remarried after my dad died when I was two.”

  The guard nodded and paused again. “Brothers?”

  “One,” Jake said, then smiled a bit broader. “But I’m number one son.”

  The guard studied Jake’s face and for the first time let the edges of his mouth slightly turn up. “So am I.” He smiled and glanced down at the floor with embarrassment.

  “My real name isn’t ‘number five,’ either. It’s Jake.” He gathered his courage and reached out to the cautious bird. “What’s your name?”

  The guard looked around for fear of being accused of fraternizing with the enemy and gave out a nervous sigh. He looked back at Jake and moved his face close to the opening and spoke softly, “Yoshimasa.”

  Jake was ecstatic, but controlled his enthusiasm. “Yoshimasa,” he repeated quietly.

  Yoshimasa nodded. “I’ve got to go ... Jake.” Yoshimasa gave a slight smile, then walked off to his business.

  Jake’s eyes followed him until he disappeared from view, then he whispered to himself, “Yoshimasa.” He wasn’t sure, but it appeared that Yoshimasa had a slight spring to his step.