Word: fuchida
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Finally, Time: "Genda, Fuchida and other officers joined [Admiral Yamamoto, the architect of the raid] in eating surume (dried cuttlefish) for happiness and kachiguri (walnuts) for victory...
Japanese military censors delayed that message for 10 hours, so it was almost midnight on Dec. 7 in Tokyo when U.S. Ambassador Joseph Grew sped with it to the Foreign Ministry. It was past 3 a.m. -- and Fuchida's bombers were within sight of Pearl Harbor -- when Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo, in full diplomatic regalia, reached the Imperial Palace. He found the Emperor listening to his shortwave radio. Togo read him the message and then the response that the government had already written for him. It said that peace was the Emperor's "cherished desire." This would "do well," Hirohito...
...least important of his ideas was to recruit a cadet classmate named Mitsuo Fuchida, who could train all of Yamamoto's pilots and lead them into battle. Fuchida, grandson of a famous samurai, was born in 1902, a Year of the Tiger ("Tora! Tora!"), so he was 39 when summoned to his mission. An ardent admirer of Hitler, he had grown a toothbrush mustache...
...water as shallow as Pearl Harbor. Filching an idea from a recent British torpedo raid against the Italian naval base of Taranto, Genda had technicians create auxiliary wooden tail fins that would keep torpedoes closer to the surface; others converted armor-piercing shells into bombs. But drilling was Fuchida's main task, and all summer his planes staged trial runs over Kagoshima Bay in Kyushu, chosen for its physical resemblance to Pearl. Only in September did Genda tell him, "In case of war, Yamamoto plans to attack Pearl Harbor...
...Yamamoto visited his training base in Saeki Bay to bid his men farewell. "Japan has faced many worthy opponents in her glorious history -- Mongols, Chinese, Russians," Yamamoto said, "but in this operation we will meet the strongest opponent of all. I expect this operation to be a success." Genda, Fuchida and other officers joined him in eating surume (dried cuttlefish) for happiness and kachiguri (walnuts) for victory. Near portable Shinto shrines, they toasted the Emperor with sake and shouted, "Banzai...