Word: fuchida
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Died. Mitsuo Fuchida, 73, the Japanese Imperial Navy pilot who led the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor that jolted the U.S. into World War II on Dec. 7, 1941; of diabetes; in Kashirhara, Japan. Six months after radioing his jubilant message of success ("Torn! Torn! Torn!") from Hawaii, Fuchida was severely wounded in the battle of Midway and spent the rest of the war as a staff officer. A chance encounter with a missionary in 1949 converted him to Christianity. He became a prolific writer of religious tracts and war histories, including Midway, the Battle That Doomed Japan, a close...
...often the city of Darwin has been subjected to the harsh and literal testing of that phrase. In 1897, a cyclone leveled the cliff-perched port town, killing 28 of its residents. In 1937, it was flattened by another tropical storm. Five years later, Japanese Commander Mitsuo Fuchida, who led the attack on Pearl Harbor, blasted the city with 188 bombers, killing 243 people and wounding 300. Last week on Christmas Day came the latest -and worst-destroyer in Darwin's 105-year existence. Cyclone Tracy smashed and battered Darwin for five hours with banshee winds that reached...
...help in filming it. Then, to launch their $25 million epic, Tora! Torn! Tora!, a recapitulation of Pearl Harbor (see CINEMA), the producers held a premiere last week in Washington. Among the guests of honor: Technical Adviser Minoru Genda, the retired Japanese general who planned the attack, and Mitsuo Fuchida, the pilot who led it. Even at a remove of nearly 30 years, there seemed an almost stupefying broadmindedness in celebrating Pearl Harbor in the nation's capital...
...yellow line. Tora! Tora! Tora!* is a refreshing reversal. The Americans tend to blend into an indistinguishable potbellied mob. It is the Orientals who are individuals. Admiral Yamamoto (Soh Yamamura) is Eskimo-like in appearance, stoical in practice, goaded by an affliction no leader can afford: doubt. Lieut. Commander Fuchida (Takahiro Tamura) is an Oriental Smilin' Jack, all jaw and strut. Ambassador Nomura (Shogo Shimada), present in Washington when the bombs fell, is the same shrunken cipher who appeared in all the newsreels. It is he who bears the verbal assault delivered by Cordell Hull, played by George Macready...
...well aware, in hindsight, that U.S. code crackers found out Japan's plans in advance. Fuchida and his coauthor, another officer who survived the disaster, quote U.S. Naval Historian Samuel Eliot Morison's verdict that Midway was "a victory of intelligence." They have practically nothing good to say for their leaders' performance. They find the Imperial Navy's intelligence "ineffective." its plan "faulty," its technology backward (only the U.S. had radar at Midway), its security procedures far slacker than before the Pearl Harbor attack. In the first week of June 1942, they say, all Japanese suffered...