A chance encounter with the writings of a former sworn enemy transformed the Japanese “hero” of the attack on Pearl Harbor into a Christian missionary of peace in the United States.

Few people may now remember the name Mitsuo Fuchida (1902-1976). But the radio code he sent 80 years ago, “Tora tora tora” (Surprise attack successful), remains broadly known.

Fuchida was the Imperial Japanese Navy commander of the 350 military aircraft, including fighter jets and bombers, that took off from six carriers on Dec. 7 (Dec. 8 Japan time), 1941, and attacked Pearl Harbor, devastating the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

Actor Takahiro Tamura (1928-2006), who played Fuchida’s part in the joint Japan-U.S. movie “Tora! Tora! Tora!” released in 1970, had said excitedly in an interview, “I accepted that part because I wanted to pronounce this line, ‘Send surprise attack successful, or tora tora tora.’”

Fuchida died six years after the film’s release. He is believed to have spent the final eight years of his life writing his autobiography.

It consisted of more than 2,000 sheets of paper, each with 400 squares for individual Japanese characters.

The autobiography was published in 2007 under the title, “Shinjuwan Kogeki So-Taicho no Kaiso” (Memoirs of the head commander of the Pearl Harbor attack), by Kodansha Ltd. The book is now available in paperback edition under the Kodansha Bunko imprint.

It was edited by Seiichi Nakata, an 80-year-old nonfiction writer and former producer for Japan Broadcasting Corp. (NHK) who made a number of TV programs about little-known episodes during the Showa Era (1926-1989).

CRITICAL OF MIDWAY COMMANDER

Fuchida’s memoirs meticulously recount his early childhood, his enrollment in the Imperial Japanese Navy, the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Battle of Midway, his loss of moral support after Japan’s defeat, his conversion to Christianity and his missionary activities.

The section on the Pearl Harbor attack covers about 90 pages in the paperback edition.

Fuchida was flying solo in an aircraft that was hit by enemy fire and running low on fuel. But he stayed in the air over Pearl Harbor for three hours to command the action, verify the results of the battle and guide the return of stray airplanes, according to the book.

“It’s a wonder you managed to stay in flight for as long as three hours in a state like this,” he quotes a petty officer in charge of maintenance as telling him when he returned.

Fuchida could not take active command of Operation Midway, which marked a turning point in the Pacific War, because he was hospitalized with typhlitis aboard his ship.

He was on the deck, watching a naval battle, when a bomb struck the ship, breaking both of his legs.

He lambastes Isoroku Yamamoto, commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet, in the passage describing the Battle of Midway.

“The most disgraceful thing was not so much the failed supervision of the battle by Commander (Chuichi) Nagumo (who led a task force) as it was the mediocrity of Commander-in-Chief Yamamoto of the Combined Fleet in the overall manner he supervised the operations,” Fuchida writes.

Nonfiction writer Masayasu Hosaka, who is well-versed in the history of the Showa Era, says in his explanatory note in the paperback edition, “While criticisms of Isoroku Yamamoto by staff officers who were in the Naval General Staff abound and are no rarity, a denunciation by an officer who was watching a naval battle in the midst of it is significant in its own right.”

In the waning days of the war, Fuchida was staying in Hiroshima but headed for the Kansai region at the order of the headquarters on Aug. 5, 1945. That was a day before the U.S. atomic bomb leveled Hiroshima.

Fuchida joined a mission that surveyed the damage from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“So many facts have already been discussed about the barbaric and atrocious nature of the atomic bombings,” he says in his memoirs. “But their wretchedness and cruelty are beyond the imagination of those who have never seen them in person.”

Fuchida attended the surrender ceremony aboard the USS Missouri in September 1945 as a naval aviation staff officer.

In his memoirs, Fuchida criticizes the “parochial, insular mentality” of the Japanese military for burning classified documents at the end of the war.

“It would have been wiser to paginate and index all the records kept since the war was opened and have them distributed to nations of the world,” he writes.

ENCOUNTER WITH TRACT DURING PURGE

After Japan’s defeat, Fuchida returned to his native Nara Prefecture, where he engaged in farming.

The “hero of Pearl Harbor” was purged from public office and shunned in public amid the postwar devastation.

“The Occupation Forces put me into a cauldron as a running dog of the militarists, but my Japanese compatriots are building the fire beneath the cauldron to boil me,” he says in his memoirs.

Around this time, he had an opportunity to read “I was a Prisoner of Japan,” a religious tract by Jacob DeShazer, a former U.S. serviceman who had become a Christian missionary in postwar Japan.

DeShazer was one of the Doolittle Raiders who conducted the first air strikes on Japan.

He was taken prisoner in China following the air raids and suffered severe physical abuse. He said he survived the plight after finding moral support in the Bible.

DeShazer’s tract prompted Fuchida to read the Bible, which led to his belief that chain of hatred and revenge must be broken.

Fuchida was baptized in 1951 under the Rev. Toshio Saito, minister with the Sakai Church in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture. The house of prayer belongs to the United Church of Christ in Japan, a group of Protestant churches.

Fuchida visited the United States the following year on the invitation of church officials. The trip kicked off his missionary activities, and he once made the rounds of 47 U.S. states in one year.

His conversion and use of his “hero of Pearl Harbor” status for missionary purposes were criticized by his former colleagues in the Navy.

But Fuchida paid little attention to the complaints and continued stressing the foolishness of war and calling for a severing of the chain of hatred.

“Fuchida’s encounter with the Bible probably led him to realize that what is truly needed is love and forgiveness, not only for himself but also for postwar Japan and the world,” said Satoru Uchida, the current minister with the Sakai Church. “He was probably also happy that he had found something that was worth devoting his life to.”

The Sakai Church stands on the former site of a military-police unit building. After the war, the building was going to be turned into an entertainment facility for the U.S. military, but the church rented the plot and opened its house of prayer and an attached kindergarten there.

“The military-police unit building was a symbol of the most dreadful branch of authority during the war,” Uchida, 49, said. “The fact that it turned into a Christian church could be seen as a parallel to how Fuchida, the head commander of the Pearl Harbor attack, turned into a missionary of peace.”

Atsushi Koketsu, a non-tenured professor of political science with Meiji University, shared his thoughts on the significance of reading Fuchida’s memoirs on the 80th anniversary of the attack that opened Japan-U.S. hostilities.

“Fuchida gained a strong sense of sin through his experiences during his U.S. visits, including meeting with family members of those killed at Pearl Harbor on his command,” Koketsu said. “His autobiography is so valuable because few books are available in which well-known figures who engaged in war have confessed so extensively to their remorse.”

Koketsu, who is well-versed in military history, said: “War arises from a loss of humanity, and peace is acquired during a recovery of humanity. Fuchida tells that to us convincingly through his outspoken descriptions of aggression in the first half of the book and his accounts of his interactions with victims in the second half.

“The cruelty of war and the preciousness of peace are found condensed into this single volume,” he added.