The Other Side of Midway

MIDWAY, THE BATTLE THAT DOOMED JAPAN (266 pp.)--Mitsuo Fuchida & Masatake Okumiya--U.S. Naval Institute ($4.50).

In the months after Pearl Harbor, the restless aggressors who bossed the Imperial Japanese Navy cast loftily about for new coasts to conquer. Having smashed many of the biggest ships of the U.S. and British fleets and landed their forces at will around the southern seas, they toyed between plans to go for India, Australia or Hawaii. It was Doolittle's Tokyo raid, launched in April 1942 from the U.S. carrier Hornet, that clinched the sea lords' new course of conquest. They decided to turn east, to capture Midway Island (1,300 miles northwest of Pearl Harbor) and use this outpost as an advance base for Japanese air patrols. As naval strategists they calculated that the attack would draw out the last remnant of the U.S. fleet--including those annoying U.S. flattops that had escaped the Pearl Harbor massacre.

Come Out & Fight. In this first complete Japanese account of the battle of Midway to be published in the U.S., Former Captain Mitsuo Fuchida, who led the bombing attack on Pearl Harbor and now preaches in Japan as a Christian missionary, evokes the long-forgotten months when the Imperial Navy was top dog of the Pacific. The Midway invasion fleet that he describes numbered more than 200 ships, the mightiest yet assembled by the Japanese. Proud in the van rode the powerful, fast carrier attack force that had spread destruction from Pearl Harbor to Ceylon. Its bonus of strength, the admirals agreed, was surprise. Its only fear was that the U.S. Navy might not dare come out and fight after the Imperial fleet opened the attack.

The night the force sailed Author Fuchida was knocked out of his air command by an emergency appendectomy. But early on the morning of June 4, he climbed shakily to the flight deck of the flagship Akagi to see his boys launch the first strike on Midway. He watched the carriers easily brush off first retaliatory attacks by land-based Marine and Army planes. Then: "A lookout screamed 'Hell-divers!' I looked up to see three black enemy planes plummeting toward our ship. Some of our machine guns managed to fire a few frantic bursts at them, but it was too late. The plump silhouettes of the American 'Dauntless' dive bombers quickly grew larger, and then a number of black objects suddenly floated eerily from their wings. Bombs! Down they came straight toward me. I fell intuitively to the deck and crawled behind a command post mantelet."

Two Minutes. It was the U.S. fleet that had achieved the surprise. Caught with most of its planes aboard, the Akagi exploded and burned. So did two sister carriers, the Kaga and Soryu (Hiryu, the fourth, survived to be wrecked by an evening raid). In two minutes the whole course of the Pacific war changed. That night, its air striking power destroyed, the Japanese invasion armada turned in "emptiness, cheerlessness and chagrin" and limped for home. (The U.S. Navy lost the Yorktown, one of the three carriers that it was able to muster for the great battle.)

Now 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 from the "Victory Disease." The U.S. never allowed the Japanese generals and admirals the chance to recover from the consequences of that illness. After Midway, Japan fought no longer for victory but for a negotiated peace.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.