Mitsuo Fuchida's Nakajima B5N2 Kate

"I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."
- Jesus Christ to the Scribes and Pharisees, Mark 2:17 and Luke 5:32 of the King James Bible

The first wave of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was led by Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) commander Mitsuo Fuchida (1902-1976) aboard his Nakajima B5N2 Kate torpedo bomber, who was followed by almost ninety torpedo bombers, fifty dive bombers, and almost as many fighters.  After two waves, over 2400 Americans were dead and eighteen U.S. Navy ships were sunk or beached, but Admiral Chuichi Nagumo cancelled the third wave that would have attacked the fuel depot, drydocks, and other facilities and delayed the recovery of American naval power in the Pacific by over a year.  Commander Fuchida had his radioman Norinobu Mizuki send the signal "Tora!  Tora!  Tora!" to Japan, and then waited for the second wave to finish its attack before returning to the aircraft carrier HIJMS Akagi. 

For leading the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Fuchida was granted a personal audience with Emperor Hirohito before being returned to combat for a raid on Darwin, Australia and another raid on the British naval base in Ceylon.  It was perhaps lucky for the Allies that Fuchida had to undergo surgery aboard HIJMS Akagi just before the Battle of Midway, preventing him from flying during the battle, and Fuchida broke his ankles during the evacuation of the sinking carrier, taking him out of the cockpit for the rest of the war.  He was promoted to captain in the naval staff and "flew a desk" until Japan surrendered in 1945. 

After the war, Fuchida wanted to exact revenge against America, and was mystified by the relatively fair treatment Japanese prisoners of war had received at Allied hands compared to the Japanese treatment of Allied prisoners.  Walking around Tokyo one day in 1948, he was given a pamphlet by Jacob DeShazer (1912-2008), a U.S. Army Air Force "Doolittle Raider" who claimed to have received divine enlightenment while tortured in a Japanese prison.  Fuchida read the Bible, met DeShazer, and himself became an evangelical Christian missionary, traveling around the world to spread religion and peace rather than imperialism and war.  He moved to America and wrote two military memoirs of disputed historical accuracy and a memoir about his religious conversion titled From Pearl Harbor to Cavalry before moving back to Japan and dying in Kashiwara. 

Comparing Fuchida to biblical figures, I find some parallels to Saint Longinus (the Roman soldier who wounded the crucified Christ with the Holy Lance and proclaimed Him the Son of God), Saint Paul the Apostle (converted from the ruthless Saul of Tarsus on the Road to Damascus by a vision of Christ), and Saint Matthew the Apostle (who collected taxes for the Roman Empire as Levi before witnessing the crucifixion and resurrection).  This model of Fuchida's bomber from the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor is displayed at the San Diego Aerospace Museum in Balboa Park.