Yoshioka Masamitsu saw Pearl Harbor from the air
The last of the attackers on the “day of infamy” died on August 28th, aged 106
Photograph: ©JAPAN Forward
Oct 9th 2024
As he SLID into his bunk in the aircraft-carrier Soryu, on the night of December 6th 1941, Bombardier Yoshioka Masamitsu was struck by a thought. He didn’t have much time left, because tomorrow he was likely to die. He would die in Hawaii, because that was where Japan had decided to hit America. Such an attack would unleash a gigantic war. Of course it was an honour to be chosen for this mission, and his parents would be proud of him if he died that way. But he was 23, and the thought made all the blood drain from his head. Other crewmen and bombardiers might stoically turn on themselves the pistols they had been issued with, in case they were captured by the enemy. He had a pistol himself. But death did not appeal to him at all.
For weeks the Imperial Japanese Navy had been building up to attack. Besides the Soryu, five other aircraft-carriers had gathered in the Kuril Islands with more than 300 warplanes. Emperor Hirohito had ordered on November 5th that if talks with the Americans broke down, America should be attacked by the end of the month. The talks concerned an oil embargo by the Americans on Japan, to deter it from military adventures in Asia. Two years before Yoshioka had been deployed on the Soryu against the Chinese Nationalists, who were resisting Japanese conquest. But that was a regional war. What threatened now was something even bigger.
Before dawn, having slept at least a little, he went out on deck to watch the torpedo being loaded onto his plane. It was still dark, but the missile gleamed silver. That made him realise it was the real thing. In training, because torpedoes were scarce and expensive, they had used wooden canisters with a warhead filled with water, not explosives. After every drop, they fished them from the sea again. The torpedoes themselves were much less important than learning how to fly fast, flat and low above the sea, sometimes as low as 12 metres, getting the angle just right, before releasing them.
Now they would be dropped on America: specifically on the Pacific Fleet moored at Shinjuwan, or Pearl Harbor. That information had filtered to him and his comrades extremely slowly. Just before they sailed from the Kuril Islands, on November 26th, they were told to pack shorts. That seemed to mean they were going south. But then the pipes were lagged with asbestos, which suggested somewhere colder. In the bar and at deck smoking-breaks he and his comrades speculated constantly. He himself had been switched quite suddenly, that year, from navigation to torpedo training. So deployment was imminent, somewhere. But it couldn’t be America, because America, up until recently, still supplied the petrol for their planes.
Just after dawn, with a stiff east wind and choppy seas, he climbed into his craft. It was a Nakajima B5N2, much better than the rickety old biplanes he had spent his time repairing when, at 18, he first joined up. Day after day he would enviously watch as the airmen flew off in newer models. The Nakajima, though, was no more airtight than most of the planes of the time. Gaps all over the body let in the disgusting firework-smell of gunpowder or anti-aircraft fire. Roaring engine noise and the echoing wind drowned out almost all other sound—except the worst of all, the bang! of his plane being hit. Added to all this, the 800kg weight of a real torpedo made his plane tip to the rear. He was so burdened on take-off that he sank at first two metres below deck-level, before he could get the nose up and away.
He, his pilot and his rear-gunner flew steadily to the east. They were in radio silence, with him as navigator calculating the route by the flight time (110 minutes), distance (220 nautical miles) and the position of the Soryu as they left. Otherwise, they flew into the glare of the sun. That glare changed to towering white cumulus clouds; then to billowing black smoke from American ships that had already been hit. He sent his torpedo down and, looking back, saw two slim columns of spray shoot 30 metres from the water. A direct hit! Right on target!
Then he saw something else. The battleship, which was already listing, had no barrels on the gun-turrets. It was the USS Utah, a training ship which had been stripped of its weapons a decade before. During torpedo training he and his comrades had been told to memorise the silhouette of the Utah, so that they could avoid it. Somehow—sun-dazzle, perhaps—he had not. His elation turned in an instant to horror at his mistake.
He got back safely that day. War had now started between Japan and America, and would last for four years, but he had a lucky one. When the Soryu was sunk at the Battle of Midway in 1942, he was on shore leave. When fighting became intense round the Palau Islands, he was recovering from malaria. His plane was grounded, short of parts, when kamikaze tactics came in. Enemy bullets streamed towards his plane once, heading for his face, but passed by on either side. His plane was pierced by cannon-fire, but it hit none of the crew, and the fuel tank it struck was empty. He never took such luck for granted, nor stopped being scared.
He increasingly felt shame, though, that he had survived. And not merely survived, but to a great age, still straight-backed, lucid, mobile and dapper. For decades he worked in the Maritime Self-Defence Force, the post-war version of the emperor’s proud navy. And he remained unceasingly, though silently, aware of all who had died around him. His brothers in arms, of course. But also the sailors they had killed, young men like him, faithfully carrying out their orders. Fifty-eight crew had died when he torpedoed the Utah. If he ever visited Pearl Harbor—which he doubted he would, as he wouldn’t know what to say—he wanted to visit their graves to pay his respects. As it was he added them to his prayers at the Yasukuni shrine, with the fervent hope that there would be no more wars. ■