Naoki Hyakuta - The Eternal Zero

“Is that true?”

“We suffered the disgrace of being accused of foul play all because of some damn embassy staffers. Not just us, but Japanese as a whole were labeled a nation of cowards. We’d been told that the attack would take place with the declaration. Yet as it happened… Nothing could be more mortifying.”

Ito’s face contorted.

“At the time, yes, the U.S. was exerting extreme pressure on Japan, but they say the prevailing public opinion was anti-war. Back in those years, we were made to believe that America was a country with no history, whose disconnected, unpatriotic, and individualistic citizens enjoyed pleasure-seeking lives. We were told they didn’t have our willingness to offer up our lives to our country and to the Emperor. Combined Fleet Commander-in-Chief Yamamoto wanted to smash the U.S. Navy’s Pacific forces to pieces at the outset so the American people would completely lose spirit.”

“And the exact opposite happened.”

“Indeed. In response to our cowardly sneak attack, public opinion in America changed overnight to ‘Remember Pearl Harbor’ and giving us hell as many people rushed to enlist in the armed forces.”

Ito continued. “Furthermore, even though the attack was called a tactical victory, that wasn’t completely true, because we didn’t send the third wave of attackers. While we succeeded in destroying much of their Pacific fleet and the aircraft there, we left the dry docks, oil reserves, and other important land-based facilities wholly intact. If we had destroyed everything, Hawaii would no longer have been viable as a military base, and total supremacy in the Pacific would have been ours. The squadron commanders offered to do a third attack, but were turned down. Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, the fleet commander, chose to withdraw from the area. Looking back, I don’t think Vice Admiral Nagumo had it in him to lead. The Imperial Navy missed more crucial chances after that throughout the Pacific, and it all stemmed from the indecisiveness and timidity of his leadership.”

Ito sighed deeply. “I’ve really wandered off topic. No point in criticizing the Imperial Navy now, is there. Let’s get back to Miyabe.”

In the crew quarters on the journey back to Japan from Pearl Harbor, the squadron members who participated in the strike told the rest of us what it had been like. They raved about their magnificent attack. Those of us who’d been on CAP duty listened with one part excitement and two parts jealousy and envy.

Suddenly someone asked, “Hey, Miyabe, what were the American ships like?”

Miyabe replied, “The carriers weren’t there.” Everyone stared at him blankly, but he went on, unperturbed. “There were only battleships in Pearl Harbor.”

That was common knowledge, as the pilots had already vented their frustrations over the lack of carriers. Everyone was confused as to why Miyabe was bringing up that point again.

He kept talking, unfazed by our reaction. “Eventually the Americans will attack us in the same way we attacked them today. That’s why I wish we’d gotten their aircraft carriers.”

“True, sooner or later we’ll take on their carriers,” someone said.

“Guess we saved the best for last, eh?” someone else joked, making everyone, including me, laugh. “Leave some for us,” one of the CAP guys said. And another one of us, “Yeah, I want to be in the attack force next time, not in the CAP.” Everyone who had been part of the patrol team that day agreed and laughed.

Miyabe was the only one not smiling. “That day will surely come,” he said.

“Well, when it does we’ll make mincemeat of any American aircraft carrier,” someone retorted.

Miyabe finally cracked a smile at that. “I think we shall. Today was the first time I saw the attack bombers and dive bombers in action, and they were quite magnificent. Their airmanship is truly divine. I’m sure American carriers will be helpless in the face of such attacks. I don’t know what kind of technology their bombers have, but they sure can’t compete with our skills.”

Since they weren’t the hyperventilations of a blowhard but the detached observations of a calm fellow, Miyabe’s words had a lot of impact. Everyone was well aware of his ability as a pilot, so his speech carried even more weight.

I found myself feeling profoundly disappointed that I hadn’t been able to witness our attack force delivering its pinpoint strikes at Pearl Harbor.

“We can win, can’t we?” I asked.

“If we take them head-on, we’ll overwhelm them,” Miyabe replied.

He was both correct and incorrect in that assumption.

Following Pearl Harbor, the Mobile Task Force under Vice Admiral Nagumo’s command swept over the Pacific. “Mobile Task Force” refers to a carrier battle group. Aircraft carriers had greater speed and mobility than battleships, hence the term.

We freely ran riot from New Guinea in the south to the Indian Ocean in the west, our carrier-based aircraft sinking many enemy warships. “You’ll see us run wild, for half a year,” Commander-in-Chief Isoroku Yamamoto is said to have promised, and we were indeed invincible.

Of course, the Mobile Task Force came under several attacks from enemy aircraft, but the Zero squadrons protecting their motherships never let them lay a finger on our carriers. At the time there wasn’t any fighter aircraft that could beat the Zero. If I do say so myself, Nagumo’s fighter pilots were easily the most competent in the world. The bombers boasted near-superhuman skills as well. When we sank a British cruiser and small carrier in the Indian Ocean, our dive-bomber squadron had an accuracy rate of almost 90 percent. That was an astounding number for dive bombing.

The Nagumo Fleet controlled the Pacific. The country that had the most powerful aircraft carriers could claim naval supremacy. This smashed previously held military common sense.

For a long time, the world was caught in the “Dreadnought Era.” According to the thinking, direct confrontations between battleships determined the outcome of naval warfare. Battleships were the most powerful weapons in history, and massive ones were thought to be necessary to claim mastery of the seas. The British Empire indeed came to dominate the world thanks to its fleet of powerful battleships. You can fathom the impression these weapons made just from how menaced the Shogunate felt by Perry’s “Black Ships” anchored in Uraga. The history of the world was written by battleships.

Aircraft carriers first appeared after World War I. Back then, however, the aircraft were biplanes, and carriers only played an ancillary role. Some factions pointed out that attacks carried out by aircraft were effective, but it was believed that only small ships could be sunk that way, not larger ones like battleships.

Nevertheless, thanks to impressive developments in aeronautics, the power of aircraft carriers grew rapidly. The attack on Pearl Harbor at the outset of the war demonstrated this fact to the world. Aircraft alone were able to sink five battleships in one fell swoop. That was the moment when battleships, for hundreds of years the main actors in battles for naval supremacy, yielded the leading role to carriers.

There was another phenomenal battle that proved that airplanes, not battleships, ruled the seas. It took place two days after Pearl Harbor, off the coast of the Malayan peninsula. Our aircraft attacked and sank the pride of the British Royal Navy, Eastern Fleet, the state-of-the-art battleship HMS Prince of Wales, and the battlecruiser HMS Repulse. Thirty-six Type 96 land-based attack aircraft took off from Saigon and other bases, torpedoed both ships, and sent them to the bottom. It was about this naval battle that Churchill later said, “During all the war, I never received a more direct shock.”