The Midway operation had two central objectives. The first and more limited one was the seizure of Midway as an advance air base to facilitate early detection of enemy carrier forces operating toward the homeland from Hawaii, with the attack on the Aleutians as a diversion. The second, much broader objective was to draw out what was left of the United States Pacific Fleet so that it could be engaged and destroyed in decisive battle. Were both these objectives achieved, the invasion of Hawaii itself would become possible, if not easy.
To carry out the invasion plan, Combined Fleet mustered the mightiest force in Japanese naval history. The task organization embraced more than 200 ships, including eleven battleships, eight aircraft carriers, 22 cruisers, 65 destroyers and 21 submarines, and almost 700 planes, carrier and shore-based. These forces were organized as follows:
Main Force—Admiral I. Yamamoto
First Carrier Striking Force—Vice Admiral C. Nagumo
Midway Invasion Force—Vice Admiral N. Kondo
Northern (Aleutians) Force—Vice Admiral M. Hosogaya
Advance Submarine Force—Vice Admiral T. Komatsu
Shore-Based Air Force—Vice Admiral N. Tsukahara
Between May 26 and 29 these forces sortied from three widely separate take-off points: Ominato, on notthern Honshu, Hashirajima in the western Inland Sea, and Saipan and Guam in the Marianas. All cleated port uneventfully, evading the prying eyes of enemy submarines, and headed for the battle areas.
On May 29, 1942, at the end of the day, the various Japanese forces were forging ahead toward their objectives without any hitch other than the fog still plaguing the Kakuta Force. On the 30th, however, the weather also began to deteriorate over that part of the Central Pacific now being traversed by the Yamamoto and Kondo Forces. In the afternoon the Yamamoto Force encountered rain and increasingly strong winds which caused the destroyers and cruisers to ship occasional seas over their bows. The formation cut its speed to fourteen knots, and zigzagging was discontinued.
It was not only the weather that was ominous. Yamato's radio crew, which was keeping a close watch on enemy communications traffic, intercepted a long urgent message sent by an enemy submarine from a position directly ahead of the Japanese Transport Group. The message was addressed to Midway. It was in code, and we could not decipher it, but it suggested the possibility that the Transport Group had been discovered. If so, it would be logical for the enemy to surmise that the transports were heading for Midway for the purpose of an invasion attempt, since so large a convoy sailing east-northeast from Saipan could hardly be taken as merely a supply force destined for Wake Island. Admiral Yamamoto's staff officers, however, were not greatly concerned. They nonchalantly took the view that if the enemy had guessed our purpose and now sent his fleet out to oppose the invasion, the primary Japanese objective of drawing out the enemy forces to be destroyed in decisive battle would be achieved.
Bad weather continued in the central Pacific on May 31. Not only the Yamamoto and Kondo Forces, but also Vice Admiral Nagumo's carriers, which were a few hundred miles farther east, encountered strong winds and occasional rain. Meanwhile, Yamato's radio intelligence unit observed further signs of enemy activity, especially of aircraft and submarines, in both the Hawaii and Aleutians vicinities. Admiral Yamamoto and his staff surmised that the activity around Hawaii might presage a sortie by an enemy Task Force, and they waited eagerly for reports of the flying boat reconnaissance which was to have been carried out over Hawaii.
The two Type-2 flying boats assigned to this mission, designated the second "K" Operation, had duly moved up to Wotje and were scheduled to take off at 2400 May 30 (Tokyo time) to reach French Frigate Shoals by 1430 (1730 local time) shortly before sunset, refuel there from submarines, and take off within an hour and a half for Hawaii. If all went well, they would arrive over Hawaii at 2045 (0115 May 31, local time). After completing their reconnaissance, they would fly non-stop back to Wotje, reaching there about 0920 (Tokyo time) on June 1. Vice Admiral Komatsu, Commander Submarine Force, had assigned six submarines to the operation. Three of them were to refuel the flying boats at French Frigate Shoals. Another was to take station on a line between Wotje and French Frigate Shoals, about 550 miles from the latter, to serve as a radio picket ship. The fifth was to lie off Keahole Point, Hawaii, as a rescue boat in case of mishap, and the sixth was to be stationed eighty miles southwest of Oahu for patrol and weather observation.
The carefully laid plan, however, had already gone awry. On May 30, one of the fueling subs (I-123), reached French Frigate Shoals and, to its dismay, found two enemy ships lying at anchor. It urgently radioed this information back to Kwajalein, adding that there appeared to be little prospect of carrying out the refueling operation at the Shoals as planned. Vice Admiral Goto, 24th Air Flotilla commander at Kwajalein, who was responsible for directing the second "K" Operation, accordingly ordered a 24-hour postponement, instructing I-123 to keep watching the Shoals in the hope that the enemy ships would depart.
This forlorn hope was blasted the following day when I-123 reported that she had sighted two enemy flying boats near the entrance to the Shoals. This made it apparent that the enemy was already using the Shoals as a seaplane base, and there consequently was no alternative but to abandon Operation "K" altogether.
These disappointing developments were promptly communicated to Admiral Yamamoto in Yamato. The failure of Operation "K" meant that there was no way of ascertaining what enemy strength actually was present at Pearl Harbor. Nevertheless, Combined Fleet Headquarters still hoped that, if an enemy force did sortie from that base to oppose the Midway invasion, the submarine cordons scheduled to be established by Vice Admiral Komatsu's command between Hawaii and Midway by June 2 would suffice to provide advance warning as well as knowledge of the enemy's strength.
* * *
The first of June found the Yamamoto Force still surrounded by dark, forbidding weather, although the rain had ceased. Low-lying clouds made visibility so poor that it was barely possible from Yamato's bridge to make out the phantom shapes of the destroyer screen 1,500 meters away.
It was now time for the Main Force to rendezvous with its tanker train and refuel. The oilers were not found at the prearranged rendezvous point, however, and Hosho launched planes to look for them. The search proved unsuccessful because of the poor visibility, but at this point the tanker train radioed its position to Yamato, making it possible to effect a rendezvous. At the same time, because radio silence had been broken, it had to be assumed that the enemy was now aware of the position of the Main Force.
Evidence that the enemy had already discovered or, at the very least, strongly suspected the Japanese advance toward Midway, mounted sharply during the day. Radio intelligence disclosed a marked intensification of communications traffic out of Hawaii, and 72 out of 180 intercepted messages were " urgent," indicating an unusually tense situation. A chance encounter 500 miles north-northeast of Wotje between a Japanese patrol plane from that island and an American flying boat, which exchanged brief machine-gun bursts, also showed that the enemy had extended his Midway-based air patrols out to a radius of 700 miles. There were still further reports to the effect that enemy submarines had been sighted about 500 miles northeast and north-northeast of Wake Island, which indicated the existence of an American submarine patrol line about 600 miles southwest of Midway.
By this time the Midway transport convoy had reached a point about 1,000 miles to the west of Midway and was proceeding on a northeast course. Advancing at a rate of 240 miles in 24 hours, the convoy would enter the 700-mile patrol radius of American planes from Midway on June 3, two days before the date set for the pre-invasion air strike on the island by the Nagumo Force. It looked as if the transports were advancing too fast for their own safety.
Cloudy weather, with occasional rain, persisted in the vicinity of the Yamamoto Force on June 2. Fueling operations, which had started the preceding day after the delayed rendezvous with the tanker train, were resumed in the morning but had to be discontinued again when visibility became so poor that the ships could no longer maneuver safely.
Still another hitch now developed in the operation plan. Owing to overhauls which had delayed their departure from the homeland, the submarines of SubRon 5 assigned to the "B" cordon line scheduled to be established on this date to the northwest of Hawaii failed to reach their assigned positions. Boats of SubRon 3 assigned to the "A" cordon line to the west of Hawaii were also unable to reach their stations because of delays resulting from the miscarriage of Operation "K". Actually it was not until June 4 that the submarines arrived on station.
With the submarine cordons not yet established, Admiral Yamamoto and his staff remained completely in the dark regarding enemy task force activities. During June 2, however, submarine I-168, reconnoitering the Midway area, sent in a few bits of information regarding the situation there. The report stated that no ships had been observed other than a picket ship south of Sand Island; that the enemy appeared to be flying intensive air patrols to the southwest, probably to a distance of 600 miles; that a strict alert seemed to be in force, with numerous aircraft on defensive patrol day and night; and that many cranes were visible on the island, suggesting that the installations were being expanded. This eventually turned out to be the only significant reconnaissance report sent in by a submarine during the Midway operation.
During the 2nd the Nagumo Force, cruising some 600 miles ahead of the Yamamoto Force, entered an area enveloped in thick mist. Clouds hovered low over the ocean, and light rain began to fall. Fog seemed likely to follow. Already visibility was so restricted that neighboring ships in the formation could scarcely see each other.
Vice Admiral Nagumo in flagship Akagi was as much in the dark about enemy fleet movements and intentions as Combined Fleet Headquarters. Indeed, because of Akagi's limited radio-receiving capacity, coupled with the radio silence being observed by the advancing Japanese forces, he lacked much of the information which had been received by Admiral Yamamoto in the Fleet flagship and which strongly suggested that the enemy was already aware or highly suspicious of a Japanese advance toward Midway and was preparing to counter it. This was precisely the situation which Rear Admiral Kusaka, Nagumo Force Chief of Staff, had feared might develop. Prior to the sortie, he had repeatedly requested that Yamato relay all important radio intelligence information to Akagi, but it was apparent that Admiral Yamamoto and his staff still hoped that surprise had not been lost and felt it advisable to continue radio silence.
Thus, as June 2 ended, the Japanese forces were steadily approaching their objectives through adverse weather. Thus far there was no certain indication that any of them had actually been detected by the enemy, and every man from Admiral Yamamoto on down hoped that the precious advantage of surprise was still in Japanese hands.
By dawn on June 3 the mist which the Nagumo Force had encountered the previous afternoon had become a heavy blanket of fog. Steaming at fog navigation quarters, adjoining ships in the formation were often unable to see each other across their scant 600-yard intervals. Powerful searchlights were turned on, but they scarcely showed through the gloom.
The task of maintaining zigzag courses through this endless veil, with only momentary and infrequent glimpses of consorting ships, was arduous and nerve-wracking. Yet it had to be done, for we were entering waters patrolled by enemy submarines. While the fog was advantageous in keeping us hidden from prying scout planes, this benefit was canceled by the increased hazards of navigation. And the enemy's radar-equipped submarines would be little affected by the fog which at the same time prevented us from launching antisubmarine patrol planes. To cope with these and other problems that beset us, all ships were at full alert and double watches were posted at submarine lookout stations.
The starboard side of Akagi's bridge was occupied by Admiral Nagumo and his entire staff. They stared silently at the impenetrable curtain surrounding the ship, and each face was tense with anxiety. Captain Aoki and his navigation officer, Commander Miura, on the other side of the bridge, devoted their entire energies to keeping the ship on course and maintaining position in the formation. From time to time they leaned out of the window in an effort to peer through the all-encompassing fog.
A change in course was scheduled for 1030, and it had to be executed if our timetable was to be carried out. Yet, prior to execution of such a course change in heavy fog, confirmation would have to be communicated to all ships in the formation lest some stray and become lost. With visibility so limited, flag signals obviously could not be employed, and even searchlights would be ineffective to transmit the required orders. Nothing remained but to use radio, which was sure to reveal our presence to the enemy.
This distressing situation served to bring out the fact that the Nagumo Force had been assigned two tactical missions which were essentially incompatible. The assignment to attack Midway on June 5 in preparation for the landing operation put the Task Force under rigid limitations of movement. The other mission—to contact and destroy enemy naval forces—required that Nagumo be entirely free to move as the situation required, and it also made it absolutely essential to keep our whereabouts secret while searching for the enemy.
A decision obviously had to be made as to which of these missions should be given precedence. Nagumo's staff had pondered this problem hypothetically for a long time, but now the Task Force Commander faced a situation requiring a definitive choice. And still there was not a scrap of information about enemy naval forces. In this critical situation the senior member of the staff, Captain Oishi, was the first to speak up.
"The Combined Fleet operation order gives first priority to the destruction of enemy forces. Co-operation with the landing operation is secondary. But the same order specifically calls for our air attack on Midway Island on June 5. This means that the air attack must be carried out exactly as scheduled, provided that nothing is heard about enemy Task Forces by the time we are ready to launch.
"If we do not neutralize the Midway-based air forces as planned, our landing operations two days later will be strongly opposed and the entire invasion schedule will be upset."
With his usual directness Admiral Nagumo voiced the question in everyone's mind, "But where is the enemy fleet?"
In answer Oishi continued, "We know nothing of the enemy's whereabouts because we failed to reconnoiter Pearl Harbor. But if his forces are now in Pearl Harbor, we shall have plenty of time to prepare to meet them should they sortie following our strike at Midway. They will have over 1100 miles to cover.
"Even if they are already aware of our movements and have sortied to meet us, they cannot be far out from base at this moment and certainly can't be near us. I think the first thing for us to do is to carry out the scheduled raid on Midway."
At this, Chief of Staff Kusaka turned to the Intelligence Officer and asked if radio intercepts had given any indication of enemy movements. Informed that nothing had been picked up, Kusaka asked if any information had been received from Combined Fleet flagship Yamata. Receiving another negative response, he addressed a suggestion to Admiral Nagumo. "Since we must maintain the schedule at all cost, would you approve the use of our low-powered, inter-fleet radio for sending the order to change course?"
The Commander assented to this as the only feasible solution and the order was sent accordingly by medium-wave transmitter. A reduced-power transmission would reach out to the fringe of our force and, it was hoped, not farther. This method was not entirely safe, but it had worked on occasion in the past, thanks to enemy carelessness. In this case, however, the message was received clearly even by Yamata, which was 600 miles to the rear. Inasmuch as an enemy Task Force was then only a few hundred miles distant—a fact of which we were totally unaware—it was highly probable that it, too, intercepted this signal.
From the first, the planners of the Midway operation calculated that the enemy naval forces would be lured out by the strike at Midway Island and not before. We had not the slightest idea that the enemy had already sortied, much less that a powerful enemy Task Force was lying in wait, ready to pounce upon us at any moment.
Dense fog still hung over the Nagumo Force throughout the afternoon and on into the night. In contrast to the tenseness prevailing on Akagi's bridge, her wardroom hummed with the lusty chatter and laughter of carefree flyers whose only job was to jump into their planes and roar off at a moment's notice. Everything was ready for the scheduled air raid two days hence, and no flight missions had been ordered because of the adverse weather.
Meanwhile, the weather around the Yamamoto Force, 600 miles astern, improved somewhat in the afternoon, and refueling, which had been suspended on the preceding day, was resumed.
The worst thing about the persistent fog was that it cloaked enemy movements in complete secrecy. As previously mentioned, the plan for a flying boat reconnaissance of Pearl Harbor on May 31, using French Frigate Shoals as a refueling point, had been thwarted. Nor did our submarines provide any information. The sole remaining source of information was radio intelligence. As early as May 30, such intelligence picked up by Admiral Yamamoto's flagship Yamata had pointed to brisk enemy activity in the Hawaii area, especially of patrol planes. This strongly suggested the possibility of a sortie by an enemy force from the Hawaiian base, but Combined Fleet sent no warning whatever to Admiral Nagumo!
Admiral Nagumo and his staff were deeply chagrined when they learned after the battle that Combined Fleet Headquarters had suspected an enemy sortie because of this radio intelligence. Why did Combined Fleet not transmit this vital information to the Carrier Striking Force so that any danger of its being taken by surprise might be averted?
There were two reasons behind this unfortunate failure. Firstly, Combined Fleet Headquarters thoughtlessly believed that Akagi, closer to the enemy than Yamato, would naturally have obtained the same information, and that Admiral Nagumo was formulating his decisions accordingly. Secondly, they feared that radio communication between the two forces would reveal their positions to the enemy.
At any rate, Admiral Yamamoto's failure to issue necessary precautionary instructions to the forces under his command was an important cause of the Midway fiasco. He was to blame for being too much preoccupied with the idea of "radio silence." It is easy to imagine what angry and bitter emotions must have welled up inside Rear Admiral Kusaka when he went on board Yamato after the battle to report on the near annihilation of the Nagumo Force and there learned for the first time of Combined Fleet's negligence. Well might he have said, "How often I told them not to let this happen!"
Combined Fleet Headquarters, however, was not alone to blame. The Naval General Staff back in Tokyo was also partially responsible, for it again sent a radio to Combined Fleet concerning enemy fleet activity in the Solomon Islands area. The message carried the strong implication that the movement of the Japanese forces toward Midway was not yet suspected by the enemy.
The Naval General Staff had originally opposed the Midway operation, but once having given its approval, it was responsible for the whole operation even more than was Combined Fleet Headquarters. With the decisive battle only a few days off, it was engaged in gathering all available intelligence regarding enemy activity. What particularly attracted the attention of the intelligence staff were indications that an American Carrier Task Force still was operating in the Solomons area. If this was true, as the Naval General Staff believed, it constituted powerful evidence that the enemy did not yet suspect our intention, for, if he did, he would obviously have called all his scarce remaining carriers back from the Southwest Pacific. Even after intercepting a number of "Urgent" calls from American radios in the Hawaii-Midway area, the Naval General Staff still stuck fast to its first conclusion.
The storm of battle was about to break, and for the first time in six months, Fate did not seem to be smiling upon us. No change, however, was made in the operational plan. All forces plunged on through the boundless fog like stagecoach horses driven blindly forward by a cracking whip.
* * *
At about 0300 on the morning of June 41 the noisy drone of plane engines warming up roused me from slumber. I got out of bed and attempted to stand, but my legs were still unsteady. The sound of engines alternately hummed and then rose to a whining roar. Akagi was preparing to launch her planes for the attack on Midway.
Unable to resist the desire to be topside at take-off time, I slipped out of the sick bay. The watertight doors of every bulkhead had been closed, leaving only a small manhole in each door open for passage. It was an arduous task to squeeze through these small openings in my weakened condition, and cold sweat soon ran down my forehead. I frequently felt exhausted and dizzy and had to squat on the floor to rest.
The passageways were empty. All hands were at their stations. Lights were dimmed for combat condition, and one could see a distance of only a few feet. With great effort I finally climbed the ladders up to my cabin just below the flight deck, clutching the handrails every step of the way. There I paused long enough to catch my breath and put on a uniform before going on to the flight control post. The first-wave attack planes were all lined up on the flight deck. The warm-up was completed, and the roar of the engines subsided. I found Commander Masuda, Air Officer of Akagi, in charge of flight preparations.
My colleagues expressed concern over my leaving bed, but they understood when I explained that I could not bear to hear the sound of the engines and remain below in sick hay. I looked up at the dark sky. The dawn still seemed far off. The sky was cloudy, and the weather, while not good, was not bad enough to prevent flying. The sea was calm.
I asked Lieutenant Furukawa when sunrise would be.
"At 0500, Sir," was the reply.
"Have search planes already been set out?"
"No, Sir. They will be launched at the same time as the first attack wave."
"Are we using the single-phase search system?"
"Yes, Sir. As usual."
I recalled the attacks on Colombo and Trincomalee in the Indian Ocean, two months earlier, when single-phase search had been employed. It had not been a wise tactic. In both instances, the searches had spotted enemy surface forces while our attack groups were away hitting the enemy bases, and this had caused our carriers some anxious moments. With this in mind, I inquired what plans had been made for the eventuality that our search planes might sight an enemy fleet during the Midway attack.
"No need to worry about that," Lieutenant Commander Murata replied. "After the first attack wave departs, the second wave, consisting of Lieutenant Commander Egusa's dive bombers, my torpedo bombers, and Lieutenant Commander Itaya's Zeros, will be available to attack an enemy surface force, if discovered."
"I see. Well, that's a good team, and we can just hope that the enemy fleet does come out so we can destroy it. What searches are scheduled?"
Furukawa explained them to me on the map board. "There are seven lines extending east and south, with Midway lying within the search arc. We are using one plane each from Akagi and Kaga, two seaplanes each from Tone and Chikuma, and one from Haruna. The search radius is 300 miles for all planes except Haruna's, which is a Type-95 and can do only half that."
Although the coverage appeared adequate, I still felt that a two-phase search would have been wiser. A single-phase search might be sufficient if we wished only to confirm our assumption that no enemy fleet was in the vicinity. However, if we recognized the possibility that this assumption might be wrong and that an enemy force might be present, our searches should have been such as to assure that we could locate and attack it before it could strike at us. For this purpose a two-phase dawn search was the logical answer.
As the term indicates, a two-phase search employs two sets of planes which fly the same search lines, with a given time interval between them. Since our planes were not equipped with radar at this time, they were completely reliant on visual observation and could search effectively only by daylight. Consequently, to spot an enemy force as soon as possible after dawn, it was necessary to have one set of planes (the first phase) launched in time to reach the end of their search radius as day was breaking. This meant that the areas traversed in darkness on their outbound flight remained unsearched. Hence, a second-phase search was required over these same lines by planes taking off about one hour later.
Men assigned to the first phase of such a search obviously had to be well trained in night flying. Nagumo had such pilots and could have used this method, but it would have required twice as many planes as a single-phase search. Despite the importance of conducting adequate searches, our naval strategists were congenitally reluctant to devote more than a bare minimum of their limited plane strength to such missions. Ten per cent of total strength was all they were willing to spare for search operations, feeling that the rest should be reserved for offensive use. But such overemphasis on offensive strength had proven detrimental to our purposes before this, and it would again.
Naturally enough, Admiral Nagumo was eager to devote maximum strength to the Midway attack and did not want to use any more planes for search than seemed absolutely necessary. Since he had no reason to suspect the presence of an enemy force in the area, he was satisfied that a single-phase search was adequate precaution.
Search planes from Akagi and Kaga were launched at 0430, simultaneously with the departure of the first Midway attack wave. Haruna's seaplane was also catapulted at this time. But the Tone and Chikuma planes, which were covering the center lines of the search pattern, were delayed. Watching the two cruisers, I noticed that the last of their search planes did not get off until just before sunrise, nearly half an hour behind schedule. It was later learned that Tone's planes had been held up by catapult trouble, while one of Chikuma's planes had a balky engine. This last plane was forced to turn back at 0635 when the engine trouble recurred and it ran into foul weather.
Although poorly advised, a one-phase search dispatched half an hour before sunrise would still have been helpful if everything had worked out as planned. But the delay in launching Tone's planes sowed a seed which bore fatal fruit for the Japanese in the ensuing naval action. Reviewing the full story of the battle on both sides, we now know that the enemy task force was missed by Chikuma's search plane which, according to the plan, should have flown directly over it. The enemy force was discovered only when the belated Tone plane, on the line south of the Chikuma plane, was on the dog-leg of its search. Had Admiral Nagumo carried out an earlier and more carefully planned two-phase search, had the observer of the Chikuma plane been more watchful on the outward leg of his search, or had the seaplanes been on schedule, the disaster that followed might have been avoided.
The fundamental cause of this failure, again, lay in the Japanese Navy's overemphasis on attack, which resulted in inadequate attention to search and reconnaissance. In both the training and organization of our naval aviators, too much importance and effort were devoted to attack. Reconnaissance was taught only as part of the regular curriculum, and no subsequent special training was given. Also, there were no organic reconnaissance units of any appreciable size in the Japanese Navy. When reconnaissance missions were required, attack planes were usually refitted and assigned to perform them. There were no carrier-borne planes designed solely for search. In the Pearl Harbor attack, every carrier-borne bomber of Nagumo's six carriers was assigned to the attack, leaving for search only some ten-odd float planes from the accompanying battleships and cruisers. This had been perhaps the basic reason for Admiral Nagumo's decision to withdraw upon that occasion without exploiting his advantage. At the critical moment, when he had to decide whether to launch another attack on Pearl Harbor, he did not have the vital information which reconnaissance planes could have provided. The Nagumo Force continued to suffer from this same lack of aerial reconnaissance in every action that followed.
While searching for the British Fleet in the Indian Ocean earlier in the year, our search planes often lost their way and the carriers had to send out radio signals on which they could home. This, however, also alerted the enemy to our positions, and the result was an understandable reluctance on the part of Admiral Nagumo and his staff to send out search planes if it could possibly be avoided. This reluctance was still present in the Midway operation and, coupled with the erroneous estimate of the enemy situation, was responsible for the inadequate search dispositions ordered by Admiral Nagumo.
One small step toward remedying the search weakness of the Nagumo Force had been taken prior to the sortie for Midway. After prolonged negotiations with the authorities, Nagumo had succeeded in getting two carrier-based reconnaissance planes of a new type, on which experiments had just been completed. This type had been designed originally as a dive bomber, but was altered for use as a search plane. It was later designated the Type-2 carrier-borne reconnaissance plane or Suisei ("Judy") dive bomber, and there were high expectations for its success in reconnoitering powerful enemy Task Forces. Two of these planes had been loaded on board Soryu.
At the time his search and attack groups took off from the carriers on June 4 Admiral Nagumo was unaware that the Japanese Transport Group had already been sighted and attacked by planes from Midway. Akebono Maru, the only ship hit, was not damaged enough to hinder her progress, but the important thing was that the enemy was fully alerted to the presence of Japanese ships approaching in the direction of Midway. And we did not know that they knew.
Mitsuo Fuchida served 25 years in the Imperial Japanese Navy and was a captain at the end of World War II. An aviator with 3000 hours of flight time, he served as commander of the air groups of Cardiv 1 from August, 1941, to July, 1942, in Akagi. Wounded during the Battle of Midway, he was hospitalized for about one year. In June, 1943, he was made senior staff officer of the 1st Air Fleet at Kanoya, and later at Tinian when the 1st Air Fleet was moved to the Marianas. In April, 1944, he was transferred to Oyodo as Air Operations Officer of the Combined Fleet. When Fleet Headquarters moved ashore to Hiyoshi in September, 1944, he continued in this same position until the end of the war.
Masatake Okumiya entered the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy in 1927, was commissioned an ensign in 1932, and joined the naval air corps in 1933. After duty in China during 1937, he was test pilot for dive bombers until September of the next year when he suffered a serious air accident. Active again in 1941 as an Air Staff Officer, he joined Cardiv 4 in April, 1942, under Rear Admiral Kakuji Kakuta in Flagship Ryujo for the Aleutians operations. He was with Admiral Kakuta in Cardiv 2 on Flagship Junyo during the Battles of Santa Cruz and Guadalcanal. He saw duty at Wewak in December, 1942; in the Guadalcanal withdrawal operation of January-February, 1943; at Rabaul and Buin in April, 1943; and he was with the last of the air forces at Rabaul in February, 1944. In June, 1944, he was Air Officer to Rear Admiral Takaji Joshima, ComCardiv 2, in flagship Junyo. He was at Okinawa in July and August before joining the Naval General Staff as Air Staff Officer with rank of commander, where he remained until the end of the war. As a member of the Second (Navy) Demobilization Board after the war, he had access to what naval records survived.