It was on a Sunday December 7^th some sixty years ago in 1941 that the plans of Isoroku Yamamoto were put into action. Yamamoto had studied at Harvard in 1919 and graduated in 1921. He had already graduated from Japan’s Imperial navy academy in 1904 at only 20 years old. In 1926 he returned to the United States for another two years as a Japanese naval attache in Washington. By 1930 he had become an admiral and one fully familiar with the United States as well as it’s Navy.

He was a primary reason why the Japanese Navy was one of the most modern and powerful in the world. Yet, he was opposed to the mounting call for war with the United States. His opposition was strong enough that a plot to murder him was discovered in 1939 and he was sent back to sea for his own protection. The minister of the Navy made him the commander of the combined fleet which essentially was the entire Japanese Navy. When one of the people supporting war, General Hideki Tojo, became the new prime minister war was inevitable. It was left to Yamamoto to plan a daring pre-emptive attack on Pearl Harbor.

That’s the reason on this Sunday, Admiral Chuichi Nagumo was leading an attack force of six carriers with 423 planes on its way to Pearl Harbor. Nagumo had aged both physically and mentally. He was a very a cautious officer who many felt was unsuited for this job. But, it was he who ordered at 6:00 am 183 Japanese planes to take off from carriers located 230 miles North of Oahu heading for the U.S. Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor.

By 7:02 am two army operators at Oahu’s northern shore radar station detected planes approaching and contacted a junior officer. This officer concluded they were American B-17’s from the U.S. which were expected and did nothing. At 7:15 am the second wave of 167 planes took off from the carriers heading for the same destination. At 7:53 am the first wave arrived and flight commander Mitsuo Fuchida signaled the attack with the battle cry: "Tora! Tora! Tora! (Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!)

There was complete surprise on the ground. The attack was over by 9:45 am. Eight battleships damaged, five sunk. Three light cruisers, three destroyers and three smaller vessels destroyed. 188 aircraft damaged. 2,335 military casualties along with 68 civilians. Included are the 1,104 men aboard the Battleship USS Arizona killed when a 1,760 lb bomb hits the forward magazine causing huge explosions. The Japanese losses were 27 planes and five midget submarines.

Yamamoto is regarded as a national hero for the success of this attack and Nagumo, always cautious, was criticized by many for his failure to launch the third wave which would have destroyed the repair stations making Pearl Harbor worthless as a naval base.

By 1943 the Americans had fully cracked the Japanese code and intelligence picked up a coded Japanese radio message that Yamamoto intended to visit units in the Northern Solomon islands on April 18^th of that year. Admiral Nimitz, commander of the U.S. Pacific fleet decided to attack the plane he would be traveling Sixteen American Lightening were sent to intercept the planes will within Japanese controlled air space. The Americans flew in at low altitude to avoid detection focused on two bombers escorted by six Zero fighters. Both bombers were shot down and Yamamoto was killed.

What of Nagumo? In March of 1944 he was sent to the Mariana Islands to command the air fleet and became commander in chief of the Central Pacific Area fleet. It was short lived. On July 6^th, during the last stages of the Battle of Saipan, Nagumo committed suicide. Instead of the traditional seppuku, he put a pistol to his temple and pulled the trigger.