Pearl Harbor Comparisons Difficult for This Woman
Note: This story was a sidebar that accompanied my front-page story titled, "Twin Tragedies." It is also included on this blog.
By Corey Lyons
Contra Costa Newspapers
Dec. 7, 2001
BERKELEY -- Miyako Fuchida Overturf grabs a tiny replica of a Japanese Zero plane from a cluttered mantel above her fireplace. She regards the silver relic carefully, rotating it between her fingers.
"This is what my father used to fly," she said, before her voice trailed off. Her father, Mitsuo Fuchida, is a significant name in a dark chapter of American history. A gifted Japanese pilot, Fuchida led the stunning air raids over Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, a sneak attack that jolted America into World War II.
For the past four decades, Miyako, 64, has lived a quiet and relatively anonymous life in Berkeley, where she raised two children and married a former U.S. Marine. But the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have reopened old wounds for a guarded woman whose father helped produce the worst naval disaster in U.S. history.
"When I heard people trying to compare the two events on the news," she told the Contra Costa Times, breaking years of silence, "I didn't like it. It made me very upset."
Indeed, "America's second Pearl Harbor" became a familiar refrain in the days after the suicide strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In the aftermath of Sept. 11, politicians and war veterans grasped for ways to describe the size and scope of the strikes, which killed about 800 more people than the bombings at Pearl Harbor.
But many Japanese-Americans, including Miyako, find the link to Pearl Harbor particularly offensive. The 1941 airstrikes, they say, did not target civilians, and occurred at a remote military base when most of the world was already at war.
Her father participated in a political operation, not a terrorist one, Miyako said. "Of course, we don't see that from this side," she said, sitting on a sofa in her two-story Berkeley house. "From the Japanese perspective, Pearl Harbor is why my father became a hero."
A petite, resolute woman with an easy smile, Miyako was only 4 years old when her father, a lead pilot, led a wave of Japanese warplanes across the Pacific Ocean.
Capt. Mitsuo Fuchida, a gaunt man with a mustache fashioned after Adolf Hitler, led the first wave of airstrikes from the Japanese carrier Akagi. "Tora! Tora! Tora!" was the three-word message that Fuchida sent to his superiors early that Sunday morning, indicating that surprise had been achieved.
When the mission ended, the heart of the American naval fleet was left battered and smoldering. About 2,400 people were killed; 1,178 injured; 188 planes destroyed; and eight battleships destroyed or damaged.
"A detailed survey of the damage was impossible because of the dense pall of black smoke," Fuchida wrote in one of his books, "I Led the Air Attack on Pearl Harbor."
"I think the U.S. knew that war was coming," Miyako said, "but didn't think that Japan was capable of such a big operation. And that's why it is called a surprise attack."
Nonetheless, Fuchida learned to regret his involvement in war, especially Pearl Harbor.
In a dramatic spiritual transformation after the war, the famous pilot became a Christian minister and toured the world promoting peace. His conversion from Buddhism began in 1950 when he befriended Jacob DeShazer, an American prisoner of war in Japan who circulated a startling essay in which he forgave his captors.
"He accomplished a lot," Miyako said of her father, who died in Kashiwara, Japan, on May 30, 1976. "He showed a lot of guts to face all these unknown people, and I admire him for that. A lot of people thought he was faking when he became a Christian, but he proved his sincerity."
Miyako, whose father was gone a lot while she grew up, also admired the independent strength of her mother, Haruko.
In 1960, Haruko allowed Miyako to move to the United States with a student visa to attend the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. She had promised her mother that she would return in a year.
It never happened. Once at school, the interior design major met Jim Overturf, a U.S. Marine, whom she married in 1963. Overturf, a 59-year-old retired carpenter who still wears a military haircut, said the United States still has a difficult time acknowledging the devastation of Pearl Harbor.
"To this day, it only occupies brief chapters of most history books," he said.
Miyako, a semi-retired seamstress, said her father remains a fixture of national pride in Japan. Still, she has no idea how the world accepts him today.
Some will call Mitsuo Fuchida a villain, others a proud soldier who found redemption. There is nothing she can do about either interpretation. She was too young to remember how she felt when the bombs rained on Pearl Harbor.
But she will always remember squeezing her father's hand as they walked through the streets of Tokyo, and watching strangers stand and salute him.
By Corey Lyons
Contra Costa Newspapers
Dec. 7, 2001
BERKELEY -- Miyako Fuchida Overturf grabs a tiny replica of a Japanese Zero plane from a cluttered mantel above her fireplace. She regards the silver relic carefully, rotating it between her fingers.
"This is what my father used to fly," she said, before her voice trailed off. Her father, Mitsuo Fuchida, is a significant name in a dark chapter of American history. A gifted Japanese pilot, Fuchida led the stunning air raids over Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, a sneak attack that jolted America into World War II.
For the past four decades, Miyako, 64, has lived a quiet and relatively anonymous life in Berkeley, where she raised two children and married a former U.S. Marine. But the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have reopened old wounds for a guarded woman whose father helped produce the worst naval disaster in U.S. history.
"When I heard people trying to compare the two events on the news," she told the Contra Costa Times, breaking years of silence, "I didn't like it. It made me very upset."
Indeed, "America's second Pearl Harbor" became a familiar refrain in the days after the suicide strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In the aftermath of Sept. 11, politicians and war veterans grasped for ways to describe the size and scope of the strikes, which killed about 800 more people than the bombings at Pearl Harbor.
But many Japanese-Americans, including Miyako, find the link to Pearl Harbor particularly offensive. The 1941 airstrikes, they say, did not target civilians, and occurred at a remote military base when most of the world was already at war.
Her father participated in a political operation, not a terrorist one, Miyako said. "Of course, we don't see that from this side," she said, sitting on a sofa in her two-story Berkeley house. "From the Japanese perspective, Pearl Harbor is why my father became a hero."
A petite, resolute woman with an easy smile, Miyako was only 4 years old when her father, a lead pilot, led a wave of Japanese warplanes across the Pacific Ocean.
Capt. Mitsuo Fuchida, a gaunt man with a mustache fashioned after Adolf Hitler, led the first wave of airstrikes from the Japanese carrier Akagi. "Tora! Tora! Tora!" was the three-word message that Fuchida sent to his superiors early that Sunday morning, indicating that surprise had been achieved.
When the mission ended, the heart of the American naval fleet was left battered and smoldering. About 2,400 people were killed; 1,178 injured; 188 planes destroyed; and eight battleships destroyed or damaged.
"A detailed survey of the damage was impossible because of the dense pall of black smoke," Fuchida wrote in one of his books, "I Led the Air Attack on Pearl Harbor."
"I think the U.S. knew that war was coming," Miyako said, "but didn't think that Japan was capable of such a big operation. And that's why it is called a surprise attack."
Nonetheless, Fuchida learned to regret his involvement in war, especially Pearl Harbor.
In a dramatic spiritual transformation after the war, the famous pilot became a Christian minister and toured the world promoting peace. His conversion from Buddhism began in 1950 when he befriended Jacob DeShazer, an American prisoner of war in Japan who circulated a startling essay in which he forgave his captors.
"He accomplished a lot," Miyako said of her father, who died in Kashiwara, Japan, on May 30, 1976. "He showed a lot of guts to face all these unknown people, and I admire him for that. A lot of people thought he was faking when he became a Christian, but he proved his sincerity."
Miyako, whose father was gone a lot while she grew up, also admired the independent strength of her mother, Haruko.
In 1960, Haruko allowed Miyako to move to the United States with a student visa to attend the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. She had promised her mother that she would return in a year.
It never happened. Once at school, the interior design major met Jim Overturf, a U.S. Marine, whom she married in 1963. Overturf, a 59-year-old retired carpenter who still wears a military haircut, said the United States still has a difficult time acknowledging the devastation of Pearl Harbor.
"To this day, it only occupies brief chapters of most history books," he said.
Miyako, a semi-retired seamstress, said her father remains a fixture of national pride in Japan. Still, she has no idea how the world accepts him today.
Some will call Mitsuo Fuchida a villain, others a proud soldier who found redemption. There is nothing she can do about either interpretation. She was too young to remember how she felt when the bombs rained on Pearl Harbor.
But she will always remember squeezing her father's hand as they walked through the streets of Tokyo, and watching strangers stand and salute him.
posted by Corey at 11:20 AM
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