Minoru Genda - Planned the Carrier-Based Attack

Commander Minoru Genda planned the devastating air strike on Pearl Harbor.  His revolutionary thinking was to make airplanes (which could drop torpedoes as well as bombs) the driving force of the attack. 

He envisioned a carrier strike force (the Kido Butai) which could get Japanese airplanes close to the island of Oahu.  When the bombers left their ships, they were only 230 miles away from their targets.

In 1969, Minoru Genda (who, by that time, was a General) was invited to a three-week speaking tour in America.  He revealed when he first conceived of a carrier-based, concentrated-air strike on Pearl Harbor:  while he was watching an American newsreel, in 1940.

After the war, Genda worked closely with Americans who were occupying his country.  Commenting on his prior at-odds relationship with the United States, he said:  "'Wars are fought and then they end, and when they end we don't look back - only forward."

He died of heart disease just before his 85th birthday - forty-four years, to the day, that the war in Japan was over.

Credits

Photo, courtesy National Archives.