Lieutenant Zenji Abe: A Japanese Pilot Remembers

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Zenji Abe, one of the pilots who bombed Pearl Harbor, was born in 1916 in a small mountain village in Yamaguchi prefecture on the southern tip of the island of Honshu, the son of a sake brewer. He grew up in a time of worldwide depression, and his father was financially hard pressed to provide for his family. Nevertheless, Abe’s father saved enough to send Abe’s older brother through high school and college. As Abe said, ‘My father was not skillful in his business, but he paid earnest attention to the education of his children.’

After completing the sixth grade in primary school, Abe passed the entrance examination for the Bocho Military School, which was a private school founded and operated by general officers of the Japanese army in Yamaguchi prefecture. He subsequently attended Yamaguchi High School, financed by a fund provided by the Bocho Military School, and at age 16, Abe took the entrance examination for the Imperial Naval Academy. He was successful in spite of competition that eliminated 39 out of 40 applicants.

Abe’s mother had died when he was 9, and only his father was on hand when he entered the Imperial Naval Academy in April 1933. For four years Abe pursued a curriculum of naval subjects as well as language, mathematics, physics, history and other cultural subjects in the Spartan atmosphere of the samurai. (One saying goes, ‘The samurai glories in honorable poverty but takes a toothpick when he has not eaten.’)

As an ensign, he enrolled in the Naval Air School; he graduated a year later as a naval pilot. Abe was assigned to the carrier Soryu and flew many missions in the Sino-Japanese War. He participated in the attack on Pearl Harbor and later took part in raids on Dutch Harbor in the Aleutians, as well as battles in the Indian Ocean, Australia and the Pacific. During the Battle of the Philippine Sea on June 19, 1944, Abe flew a one-way, long-range attack mission off the carrier Junyo. He made a forced landing on the island of Rota, between Saipan and Guam, and lived in a cave on the island until the end of the war, when he was taken prisoner and held for 15 months until he was repatriated to Japan. During his time as a POW, his wife believed him dead.

Forbidden by the Potsdam Agreement to hold a government office, Abe diligently set out to shape himself a new career as a merchant. He had made a modest success of his new venture when war broke out in Korea in 1950. The subsequent withdrawal of American troops from Japan to oppose the North Korean invasion of South Korea created a vacuum that was filled by the hurriedly organized Japanese National Police Reserve (NPR).

In September 1951, it was finally decided that the rule prohibiting certain former officers in the Japanese military service from holding public office should be lifted. Abe was offered the position of superintendent third class in the NPR in view of his demonstrated proficiency and wartime experience. During his refresher schooling, Abe became passably fluent in the English language.

It was on December 6, 1952, that Zenji Abe finally consented to tell his side of the story about Pearl Harbor. He began by quoting a Japanese proverb: ‘The defeated should not talk about the battle.’ He then added, ‘I can only say that I fought as I was trained in those times.’ What follows is his account.

In April 1941, I was in command of a bomber company on board the carrier Akagi. There were nine bombers in my company. All the airplanes of six carriers were assembled in several aerodomes at Kyushu, and we trained hard every day and night, without rest.

The bombers dived in at an angle of 50 to 60 degrees and released their bombs on the target at an altitude of 400 meters. Our target was a naval vessel that attempted to escape from us, and each plane used eight practice bombs on the vessel. We had some bombers that dived into the sea due to their pilots’ severe exhaustion, caused by excess training.

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