He entered the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy at Etajima, Hiroshima, in 1921, where he befriended classmate Minoru Genda and discovered an interest in flying.

[4] He gained combat experience during the Second Sino-Japanese War, when he was assigned to the aircraft carrier Kaga in 1929[5] and then to the Sasebo Air Group,[6] He was promoted to lieutenant commander on 1 December 1936 and was accepted into the Naval Staff College.

[8] On Sunday, 7 December 1941, a Japanese force under the command of Vice Admiral Chūichi Nagumo—consisting of six carriers with 423 aircraft—was ready to attack the United States base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Passing Waimea Bay at 07:49, Fuchida instructed his radio operator, Petty Officer 1st Class Norinobu Mizuki, to send the coded signal "To, To, To" (totsugekiseyo—"to charge") to the other aircraft.

Lt Cmdr Shigeharu Murata, overall leader of the torpedo bombers, observed both flares and saw Takahashi's planes gliding into attack formation.

[11] On 5 April, he led another series of air attacks by carrier-based Japanese aircraft against Royal Navy bases in Ceylon, which was the headquarters of the British Eastern Fleet, in what Winston Churchill described as "the most dangerous moment" of World War II.

Unable to fly while recovering from an emergency shipboard appendectomy a few days before the battle, he was on the ship's bridge during the morning attacks by U.S. aircraft.

When flames blocked the exit from the bridge, the officers evacuated down a rope, and as Fuchida slid down, an explosion threw him to the deck and broke both his ankles.

The day before the first nuclear weapon was dropped on Hiroshima, he was in that city to attend a week-long military conference with Japanese army officers.

He then went on to tell him of a young lady, Peggy Covell, who served them with the deepest love and respect, but whose missionary parents had been killed by Japanese soldiers on the island of Panay in the Philippines.

[16][17] In the fall of 1948, Fuchida was passing by the bronze statue of Hachikō at the Shibuya Station when he was handed a pamphlet about the life of Jacob DeShazer, a member of the Doolittle Raid who was captured by the Japanese after his B-25 bomber ran out of fuel over occupied China.

In the pamphlet, "I Was a Prisoner of Japan"[18] DeShazer, a former U.S. Army Air Forces staff sergeant and bombardier, told his story of imprisonment, torture and his account of an "awakening to God.

This was translated into English by Douglas Shinsato and Tadanori Urabe and published in 2011 under the title, "For That One Day: The Memoirs of Mitsuo Fuchida, Commander of the Attack on Pearl Harbor".

Fuchida's story is also recounted in God's Samurai: Lead Pilot at Pearl Harbor by Donald Goldstein, Katherine V. Dillon and Gordon W.

[23] In 1959, Fuchida was among a group of Japanese visiting the tour of U.S. Air Force equipment given by General Paul Tibbets, who piloted the Enola Gay that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

You know the Japanese attitude at that time, how fanatic they were, they'd die for the Emperor ... Every man, woman, and child would have resisted that invasion with sticks and stones if necessary ... Can you imagine what a slaughter it would be to invade Japan?

Fuchida was an important figure in the early portion of the Pacific War, and his written accounts, translated into English and published in the U.S., were highly influential.

This process began in Japan in 1971, with the publication of the Japanese official war history volume on the Battle of Midway, which explicitly contradicted Fuchida's version of events.

[32] Alan Zimm's 2011 Attack on Pearl Harbor: Strategy, Combat, Myths, Deceptions, reinforced and enlarged these earlier criticisms[33] and added new charges, including Fuchida having fabricated a battle damage assessment that was presented to Emperor Hirohito.

[34] Zimm subsequently accused Fuchida of lying about important decisions and signals he made as strike leader immediately prior to the attack, while blaming others for his own errors.

"[40] Parshall also disputed Fuchida's uncorroborated claims of attendance on the battleship USS Missouri during the Japanese surrender ceremony in 1945,[31] these criticisms being later amplified by Zimm.