Minoru Genda

Japan state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces 1904–1989 ○ Died

Naval aviation staff officer who shaped the Pearl Harbor plan, later Air Self-Defense Force chief and LDP legislator

Born to a farming family in Hiroshima Prefecture, he graduated from the naval academy in 1924 and became a fighter pilot. An early advocate of massing aircraft from several carriers, he urged the navy to build carriers instead of battleships. In 1941 he helped Ryūnosuke Kusaka write the plan for Yamamoto's Pearl Harbor attack, ran the shallow-water torpedo training and pressed for his classmate Mitsuo Fuchida to lead the strike. He served on the carriers at Midway, and late in the war organised the elite 343rd Air Group. As chief of staff of the postwar Air Self-Defense Force he pushed through the purchase of the F-104, which drew him into the Lockheed bribery scandals. Elected to the House of Councillors for the LDP in 1962, he called for scrapping Article 9 and opposed ratifying the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.