Minoru Genda (16 August 1904 – 15 August 1989) was the Chief of Staff of the Japan Air Self-Defense Force from 1959 to 1962, succeeding Sadamu Sanagi and preceding Takeshi Matsuda. As an aviation officer, he helped in planning the Attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.
Biography[]
Minoru Genda tying on his rising sun headband before the Attack on Pearl Harbor
Minoru Genda was born on 16 August 1904 in Kake, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan. He graduated from the Imperial Japanese Navy Academy in 1924 and took flight training courses from 1928 to 1929, graduating with honors to become a fighter pilot. In 1931, he was assigned to the aircraft carrier Akagi, and he served with the Second Combined Air Group during the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Unlike other Japanese naval tacticians, he realized the value of massing aircraft carriers to launch airborne attacks rather than using a single carrier, and he helped Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto with the planning of the Attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 at the recommendation of Captain Mitsuo Fuchida. 18 US Navy warships were sunk or damaged and 180+ aircraft destroyed in the brilliant attack, and Genda had over 3,000 flight hours during the war. After the war, he served as Chief of Staff of the Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF), and he died on 15 August 1989, 44 years to the day after Japan's surrender at the end of World War II and a day before his 85th birthday.