But first, you and I must come to an agreement. We're bound to our respective countries; we are bound to our respective leaders, who have made agreements and treaties.
"You are bound to the United States. I am bound to the United States. Our two governments have certain binding ties. Now, we've lived in peace for nearly a century. We mustn't tear down our two countries for our own selfish purposes.
"For instance, Japan is in need of certain raw materials and supplies. We share their need. They need certain materials we don't have. Japan needs oil, we have oil. They need iron, we have iron. They need cotton, we have cotton.
"They need copper, and we have copper. So, from the American point of view, I see no reason why we cannot work together. Why cannot we come to a common understanding?"
"Yes, that's true, but," General Shigeru replies, "I don't believe that the emperor has any rights to make treaties. I believe the emperor should maintain his dignity. The emperor will decide for himself whether he wants to sign a treaty."
But Yamamoto insists that it's the emperor who should decide. "From what I know about your government," he says, "the only government that holds the legal right to sign treaties and make alliances is the Japanese government. We have no treaty with the U.S., so the emperor has the legal authority to make a treaty with the United States.
"Now, that the emperor is sovereign, I want to give him a chance to decide for himself what he wants to do. If he agrees to sign the Tripartite Pact, then I will send you a signed copy of that treaty. If the emperor does not agree, then I will do everything in my power to prevent that treaty from ever being signed."
Yamamoto's message has a strong effect on Prince Konoye, who, during the rest of the meeting, keeps his eyes downcast, avoiding the gaze of the American delegation. "Mr. Shigeru Yamamoto," Konoye says, "if I may say so, I think you'd better not do that."
"Why not?" says Shigeru. "In my opinion, all the emperor needs to do is show the people the will to make a pact with our ally, the United States."
Then Konoye informs Yamamoto, "I have an announcement to make. The emperor will not sign any treaty."
General MacArthur makes a dramatic return to the Pacific aboard the USS Missouri and the USS West Virginia. Both of these massive battleships have been converted to carriers, now known as the _Lexington_ and the _Ranger_. After a fifteen-day voyage, the task force arrives in the Philippine Sea. The new carriers are still being outfitted, so their flights can be brief.
Lieutenant Commander James Grissom is a flight officer aboard the USS _Lexington_. "The next morning," he says, "we were getting ready to launch our first mission. In the cockpit, I have a young pilot sitting next to me, a new guy who is just entering the naval aviation service. We are supposed to fly out to some fighter group. The orders were to land on the deck.
"We were ready to go, and I was about to taxi the _Lexington_ out, when the air officer tells us, 'Oh, wait a minute; the admiral's just been notified about a meeting. He's on his way, and he wants you to wait for him.' I guess he didn't think we were going to get an order like that, so he goes to the admiral and tells him, 'He's ready to go.'
"But we wait. There is a great deal of confusion. We're ready to go, and they tell us not to go."
Finally, four hours later, Admiral Nimitz arrives on the _Lexington_. "What is going on here?" he asks. "I mean, the carrier is ready to launch, the plane is ready to launch, and he won't go."
Grissom and his pilot, Bob Fiske, are standing at attention when Nimitz gets there. Grissom is twenty-one years old and is a veteran of two combat missions in the Mediterranean. He has received the Distinguished Flying Cross for heroic combat service on five different occasions. Fiske is an Army Air Force rookie, but he also has a Distinguished Flying Cross and he is a graduate of the flight school at Pensacola. "We were the first men in two years to complete combat carrier qualification," Fiske says. "And the admiral wouldn't let us go."
"So," Nimitz asks, "who is going to go?"
"We're the pilots," Fiske answers.
Nimitz orders the carrier to launch. It is one of the most dramatic stories in the history of naval aviation. "The war in the Pacific has raged on for months," Grissom says, "and now it's a question of survival. The Pacific Fleet has been reduced to six carriers. Our mission is to relieve the _Yorktown_ and the _Princeton_ , and that will give us a force of seven.
"We have fighter planes to escort our mission to Saipan, to cover us. We'll go in pairs. I'm the second pilot in the squadron; the first is Bob Fiske. We'll be in a squadron of seven. And we'll be escorted by four fighters."
The new aircraft are known as VF-2 Avengers. At the beginning of the flight, Bob Fiske gives Grissom a brief history of the plane he and Grissom are flying, and Grissom answers him. "We've only flown three of the Avengers," Grissom says. "We've only flown this plane twice. It's brand new. So, I've got to tell you all that it's quite a plane, because it really is a marvel of engineering."
The weather is fair, and it is time to launch the mission. At last, Grissom and Fiske are leaving the carrier for their first combat mission. Grissom says, "They get in the front door, and we go out the rear. And the whole crowd in the control tower starts to cheer. They're looking up at this new fighter pilot coming out. They're cheering."
Fiske takes off first.
"Fiske, I hope you make it home," Grissom says.
"Amen," Fiske answers.
Grissom then takes off.
"They're cheering and waving," he says, "and you get the feeling it's going to be a happy flight."
In the distance, the Japanese fleet continues moving toward the American carriers. At the end of two hours, the flight has been uneventful.
The first Japanese planes are in the air, and the fighters are in the air. Grissom hears a sound like an airliner going down. He has flown fighter planes for eight months, and this is the first time he has heard an aircraft engine sound like this.
Grissom pulls his plane up to two thousand feet, then to a thousand feet, and he begins to circle the _Lexington_. "The guy next to me," he says, "is getting out of the cockpit and saying, 'What's going on? What's going on?'
"A few minutes later, I notice my wingman in trouble. The plane is starting to come down, and I'm ready to come in and land. It's about one hundred degrees below zero, and his engine's running out of gas. We go down, and we land. I climb out of the cockpit, and they're asking me, 'What's going on? What's going on?'
"I look at my wingman, and he's in a lot of trouble. 'My fuel tank is punctured,' he says, 'and I'm running out of gas. I'm all set to land.' "
Grissom continues his story. "I tell them what the problem is, and they say, 'Get him down. Get him down.' They want me to help land this guy.
"So I go to my wingman and say, 'You better get out of the cockpit.' And he says, 'Oh, my God, I'm getting out of here.'
"The rest of the flight, we're all thinking about this incident. Then we get back to the _Lexington_. The flight engineer tells us we're the first seven-ship unit in the Pacific. The admiral is furious. We didn't get an order. We didn't get the right order. We didn't get clearance to launch. We didn't have a proper rendezvous with our escort squadron. We were supposed to rendezvous with the escorts, and they were nowhere around.
"I just thought, This has to be one of the most embarrassing moments of my life."
Admiral Nimitz is furious, and he immediately orders a full investigation into this incident. Grissom's orders, however, are to go back and fly with the squadron that was supposed to go with the fighters.
After the mission, a Navy investigation board is formed to conduct the inquiry. Lieutenant Commander Grissom and Lieutenant Fiske give separate statements.
Lieutenant Fiske explains that the fighters never left the scene of the _Lexington_. "They're right in our flight path," he says. "We could have seen them going down, but we couldn't see them. The Japanese are flying all over the Pacific. Our escort mission was supposed to stay right with us, but there was no escort there.
"I tell this to the board of inquiry. And I ask if we should have waited for an order. And they say, 'Well, you're the first pilot who's done this and completed combat carrier qualification. You didn't ask for an order, and we didn't give you one. So you did the right thing.'
"I tell them that this whole thing has been a learning experience for me. When we return to Pearl Harbor, we'll have a chance to teach our escort squadron some of the finer points of carrier flight."
But Grissom tells a different story. He says that Lieutenant Commander Henry Lien, the first skipper of the VF-2 squadron, told him that he was never given a specific order to launch his unit. He was told to be ready to launch, that his unit would be escorted by four fighters, and that he would be escorted to a location in the vicinity of the enemy carrier fleet. "I had to do the same thing that Fiske did," Grissom says. "I didn't have a specific order."
In his opening statement, Grissom describes how he feels when Nimitz refuses to authorize him to fly the next combat mission. He goes on to talk about the great sacrifice the pilots make to do their duty. "We're the ones who carry out the decisions of the admirals. In this case, we do not get a direct order from Nimitz. He tells us not to go.
"He doesn't tell us not to go. We do not have a specific order to land. We do not have a specific order to return. We just decide not to land. There's a lot of gray, and that's the part I don't like. I want a simple yes or no answer. And we don't get that. All I get is excuses. We go to San Diego and wait and wait for this whole mess to get straightened out. We were told that we would go over again, but they didn't tell us when."
When Grissom returns from San Diego, the _Lexington_ has changed commanders. Captain Ralph Spangler has taken over, and, although he tries to continue with the mission, the orders to leave the carriers and rejoin the squadron are canceled.
The pilots, however, go back again and fight against the enemy. On June 17, Admiral Spangler's plane, the _Saratoga_ , is hit by one of the Japanese planes, which results in one fatal injury.
The next day, June 18, Spangler is on the flight deck of the _Lexington_ , and he watches his flight of Avengers take off, knowing that they will probably be flying against the Japanese fleet. The squadron, however, is delayed, and it is not until the day after that the squadron's first attack.
The Japanese fleet, with its big carriers, is well into the Central Pacific, about a thousand miles from the combat area. But this area is not secure, and the pilots are warned that there will be a risk of an encounter with the Japanese fleet. The squadron's mission is to fly against the Japanese fleet.
During the flight, which lasts three hours, they encounter several Japanese planes, but nothing is serious. "We take the biggest chance there is in fighter combat," Grissom says. "This is where it could all be over with in a minute. We're sitting there with about six hundred pounds of fuel, flying right over the Imperial fleet."
As they fly over the fleet, the squadron members have a sense of exhilaration. The pilots are aware that their aircraft are extremely vulnerable. All of them have been trained for the possibility of a crash, but they're not particularly nervous. One pilot even laughs at the thought that the whole squadron could be lost, just like that, in a matter of seconds.
The pilots and their planes perform flawlessly.
Lieutenant Commander Grissom, still the air boss of the unit, gets the first attack. His aircraft is hit by a Japanese plane, but he is not seriously injured. The aircraft, however, is not properly maintained. "I look over at the engine," Grissom recalls, "and the cowling of the air intake is cracked. And it's just a loose fit. I had to have it taken off.
"The next attack, I'm up in the cockpit. A plane is coming at me, and I hit the ejection button.
"I look down and the canopy is gone. And the plane is still coming at me, and I pull my chute. And I hear a noise. I look down, and the plane's coming at me. And I'm going into an inverted spin.
"I pull the trigger, and my trigger pulls the handle, and the rip cord flies out of the aircraft, but my chute isn't fully deployed. I'm going in a spin, and I hear a noise, like an air compressor. The plane's hit me, and it flips me up. I look down, and I'm just hanging there, and I go to open my chute. I can't get it open. I pull the rip cord, and the chute goes out.
"I start to go inverted, and I still hear that noise, and I start to fall to the ground. And then I remember, 'Oh my God.' I don't have a chute, and I start to feel panic.
"I'm just a hundred feet in the air. I'm falling, and I remember the story of the boy that fell from the Statue of Liberty. I'm thinking, 'This is one way I'm going to die. This is it.'
"Then all of a sudden, I'm coming out of the spin, and there's an airplane down there in a flat spin, and I go by it, and I'm coming out of the spin, and I think I'm over land.
"And I start to fall to the ground, and I feel a bump in the back of my neck, and I know that I've been hit. I don't have any idea how it happened. I look down, and I see blood coming out of my left shoulder.
"I look around, and I'm looking for my ship. And I see a tail gunner, and I go over to him and tell him I'm in trouble. I say, 'Can you help me?'
"I see him going out to try and help me. He reaches down and grabs me by my right foot and starts to pull me up. He's got me over in his lap, and he's helping me out of the cockpit, and he starts to talk to me.
"I feel really, really bad because of the accident, but he's so nice to me. He says, 'What's your name?' I tell him my name. He says, 'Are you all right?' I say, 'I'm all right, I guess.' He says, 'I'm getting you out of this cockpit, and I'm taking you home.' He takes me to the medical ship, and they take care of me."
Lieutenant Commander Grissom says that he is lucky that he wasn't killed. "You don't think about dying. You go up, and the last thing you remember is going down. You don't think about life, or about death. It's just part of the job."
The air boss of the unit has his wounds treated, and he is then taken to the medical ship, where he meets his wife, Betty. In the next two weeks, he's flown three more times, making several contacts with enemy planes, and one of them is a probable kill. On June 24, Admiral Spangler turns over the squadron to Captain Fiske, who has won his wings as a fighter pilot on the _Lexington_ in January 1941.
On June 28, the squadron is ordered to return to Pearl Harbor. Grissom sees the last of the _Lexington_ , and he watches the American battleships, escorted by the carriers, head back to Hawaii.
On July 2, the _Hornet_ squadron flies against the Japanese fleet, and in the fight several Avengers are shot down by enemy fighters. Commander Fiske is the air boss, and he is killed when a Zero hits the plane in which he is flying. The American pilots are unable to land at Midway because of enemy aircraft and because of low fuel.
When the _Hornet_ returns to Pearl Harbor, Grissom is informed that the squadron is going to be used as a training unit. "The war is over for us. No one wants to train you anymore," Grissom says.
Grissom is not pleased with the action of the squadron. "We feel we're over there in the middle of a war. All we were doing was training. If you want a training squadron, why don't you put it in Australia? It's a lot easier to train somebody when he's on the beach, you know?
"You don't fly a whole war, you know. But here we were, training and doing training. Training is a waste of time. But you don't tell that to
