ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — A group from the U.S. and Japan was planning to trek to a remote Pacific island jungle to document what is considered one of the most important wreck sites of World War II: where American fighters shot down a Japanese bomber carrying the mastermind of the Pearl Harbor attack.
Three members of a New York-based WWII research organization and a Japanese aviation expert had planned to visit the crash site on Bougainville, part of Papua New Guinea, on April 18, the 75th anniversary of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto’s death.
The big break for the U.S. came on April 13, 1943, when Navy code breakers discovered that Yamamoto planned to tour bases in areas of the Solomon Islands still held by Japanese forces. The admiral’s tour was scheduled for April 18.
U.S. military officials quickly approved an air mission to intercept the admiral’s plane and shoot it down.
The task fell to a squadron of Army Air Forces P-38 Lightnings based on Guadalcanal, in the Solomons.
After the pilots closely reviewed Yamamoto’s flight plan, 16 P-38s flew 400 miles west and spotted two enemy bombers over Bougainville, another island in the Solomon archipelago.
But Japan didn’t officially announce Yamamoto’s death until weeks later, saying he died aboard a warplane “while directing general strategy on the front line,’’ according to an Associated Press story on the announcement in Tokyo.
But one of the American pilots on the mission had spilled the beans almost immediately, telling everyone upon landing that he had shot down Yamamoto’s plane.
(Decades later, historians determined another pilot had fired the fatal burst). As the worst-kept secret in the Pacific spread among American troops, AP correspondent J. Norman Lodge confirmed details of the mission even before the Japanese announcement, but U.S. military censors withheld his story.
The wreckage of the Yamamoto’s Mitsubishi G4M “Betty’’ bomber remains in the jungle. Most of the plane was destroyed on impact but a large section of the tail survives. Over the decades, parts of the plane were removed and placed in museums.
The group planned to commemorate the anniversary at the site with a Shinto religious ceremony conducted by Japanese WWII aircraft expert Yoji Sakaida.
Yamamoto remains a revered figure in Japan, where a museum was established in his honor in his hometown of Nagaoka. Artifacts on display include the left wing from Yamamoto’s aircraft. Museum officials say an annual memorial event was scheduled for the morning of April 18, at nearby Yamamoto Memorial Park, where the house in which he was born once stood.