The Imperial Japanese Navy's First Air Fleet, six aircraft carriers and dozens of escort ships under Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, departed the remote, fog-shrouded Hitokappu Bay in the Kurils. Maintaining strict radio silence and taking a northern route to avoid shipping lanes, the fleet steamed toward Hawaii for the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor eleven days later, an operation that would draw the United States fully into World War II.
Hitokappu Bay was chosen precisely because it was so remote and miserable, a fog-bound anchorage in the Kuril Islands with almost no civilian population to notice the largest carrier task force ever assembled quietly gathering. Six carriers, Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, Hiryu, Shokaku, and Zuikaku, carried over 400 aircraft between them, escorted by battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and submarines.
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who had studied at Harvard and traveled widely in America, personally doubted Japan could win a prolonged war against U.S. industrial might, but he designed the Pearl Harbor strike as a knockout blow meant to buy Japan six months to a year of unimpeded conquest in Southeast Asia. Nagumo carried sealed orders and could still recall the fleet if diplomacy in Washington succeeded.
The fleet observed absolute radio silence for the entire eleven-day crossing, even disabling non-essential transmitters, a discipline that kept American intelligence, despite having broken Japanese diplomatic codes, from detecting the fleet's approach. On December 7, 1941, its aircraft struck Pearl Harbor, killing over 2,400 Americans and pulling the United States into a war Yamamoto had feared Japan could not ultimately win.
Key people: Chuichi Nagumo, Isoroku Yamamoto