[Milsurplus] "Yamamoto Mission Retrospective"

[Hue Miller]

Slight OT but i wanted to put the period to the sentence, regarding
a recent thread here, and i believe a few hardcore of you may find
this interesting.

"BANZAI - The Newsletter for the Collector of Japanese Militaria"
(pre-internet and now extinct for many years.) July 1988.

"Yamamoto Mission Retrospective. By John M. Scott. I would like to
report on the symposium sponsored by the Admiral Nimitz Museum...
a gathering of the people involved in the mission....[this on 4/18/1988, 
45 years to the day from the mission].

[ The venue was a local high school auditorium. Pilots Rex Barber
and Zero pilot Kenji Yanagiya as well as Saburo Sakai were in 
attendance. ]

"The surprise was that each and every survivor stated that Rex Barber
was the person who actually shot down the Type 1 bomber carrying
Yamamoto....
Thomas G. Lamphier Jr. (deceased) [statement] that he had shot down
Yamamoto, is incorrect. Several serious flaws in Lamphier's version were
pointed out....
The panelists stated they wished they had corrected Lamphier's version
at the time, but wished there had been an official debriefing in 1943...

[There was no official debriefing, to keep the secret of the intelligence
intercepts protected. ]

"[Yanagiya reports] Two hours later all six zeros returned to their home 
base. Currently, the [island] natives report that only [Yamamoto's] bomber 
and one American [P-38] plane in the jungle. The  [Houston Post, 4-20-1988]
newspaper report that the audience jeered at this point, is incorrect. It 
became quiet as this soaked in....
Apparently Yanagiya had hit Ray Hine's plane and he crashed in the jungle....

>From the Houston Post:
 " 'I cannot say honestly who shot down Yamamoto's bomber, [Col.] Holmes
said. "I wish there would have been a debriefing years ago.' Holmes said 
there were fights among pilots after other pilots challenged their stories of 
the number of Zeros shot down."

An interesting event, no doubt, this symposium. Such gatherings of actual
participants are unfortunately also only to become a thing of the past.
-Hue Miller