World War II Database

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseCaptain Taisuke Ito was a naval aviator with 21 years of service and over 2,000 hours of flight time. At the start of the Pacific War, he was an aviation officer with the Fifth Fleet, participating in the planning and implementation of the Aleutian Islands operation that began in Jun 1942. Between Nov 1942 and May 1944, he served in Tokyo with Naval Headquarters. From May 1944 to Jul 1944, he served at Saipan then Peleliu as an air officer, returning to Japan in Nov 1944. After the war ended, he was interrogated by Captain J. S. Russell of the United States Navy in Tokyo on 11 Oct 1945; Russell commented Ito as an "intelligent and cooperative" officer who provided good intelligence on the Aleutian operations from his memory; he spoke from memory because all records of the Aleutian Islands operations were destroyed on 14 Aug 1945 when the war ended with Emperor Showa's radio address. Ito shared with Russell that the Aleutian Islands and Midway Atoll were meant to be taken together at the same time so that a defensive naval patrol could be set up between the two locations to prevent attacks on Japan from sailing through this region. The locations could also serve as staging points from an invasion on the rest of the Hawaiian Islands, but no invasion plans for the remainder of Alaska were discussed. It was his opinion that when the Midway operation failed, the Aleutians operation should had been given up.