Why was Saburo Sakai relatively controversial during the war even to his own high command
what was it about Saburo Sakai that made him an outstanding ace not just for his victory count
but by his character and why was Saburo Sakai heralded and become friends with all of his allied
counterparts after the war actually being adopted by medal of honor recipient joe boss technically
as a brother hello I'm Colin Heaton former army and marine sniper and a former professor of
history and today we will discuss lieutenant Saburo Sakai of the Imperial Japanese navy
the greatest surviving ace of the Japanese forces in world war ii on forgotten history
Saburo Sakai was born on august 26 1916 in sago prefecture of japan his father had died and his
mother and his siblings were virtually penniless and his uncle took over looking after the family
and made sure that Saburo received a basic standard education Saburo turned out to not
be a very adept student he got bored easily and uh found that academics was not his strong suit
although he did attend a uh a school where he had a an American teacher who uh was teaching
him English for a short time after that Saburo enlisted at the age of 16 into the Imperial
Japanese navy he went through basic training which was harsh and brutal by any standard
that we know of today and became a qualified gunner he was assigned to the battleship haruna
in 1937 and later he would be accepted into flight school the japanese flight program
which was a a ruthless combination of discipline tactical training martial arts and endurance
Saburo Sakai earned his wings which was phenomenal the washout rate in Japanese flight school for the
navy was around 70 and he qualified in fighters he flew the Nakajima and Mitsubishi types the
oscar and the zero and his first posting was to china where he scored his first victories
but he was also wounded later his service would carry him to Borneo new guinea the Solomon islands
the Philippine islands where he would score 64 victories according to his log book
by the time the war was over what makes Saburo such a phenomenal pilot was what most fighter
pilots have the gift of good eyesight uh an ability to feel their aircraft but Saburo was also
a master of deflection shooting much like some of the great fighter pilots such as Hans Marseille
uh Walter Novotny and Guntheral of the Luftwaffe he was also a humanist he did
not believe in killing a man unnecessarily and when he encountered enemy pilots and
damaged their aircraft he would often give them the opportunity to jump out
and go under parachute rather than just kill them he did witness some of his own pilots shoot pilots
in parachutes which he found to be disgusting and he openly criticized it even to his superiors
he came across another pilot once and named Sutherland who he shot up very badly in a fight
in Guadalcanal and allowed him to bail out of course but Saburo had another encounter
uh even before this with a dc-3 transport which the military called the c-47 and he was flying
along with two of his wingmen and uh encountered the aircraft leaving the Dutch East Indies headed
towards Australia Saburo looked and saw the plane was full of women and children being evacuated
he opened his canopy and waved off his two wingmen and said basically no we're not going
to shoot this aircraft down he flew alongside looked at the horrified faces of the women and
the horrified faces of the pilot and the co-pilot but saw the smiling faces of the children waving
at him totally unaware of the danger that they were looking at Saburo said in his interview that
there was no way i could kill these people it was not of the bushido code it was not like a samurai
so he waved at the pilots they waved at him in astonishment and he peeled away they never
reported this incident to their superiors although it did come up later during an inquisition as to
whether or not they had encountered any enemy aircraft and Saburo stated i never can i never
encountered we never encountered any enemy combat aircraft when he didn't lie to his superiors
ironic part of the story is that 30 plus years later he went to a reunion and actually met
the co-pilot of that transport who had his wife and daughter on it the daughter now grown with
her own daughter Saburo met them and the pilot thanked him for not killing him and his family
and Saburo looked at the man who said i could not do that because that is not the way of the samurai
although some of my countrymen did not live by that same rule over the violent air war there was
raging around Guadalcanal in the Solomon islands Saburo Sakai and the squadron out of a ball were
flying nearly daily over Guadalcanal engaging the army navy and marine pilots they were stationed
at Henderson Field known as the cactus air force cactus being the call sign for going on a canal
Saburo Ota Nishizawa were the most successful pilots along with lieutenant uh Junichi Sasai
who is a squadron leader uh Sasai was killed by Marine Corps Captain Marion Carl in that air
battle with 34 victories to his credit before he died and Ota had scored a few victories and then
Saburo dived upon a formation of aircraft that he thought were f4f wildcats
it turned out there were actually sbd dauntless dive bombers with tail gunners
Saburo was engaged by several tail gunners and one shot into his canopy damaged his aircraft
and one of the 30 caliber bullets opened up his skull and blinded him permanently
in his right eye shapiro blinded by blood and in agonizing pain still managed to fly his zero
600 miles back to his airbase and land safely before he passed out they pulled him out of
the cockpit and he spent two years undergoing surgeries uh but they he was told he would never
fly again because he was blind in one eye but that turned out not to be the case and he did return to
combat and scored four more victories following his horrendous wounds and uh became a household
name in japan Saburo Sakai was not unaccustomed to being dressed down by his superiors
his lieutenant Junichi Sasai who was an honorable fighter pilot and did not believe in the murder of
civilians or killing prisoners or even parachuting airmen once had a real problem with him one day
during a an escort flight Nishizawa Ota and Sakai decided to fly over the Australian air base
at port Moresby and they flew in three ship formation and did an air show loops and turns
and just really put on a spectacular airshow for the Australians then they flew back to a ball
apparently by the time they landed Junichi Sasai called them in and had them stand at attention
and asked them what were you thinking we got this message from the Australians and Sasai who spoke
English read in japan translated in Japanese the letter received from the Australian stating
they were very impressed with the air show by your pilots could you please send them
back so we could have a better chance of shooting them down something without effect so they were
ordered never to do any sort of aerial displays or showing off over enemy airfields just hit the
airfield and get back and of course it became a private joke amongst the fighter squadron
and uh but Sakai followed the order and he never did it again the Japanese pilots were some of the
best trained pilots in the world they had the the best aircraft for maneuverability
uh up until 1944 the Japanese fighter pilot was probably the best trained with the most hours in
training and uh was in his own comfort zone flying his fighter but losses after the battle the coral
sea the battle of midway and just the fighting in the south pacific whittled down the fighter force
the Japanese suffered from several deficiencies not the least of which was their combat flying
formation before world war ii the standard flight formation was called a three-ship formation of v
for vic for three aircraft the Germans adopted the finger four formation created by Vernon Moulders
in the Spanish civil war later adopted by the Americans and the commonwealth countries and
the British uh the Japanese never adopted that so that left them kind of in a vulnerable spot
in a very tight dogfight the other thing about the Japanese aircraft
without having armored plate for the pilots and without having self-sealing fuel tanks
the Japanese aircraft the oscars the zeros and other models were very easy targets for
American pilots if they could get good incendiary hits in those areas and armor-piercing rounds
through the cockpit Japanese pilots often flew without radios because they were heavy
and not having the radio in the aircraft not having armor plate gave the zeros and the other
aircraft greater range but it also gave them great maneuverability and great climbing speed
they could not out dive the wild cats and hellcats they encountered but they could not
climb them until the hellcat arrived and Saburo Sakai and his other pilots found out the hard way
that when they mistakenly thought a flight of hellcats were wildcats that they had
combated before turned out to be an entirely new aircraft the hellcat could climb with the zero
and the oscar it could not out turn or outmaneuver as well but it was good enough
with the combat tactical formations flown by the navy marine corps pilots in the corsairs hellcats
that the Japanese pilots began suffering horrendous losses they could never be replaced
Sakai later became a warrant officer and then a commissioned officer as a lieutenant which gave
him access to confidential information after Saburo had his security clearance and was able
to go through a lot of the actual after-action reports of what had happened he realized the
Japanese people were being lied to the disaster of midway the previous stalemate of the coral sea
other battles where the Japanese were losing ships and men in large numbers aircraft being
swept from the skies was not public knowledge the Japanese people only heard about victory after
victory after victory in a propaganda platform that rivaled the Germans Saburo didn't realize
the rumors he had heard were true there had been atrocities occurring in china and elsewhere and
it uh it demoralized him after the war Saburo wanted his government to be held accountable
he wanted his government to acknowledge as had the Germans that war crimes had been committed
Chinese civilians had been massacred 300 000 in Nanking alone had been killed
atrocities in the Philippines against American prisons of war where he had flown and shot down
one of the first b-7 teams in the pacific theater killing captain Colin p Kelly
he had learned about the baton death march he learned all of these things and what had
happened with the Koreans and the comfort women after the war he gathered more information
Saburo became a pariah to his government because the Japanese government to this day has never
fully acknowledged the war crimes they committed against civilians and allied prisoners of war
they have done some contrition to the Koreans and the Chinese verbally but they've never done
anything of the magnitude that the Germans did to make restitution Saburo wanted to change that
and because of his sense of honor and because of his
deep feeling of guilt about what had happened he found allies with his former enemies
that he had fought against the men who tried to kill him during the war and whom he tried
to kill became his staunchest supporters in trying to have his government changed their
course of action with regard to the post-war propaganda which eradicated the war and the
atrocities committed from being learned by their students in schools and by their public at large
the Americans and the British and other pilots from the war respected him that honored him
medal of honor recipient uh captain later uh General Joe Foss and Saburo became very close
friends and Joe Foss was his biggest supporter and Saburo was welcomed at reunions here in the
united states and around the world he was a guest of honor at many American reunions because they
respected him as a fellow warrior and a fellow pilot they respected him because he was a decent
human being and i knew him personally in his interviews came out with a sense of severe
guilt and extreme melancholy after he had been unable to have his government fulfill his wishes
and at least honor the dead and be truthful to the world about what they had done Saburo died in 2002
at a reunion being held in japan of a heart attack or cerebral hemorrhage possibly both
and when he died he was heralded more by his former enemies than he ever was by his own country
which is a tragic end to a man who fought with honor who had 64 victories in his logbook
and who believed that life was the most precious thing that you should not take it lightly Saburo
Sakai fought an honorable chivalrous war in a war that was mired by criminality and contradictions
he became a legend because of his conduct and his actions as a pilot
he became a hero to his former enemies for his forthrightness and his willingness to try to
have his government take it not or at least acknowledge what they had done during the war
he set the standard for the bushido code that the Japanese hurled it throughout the war yet
often violated Saburo was a man of honor and he was someone i called a friend with all the
battles Saburo Sakai fought in world war ii his greatest fight was after the war fighting
to have his government acknowledge the crimes they had committed and to make restitution to
those people in those countries that have been harmed by the Japanese actions during the war
Saburo would not be happy today with the lack of contrition that his country has never shown
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