Samurai! chronicles the story of Saburo Sakai, who, at the time this book was first published in 1957, was Japan's greatest living WWII ace. He was born in Saga, on the island of Kyushu, in 1916. He attended local schools and did well in his studies, but when he enrolled in a more demanding school in Tokyo, he found he could no longer rank as high, and as a result became a disciplinary problem. Subsequently, he was dismissed. Rather than return to Saga and face certain disgrace, he enlisted in the Imperial Japanese Navy in 1933 at the age of sixteen.
Recruit training in the Japanese Navy of the time was harsh and brutal, yet Sakai persevered, and after serving aboard ship and rising in rank, he applied for flight training and was accepted. In spite of minimal education and little aptitude for formal study, he managed to finish at the top of his enlisted pilot training class in 1937.
Sakai soon became a living legend in World War II Japan. Among fighter pilots, he stood out, being the only Japanese ace never to lose a wingman, overshoot a landing--no matter how shot up his aircraft--or crash-land. Japanese Pilots invariably spoke in awe of his incredible exploits in the air.
Indeed, there are few aviators of the Pacific War who can claim the vast combat experience personally described in this book. From aerial combat in the skies over China in 1937, to various venues generally familiar only to Second World War veterans or historians, such as Lae in New Guinea, Java in the Dutch Indies, Formosa, Guadalcanal, and Iwo Jima, Sakai was there, establishing himself as one of the most capable adversaries in the air war. But he was not in the Battle of Midway, and he did not participate in the Battle of the Coral Sea.
One particular episode occurring in the skies over the hotly contested island of Guadalcanal in the Solomons in 1942 I found particularly riveting. During this air battle, Sakai suffered disastrous wounds that almost cost him his life. In his own words, he gives a chilling account of what it was like to face what seemed certain death as he tried to make it home to his airfield on the island of Rabaul, New Britain:
The chattering roar of the guns and the cough of the cannon drowned out all other sound. The enemy planes were only twenty yards in front of me when flames spurted from two bombers. That was all I saw. A violent explosion smashed at my body...the world burst red and I went blind.
Several seconds must have passed before I regained consciousness. A strong, cold wind blowing in through the shattered windshield brought me to. But I was still not in control of my senses...a stupor clouded my brain...I blinked several times. What was wrong? Everything was so red! I groped blindly with my hand. The stick. I had it. Still unable to see, I pulled the stick back. Gently. The plane began to recover from its wild plummeting. I felt the pressure push me into the seat as the Zero eased out of the dive and returned to what must have been level flight. A wild, pannicky thought gripped me. I might be blind! I'd never have a chance to return to Rabaul.
My whole left side seemed to be paralyzed...I could feel nothing...I had been hit. Badly. But I could feel nothing.
My cheeks were wet. I was crying; the tears poured out...the tears were washing some of the blood out of my eyes...
Sudden pain engulfed me. My right eye! The pain was becoming unbearable. I placed my hand over my right eye again; my vision remained the same. I was blind in the eye!
I felt a stabbing pain in my head, then another...as if a blunt-edged hammer had struck me against the skull. I still had the silk muffler around my neck. I untied the knot...and began to squeeze the muffler below the edge of the helmet, working it into the (head) wound. Finally I was through...I brought the fighter back to an even level...the bleeding stopped...
More than once I fell asleep...more than once I snapped awake to find the Zero in an inverted position. The drowsiness...the Zero flew on slowly. I had less than two hours in which to reach a Japanese-held island. Less than two hours to live. If I failed...
Finally, another island, dead ahead...I recognized the mountains. This was New Ireland...I knew that if I could cross the peaks...I could make Rabaul...The fuel gauge showed barely twenty minutes of flight time remaining. Then the familiar volcano showed over the horizon. I had done it! Rabaul was in sight!
After the fourth circle of the field, I went in for another landing attempt...The coconut trees on the edge of the field loomed before my eyes...Now I was over the runway. There was a sharp jolt as the Zero struck the ground. The Zero rolled to a halt near the Command Post. I tried to grin, and a wave of blackness swept over me. From a great distance I heard voices calling my name...I tried to stand up. I gripped the edge of the cockpit and rose to my feet. It was Rabaul. It was no dream, after all! Then I collapsed, helpless.
I realize the inappropriateness of such an extended quote, but I was so struck by the sheer power of this passage that I felt compelled to include a synopsis, and it refused to compress further without significant loss of effectiveness. Flyers who witnessed the scene described above stated that two bombers went down under Sakai's guns, even as his Zero plummeted 7,000 feet toward the water. On landing, Sakai was found to have paralyzing wounds in his left leg and upper arm, permanent blindness in his right eye and temporary blindness in his left, jagged pieces of metal in his back and chest, and the heavy fragments of two fifty caliber machine gun bullets imbedded in his skull. If he had never flown again, this unimaginable feat of flying 560 miles in four and a half hours in that condition would have commended Sakai to combat aviation history, but his story doesn't end there; Sakai went on to fly in combat again two years later, and further distinguished himself at Iwo Jima.
Toward the end of the war, Sakai was called home to train new pilots, but by then the handwriting was clearly on the wall. Contrary to Japan's relentless propaganda machine, he could see first hand that his country was losing the war. The struggle ended fourteen months later, and for nearly a decade afterward, Saburo Sakai carefully assembled his memoir, Ozora No Samurai, which became the English Samurai!.
Sakai's longevity is responsible for the unique historical perpective lent by Samurai! Few of his contemporaries were first-to-last warriors, logging combat hours from China before the beginning of WWII to the home islands eight years later. Of the five leading Japanese aces during the war--all of whom were friends--only Sakai remained at war's end. Sakai had logged some 3,700 flight hours by 1945, 1,700 of those in the Mitsubishi A6M Zero Series fighter, the finest combat aircraft in the world in the early days of the war.
Two people assisted Sakai in preparing the English edition of this book, Fred Saito, an English-speaking Japanese newspaperman, and writer Martin Caidin. Caidin is known for other corroborations with former Japanese naval officers, and has produced Zero!: The Story of Japan's Air War in the Pacific, among other titles.
I must admit I was plagued by negative emotions as I began reading this book. As an American, and retired Navy, I was bothered by the braggadocio Sakai exuded as he reveled over Allied kills during the first months of the war, and I admit it was difficult to continue the reading. But I did, with the hope of finding a more level-headed assessment of the war from this Japanese warrior in the end, and I was not disappointed. But before that, I had to remind myself repeatedly that he, also, just as our flyers on the Allied side, was only doing his best to defend his country and his way of life. The politics of the war, for him, was something over which he had no control. And as the war drug on, Sakai's outlook did change, from one of heady celebration of Japanese victories to grim realization of the true Japanese position, and he doesn't mince words in this memoir. Suprisingly, though there must have been some bitterness as he thought of the tremendous sacrifices he and his fellow comrades-in-arms made for their country, very little of that shines through in this thrilling dialogue.
This is one of the few historical accounts I have found in English that documents the Pacific War from the Japanese perspective, and it was a pure joy to read. I highly recommend it.
Samurai! is one of the Classics in Naval Literature series from the Annapolis Press.
Last Revised: 22Nov03
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