Victory
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Biography
The most famous Japanese ace on Zero fighter, Saburo Sakai, proclaims that his greatest success during the war was not to have shot down more than 60 planes, but to have never retreated in more than 200 dogfights. Born in the countryside in 1916, into a poor family in the Saga region, this son of a samurai entered the Navy in May 1933 to escape the shame of failure in college.
Sakai Saburo (1916-2000) was a Japanese fighter ace in World War II.
Saburo Sakai was born in Saga on August 25, 1916 in Japan, in a family with samurai ancestors, but leading a life of farmers. His studies did not bear fruit.
On May 31, 1933, at the age of 16, Sakai enlisted in the Japanese Navy. First he served as a turret gunner until 1936 when he was accepted into a pilot training school, from which he received a diploma in 1937 as an aircraft carrier pilot. He participated in real aerial combat at the beginning of the Sino-Japanese war between 1938-1939 and was wounded. Later he was chosen to fly the famous Mitsubishi A6M on a zero for the fights over China.
After the war with the USA begins, he participates in the attack on the Philippines. In early 1942 he was transferred to Tarakan in Borneo and fought in the Dutch East Indies. He achieves 13 aerial victories before falling ill. When he recovered, three months later, in April, he joined Second Lieutenant Junishi Sasai's squadron in New Guinea.
On August 7, 1942 he was seriously injured in combat over Guadalcanal and lost his right eye. He manages to bring his plane back and endures a long surgery without anesthesia. He was disabled again in Japan for five months and then spent a year training new combat pilots. In April 1944 he transferred to Yokosuka Air Wing which was deployed to Iwo Jima. It only flies on short sorties but shoots down four Allied fighters before the war is over.
During the war, Sakai shot down 64 allied planes, most of them American. He was one of only three of his original unit to survive the war.
After the war, Sakai retired from the army with the rank of lieutenant. He became a Buddhist acolyte and ran a printing shop. Later he also visited the United States and met several of his former adversaries.
In 1982, Saburo Sakai shook hands with Harold L. Jones, one of the SBD machine gunners who injured him. Residing in Tokyo, he sometimes gives emotional lectures and continues to write books. Although blind in his right eye, Sakai managed to complete three "holes in one shot" in golf.
Saburo Sakai died of a heart attack on September 22, 2000 during of a meeting at Atsugi Naval Airport.