Saburō Sakai (坂井 三郎, Sakai Saburō; 25 August 1916 – 22 September 2000) was a Japanese naval aviator and flying ace ("Gekitsui-O", 撃墜王) of the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II. Sakai had 28 aerial victories, including shared ones, according to official Japanese records, though he and his ghostwriter Martin Caidin claimed much higher numbers.
Saburō Sakai was born on 25 August 1916 in Saga Prefecture, Japan. He was born into a family with an immediate affiliation to the samurai and their warrior legacies. Their ancestors were themselves samurai and had taken part in the Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–1598) but were later forced to take up a livelihood of farming after haihan-chiken in 1871. He was the third-born of four sons (his given name literally means "third son") and had three sisters. Sakai was 11 when his father died, which left his mother alone to raise seven children. With limited resources, Sakai was adopted by his maternal uncle, who financed his education in a Tokyo high school. However, Sakai failed to do well in his studies and was sent back to Saga after his second year.
On 31 May 1933, at the age of 16, Sakai enlisted in the Imperial Japanese Navy as a Sailor Fourth Class (Seaman Recruit) (四等水兵) at the Sasebo Naval Base. Sakai described his experiences as a naval recruit:
The petty officers would not hesitate to administer the severest beatings to recruits they felt deserving of punishment. Whenever I committed a breach of discipline or an error in training, I was dragged physically from my cot by a petty officer. 'Stand tall to the wall! Bend down, Recruit Sakai!' he would roar. 'I am not doing this because I hate you, but because I like you and want you to make a good seaman. Bend down!' And with that he would swing a large stick of wood and with every ounce of strength he possessed would slam it against my upturned bottom. The pain was terrible, the force of the blows unremitting.
There was no choice but to grit my teeth and struggle desperately not to cry out. At times I counted up to forty crashing impacts into my buttocks. Often I fainted from the pain. A lapse into unconsciousness constituted no escape however. The petty officer simply hurled a bucket of cold water over my prostrate form and bellowed for me to resume position, whereupon he continued his 'discipline' until satisfied I would mend the error of my ways.
After completing his training the following year, Sakai graduated as a Sailor Third Class (Ordinary Seaman) (三等水兵). He then served aboard the battleship Kirishima for one year. In 1935, he successfully passed the competitive examinations for the Naval Gunners' School. Sakai was promoted to Sailor Second Class (Able Seaman) (二等水兵) in 1936, and served on the battleship Haruna as a turret gunner. He received successive promotions to Sailor First Class (Leading Seaman) (一等水兵) and to Petty Officer Third Class (三等兵曹). In early 1937, he applied for and was accepted into the navy pilot training program. He graduated first in his class at Tsuchiura in 1937 and earned a silver watch, which was presented to him by Emperor Hirohito. Sakai graduated as a carrier pilot although he was never assigned to aircraft-carrier duty. One of Sakai's classmates was Jūzō Mori, who graduated as a carrier pilot and served on the Japanese aircraft carrier Sōryū by flying Nakajima B5N torpedo bombers early in the war.
Promoted to Petty Officer Second Class (二等兵曹) in 1938, Sakai took part in aerial combat flying the Mitsubishi A5M at the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1938–1939 and was wounded in action. Later, he was selected to fly the Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero fighter in combat over China.
When Japan attacked the Western Allies in 1941, Sakai participated in the attack on the Philippines as a member of the Tainan Air Group. On 8 December 1941, Sakai flew one of 45 Zeros from the Tainan Kōkūtai (a Kōkūtai was an Air Group) that attacked Clark Air Base in the Philippines. In his first combat against Americans, he shot down a Curtiss P-40 Warhawk and destroyed two B-17 Flying Fortresses by strafing them on the ground. Sakai flew missions the next day during heavy weather.
On the third day of the battle, Sakai claimed to have shot down a B-17, flown by Captain Colin P. Kelly. Sakai, who has often been credited with the victory, was a Shotai leader engaged in this fight with the bomber although he and his two wingmen do not appear to have been given official credit for it.
Early in 1942, Sakai was transferred to Tarakan Island in Borneo and fought in the Dutch East Indies. The Japanese high command instructed fighter patrols to down all enemy aircraft that were encountered, whether they were armed or not. On a patrol with his Zero over Java, just after he had shot down an enemy aircraft, Sakai encountered a civilian Dutch Douglas DC-3 flying at low altitude over dense jungle. Sakai initially assumed that it was transporting important people and signaled to its pilot to follow him, but the pilot did not obey. Sakai descended and approached the DC-3. He then saw a blonde woman and a young child through a window, along with other passengers. The woman reminded him of Mrs. Martin, an American who occasionally had taught him as a child in middle school and had been kind to him. He ignored his orders, flew ahead of the pilot, and signaled him to go ahead. The pilot and the passengers saluted him. Sakai did not mention the encounter in the aerial combat report.
During the Borneo Campaign, Sakai achieved 13 more victories before he was grounded by illness. When he recovered three months later in April, Petty Officer First Class Sakai joined a squadron (chutai) of the Tainan Kōkūtai under Sub-Lieutenant Junichi Sasai at Lae, New Guinea. Over the next four months, he scored the majority of his victories in flying against American and Australian pilots based at Port Moresby.
A myth has been perpetuated over time but declared to be product of the imagination of Martin Caidin, the co-author of Sakai's book "Samurai." Supposedly, on the night of 16 May, Sakai and his colleagues, Hiroyoshi Nishizawa and Toshio Ota, were listening to a broadcast of an Australian radio program, and Nishizawa recognized the eerie "Danse Macabre" of Camille Saint-Saëns. Inspired, Nishizawa is said to have come up with the idea of doing demonstration loops over the enemy airfield. The next day, his squadron included fellow aces Hiroyoshi Nishizawa and Toshio Ōta. At the end of an attack on Port Moresby, which had involved 18 Zeros, the trio performed three tight loops in close formation over the allied air base. Nishizawa indicated that he wanted to repeat the performance. Diving to 6,000 ft (1,800 m), the three Zeros did three more loops without receiving any AA fire from the ground. The following day, a lone Allied bomber flew over the Lae airfield and dropped a note attached to a long cloth ribbon. A soldier picked up the note and delivered to the squadron commander. It read (paraphrased): "Thank you for the wonderful display of aerobatics by three of your pilots. Please pass on our regards and inform them that we will have a warm reception ready for them, next time they fly over our airfield." The squadron commander was furious and reprimanded the three pilots for their stupidity, but the Tainan Kōkūtai's three leading aces felt that Nishizawa's aerial choreography of the Danse Macabre had been worth it.
On 3 August 1942, Sakai's air group was relocated from Lae to the airfield at Rabaul.
On 7 August, word arrived that US Marines had landed that morning on Guadalcanal. The initial Allied landings captured an airfield, later named Henderson Field by the Allies, that had been under construction by the Japanese. The airfield soon became the focus of months of fighting during the Guadalcanal campaign, as it enabled US airpower to hinder the Japanese in their attempts at resupplying their troops. The Japanese made several attempts to retake Henderson Field that resulted in almost daily air battles for the Tainan Kōkūtai.