Last month in Tokyo, Saburo Sakai died at age 84. He suffered a fatal heart attack as he reached across a dining room table to shake the hand of an American military officer. This event marked the end of a life spanning most of the twentieth century and one marked by both extraordinary exploits and a later dramatic change of direction.
News reports about Sakai caught my attention because World War II still retains a strong hold on my imagination. Though not a war veteran myself, I followed the battles of WWII with rabid interest as I entered into my teenage years. Like many other Americans of that time, I internalized the negative images of both German and Japanese warriors, especially as they were presented in Hollywood films.
Images of Japanese fighter pilots in particular fascinated me because of their skills and their evil intentions against our military forces. I remember seeing actors portraying them sitting in their Zeros grinning malevolently as they dove on American ships and planes. They did not seem like human beings but rather instruments of the devil and of the evil Japanese emperor.
Sakai was one of those pilots but one whose aerial warfare skills surpassed almost everyone else’s. According to the New York Times obituary to which I am indebted for the information here, he claimed to have shot down 64 planes, starting with aircraft from the Chinese Air Force. On the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he shot down an American P-40 over the Philippines and, in the following month, a B-17, the first American bomber to be downed in the Pacific.
He himself took a bullet in the face from an American torpedo bomber in August of 1942 but he managed to get back to his base in New Guinea, some 500 nautical miles away. In 1983, Sakai met the gunner who hit him, a man named Harry Jones from Nevada. The two of them enjoyed talking with one another, according to a newspaper account of their meeting.
This meeting was one of many he had with his former adversaries. He visited the United States a dozen times and met people with whom he been locked in deadly combat. In doing so, he showed extraordinary flexibility of character, especially considering his upbringing and education.
His family, though poor farmers, claimed kinship with the Samurais, Japan’s warrior class. Sakai was taught a code of conduct called Bushido whereby one learns to live prepared to die. This ideology gave him unyielding motivation in his wartime exploits. It makes more amazing his ability after the war to change his values so sharply. According to a web site article about him, Sakai said that he had not killed any creature, “not even a mosquito,” since stepping out of his Zero at the time of Japan’s surrender.
Religion made a difference for him: the same web site reports that Sakai became a Buddhist acolyte and practiced atonement. He came to see that Japanese leaders, especially the Emperor, had betrayed their trust and he felt that they avoided taking responsibility for their actions.
The transition of the Japanese nation from an enemy country toward close friendship with our country ranks as one of the greatest historical changes in my lifetime. The extent of this change can be gauged from what I confess to be vestigial feelings about Japanese people that I still experience. These feelings never influence my actions; they are purely relics of deep emotions that touched me in those teenage years.
When I encounter Japanese tourists visiting my hometown, I am of course polite to them and reach out to them in welcoming friendship. Enmity toward them left over from the war is not something that I have to struggle against.
And yet, I sometimes spontaneously fantasize about them as adult children and grandchildren of men who savagely warred against Americans and the people of other nations as well. The memory of crimes that Japanese forces committed against others is lodged deeply within me, having fed my young imagination.
But I do not have to be defensive about these imaginings; rather they witness to how far we have come to our friendship. The passage was from acute resentment to one of mutual respect and harmony. It ranks as a triumph of human capacity for change for the values that dignify us all.
By his extraordinary ability to change radically, Saburo Sakai is representative of many more citizens of his nation who were able, in middle age and later, to turn from warmaking to peacemaking. From having been military heroes, some of them, they led the way toward becoming heroes of peace.
And so are Americans veterans of WWII who long ago also changed into exemplars of peace and reconciliation. They too deserve widespread appreciation for having accepted former enemies as fellow citizens of the world and even friends.
Richard Griffin