On the morning of December 7, 1941, newspapers were advertising cruises to Hawaii. Franklin Roosevelt was sifting through his stamp collection. And the Washington Redskins were playing the Philadelphia Eagles in front of 27,102 fans, including Ensign John F. Kennedy.
Seven time zones to the west, Kuzuo Sakamaki, one of a few people who knew World War II was coming, had just navigated his midget two-man submarine into the waters of Pearl Harbor. Long and tubular, the vessel looked like a Jules Verne space ship.
There were four other subs like it, each with two torpedoes, each captain with the same orders: rendezvous in Pearl Harbor. Then, at the end of the air attack, fire on any targets they could find. It was an iffy plan -- five subs, 10 crew members -- and smacked of failure from the start, although some historians maintain that one of the subs eventually sank the battleship Oklahoma.
By nightfall, nine crew members of the invading subs were dead. Some, like Sakamaki's partner, a petty officer, had drowned. Others had succumbed to American depth-charge explosions and toxic gases that swept through the submersibles.
On the U.S. side, statistics told a much more horrifying story: 2,404 Americans were dead or dying. And, our fleet, especially its battleships, was in shambles.
Among the submarine crews, Sakamaki was the sole survivor. The gyrocompass on his 78-foot long sub had not worked. And the sub had repeatedly run aground on coral reefs. Attempting to escape the vessel, his partner had drowned. Dazed, somewhat disoriented and exhausted, Sakamaki somehow made it to a beach on the island of Oahu. Throwing himself on the sand, he slept for hours. When he awoke, David Akui, a corporal in the Hawaiian National Guard, was standing over him holding a pistol.
Kazuo Sakamaki was the first U.S. prisoner of the Second World War.
For a man who had pledged to die for the emperor, being captured was the worst possible outcome. "I was terribly ashamed," he later said. "I asked for an opportunity to die an honorable death, but they (his captors) just laughed at me."
Taken to nearby Fort Shafter, he was interrogated and later sent to the mainland where he was interned in four camps for prisoners of war.
In Japan, the media told of the attack by the miniature submarines, but never mentioned that a crewman from the sub fleet was now in American hands.
Also in American hands was Sakamaki's two-man sub. Salvaged almost intact by American troops, it was shipped to the U.S. mainland a month after the Pearl Harbor disaster.
The minisubs had been designated "Type A" target ships. This was a ruse by the Japanese. If they were prematurely discovered, it would have been argued that they were practice targets, not warships.
A total of 50 had been built. During and after the war, their remains turned up in such diverse locales as Sydney, Australia, Sitka (Alaska), Guam, Guadalcanal and even Madagascar.
Of the five subs used in the December 7 attack, the remains of all were found through the years in the waters off Pearl Harbor. The most recent find occurred a year ago with the discovery of a sub which some believe fired torpedos at the battleships West Virginia and Oklahoma.
Sakamaki's sub, designated HA-19, was salvaged almost intact by American troops. In January 1942, it was shipped to the mainland where it was used as the centerpiece of a nationwide tour to sell war bonds. One of the tour stops was in Fredericksburg, Texas, the boyhood home of Admiral. Chester A. Nimitz, U.S. Naval commander in the Pacific.
A museum built there to honor Nimitz and called the National Museum of the Pacific War has become the permanent home of HA-19. It is displayed in the museum's Bush Gallery.
Years ago, while in south Texas, several members of my family had the option of visiting the museum or seeing a nearby exhibit called "Ralph the Diving Pig." It was a classic case of generation gap with the kids carrying the election. The museum got one vote -- mine. We saw Ralph.
After the war, Sakamaki was returned to Japan. His one day of war had made him a changed man. The 22-year-old who had wanted to die for the emperor, became an avowed pacifist.
Like many veterans, he wrote his memoirs. In them, he told of being denounced by some Japanese for not having taken his life when it appeared he might be captured.
On the eighth anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, the memoirs were published in the U.S. through the efforts of the YMCA. Titled "I Attacked Pearl Harbor," they were never reprinted. Today, the book is considered a collector's item.
Sakamaki became a businessman and, ultimately, an executive for Toyota in Brazil. In 1991, he visited the museum in Fredericksburg. Witnesses reported that he wept on seeing the submarine that had taken him into war 50 years earlier.
Aside from writing his memoirs, friends said he spoke little about the war in later life. Married and the father of two children, Sakamaki died Nov. 29, 1999. He was 81 years old.
