Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki was US Prisoner of War Number One. Taken on an Oahu beach the day after the attack, he was the sole survivor of the Special Attack force of mini-subs that attempted to enter Pearl Harbor itself immediately prior to the air raid.
Sakamaki captained his sun with a fellow crewman, Inagaki, and both were being partially poisoned by gas from their sub's batteries, and otherwise became badly disoriented. Sakamaki reported he had circled Ford Island and had fired his twin torpedoes before being carried back out to sea.
Batteries drained and not perhaps in their right minds, both crewman decided to swim ashore after setting detonating charges in their sub. Inagaki drowned in the attempt, and Sakamaki washed ashore, coming to under the muzzle of a US Soldier wielding a Tommy gun.
He spent the rest of the war in custody, attempting suicide a number of times. When the Japanese published a memorial to the lost submariners of the Pearl Harbor attack, his photo was conspicuously absent.
After the war, he faced shame from people when repatriated, but was finally given a job by (if I recall) Toyota Motor Company, and by the Sixtie's was a top man there.
I don't know when he passed, but I'd say his was the strangest story to come out of the Japanese side of December 7, but one which finally ended not so badly.
Otherwise, none of the Japanese pilots survived the destruction of the 29 aircraft downed that day over their target.
TVAG
US authorities for decades denied that any subs had actually penetrated the harbor, but photographic evidence (in plain sight throughout all that time) strongly suggests that at least one sub did enter and, logically, that would have been
ponders nirvana.
