Saburo Sakai: in Memoriam
We recently received the sad news that Saburo Sakai, probably the most famous Japanese veteran of the air war in the Pacific, and a historical advisor to Microsoft during the production of Combat Flight Simulator 2, died in Tokyo on September 22, 2000 at the age of 84.

Earlier this year we were able to interview Mr. Sakai to enhance our understanding of the Pacific air war. His patience and good humor made this memorable interview extraordinarily helpful, and his willingness to share mementos, memories, and insights from his military career helped us make Combat Flight Simulator 2 a richer and more immersive experience.

The time we spent with Mr. Sakai was a rare privilege, a fact sadly underlined by his passing. We extend our deepest sympathy to his family.

The most famous Japanese veteran of the air war in the Pacific, Saburo Sakai scored his first aerial victory in China in 1938. His first actions when the war began were in the Philippines and Dutch East Indies. Transferred to the base at Rabaul, he flew long-range missions to Guadalcanal before moving on to Lae in New Guinea, where he scored most of his 64 kills. He became the senior pilot in his division and mentored fellow pilots, including Nishizawa and Ota, who accompanied him on a quirky and audacious "airshow" mission over Port Moresby. Sakai quickly ran up a string of victories, but over Guadalcanal in August 1942 the backseat gunner in a Dauntless dive-bomber creased his skull. He managed to fly back to base, and was sent home for a lengthy recuperation. After service in the Marianas, in June 1944 he saw action over Iwo Jima, but soon became an instructor as vision problems from his wounds worsened. Author of a memoir titled Samurai!, Mr. Sakai graciously agreed to be interviewed in order to help make the Combat Flight Simulator 2: WW II Pacific Theatre as compelling as possible.

Transcript of April, 2000 Interview with Saburo Sakai
Interview by Michael Ahn

Interviewer: If you could offer one bit of advice to a new pilot about surviving an encounter with the enemy, what would you tell him?

Saburo Sakai: Remain calm and collected.

Interviewer: What were your "rules of engagement?" Did you have "style" of entering a fight with the enemy?

Saburo Sakai: There are three basic types of engagement: fighting from equal positions, fighting from an advantageous position, and fighting from a disadvantageous position. There are also variations those three.

It's a rare occasion when two groups find each other at the same time. Usually one will have height advantage of the other. A dogfight is a variety of situations. We had no radar then so seeing the enemy first was the most important thing. And once you are in a dogfight you don't know which way the enemy is coming at you - you don't know at all. Therefore, where the fight starts, where is the enemy, how many of them, what kind of shape they're in, what are their tactics - you have to figure this out this as quickly as possible. In the 200 dogfights, I was never seen first - it was always me who found them. I was the fastest in my squadron at spotting the enemy.

Interviewer: Did you practice any kinds of flying rituals (flying high, staying clouds), to gain an advantage over the enemy?

Saburo Sakai: I tried to put myself in a position in which the enemy could not fire upon me but in which I could fire upon my enemy, regardless of the difference in altitude.

Interviewer: What kind of "set-up" did you try to get before opening fire? Behind the enemy? Above or below him? Did you prefer slashing attacks, or turn-fighting tactics?

Saburo Sakai: I strove to shoot down my enemy in the first pass or attack, tried not to open fire too soon, never followed an enemy into a dive, and tried to get behind my enemy and stay there.

1. Attack from above and behind is the most important rule; one should always strive for this
2. Always attack in ways that will keep you behind the enemy
3. Attacking from below and behind, always try to shoot them down in the first attack
4. Do not chase the enemy when they dive or evade using other vertical movement

Interviewer: What did you like the best about the Zero in flight?

Saburo Sakai: Good things about the Zero in flight were the very long range, and the good visibility all around the plane. If you place too much emphasis on a feature, you will lose something else. You have to cover everything in a plane's performance - some positive, some negative. It's a kind of compromise. The Zero-sen is a very good compromise. For a pilot, it's quite comfortable. Before the war I was ordered to fly to China - they never tested how long we can fly and what distance. So we were ordered to try and flew it for twelve hours and thirty minutes - a world record at that time.

Interviewer: How is the Zero in combat?

Saburo Sakai: Good things about the Zero in combat were the responsiveness of the control stick, the tight turns it could make (to the left), the ability to climb quickly, and the reliability of the 7.7mm fixed-machine guns.

Interviewer: What is your opinion on the other Japanese planes you flew?

Saburo Sakai: Type 96: Was better for dogfights than the Zero, but its range wasn't as good
Raiden: An interceptor.
Shiden: Range was too short and the landing gear had issues

Interviewer: What would you tell new pilots about the Zero?

Saburo Sakai: I would tell new pilots the following things about the Zero...
Good points: Dogfighting prowess and a quick rate of climb. And the 7.7mm are very reliable.
Bad points: Doesn't perform well in dives. Enemy fire causes fires and easily damages the airframe.

Interviewer: What advice did you actually give?

Saburo Sakai:
Strong points: The responsiveness of the control stick, the range, and the reliability of the 7.7mm guns
Weak points: Understanding of group tactics. Methods of evading enemy fire when surprised by the enemy. Use sudden control adjustments, pulling away in the opposite direction of the line of fire, slide to the side, and continue to do this.

In wartime, you're afraid when you meet your enemy for the first time. Never be isolated from the leader. Keep your cool and posture - never panic. When you enter an area where the enemy can attack you, adjust the propeller pitch so you won't burn up your engine in a dogfight. Make sure you switch your fuel to main tank and drop your drop tanks. We used drop tanks over enemy territory, but rarely over our own territory.

Interviewer: What was life like about a Japanese carrier? What were the men like?

Saburo Sakai: Officers and enlisted pilots were treated differently. There was an incredible amount of discrimination between officers and enlisted pilots. This included differences in food, alcohol, cigarettes, and even the briefing rooms where they waited before flights at airbases.

Interviewer: What was the most fun thing on the carriers?

Saburo Sakai: Crew quarters in the evening.

Interviewer: What was the most difficult thing?

Saburo Sakai: When air engagements went against us and we lost people in those engagements.

Interviewer: What were the men like?

Saburo Sakai: The most senior person in the crew quarters was in charge of that room. There were no officers stationed there. Ninety percent of the pilots were enlisted men.

Interviewer: What did you do for entertainment?

Saburo Sakai: There was hardly any entertainment. The senior crewmembers in each quarter were like your father or your elder brother. Officers never visited the quarters.

Interviewer: How did you deal with the pressure of upcoming air engagements?

Saburo Sakai: We didn't do anything special.

Interviewer: How easy or difficult was it to take off and land on a carrier?

Saburo Sakai: A 'leadlamp' was used when landing in the Japanese navy. Pilots were nervous, but we didn't think it was hard. Taking off was easier than it was on land.

Interviewer: What was life like at Rabaul, when the men were not in combat?

Saburo Sakai: We basically waited day after day at the airbase. Veteran pilots studied formation patterns with the wing leader.

Interviewer: What kinds of activities did you do to keep busy? How did you keep morale up?

Saburo Sakai: Morale was always high. We didn't do anything in particular. Played Shogi, Go, and instruments.

Interviewer: What was the food like? Did you listen to the radio or read newspapers? Was there more news of the war or about home?

Saburo Sakai: The food was the lowest level of food consumable by human beings. The officer's food was different. There was no radio, newspapers, or magazines, and we received hardly any letters from our family and friends in Japan. There was hardly any news or information.

Interviewer: What were you instructors like? Where they tough? Kind? Did they offer up advice? What kind of maneuvers to did you practice and did you find them valuable in combat? Did they give you any advice on flying in combat?

Saburo Sakai: When I was a trainee the instructors were kind. However, the quality of instruction gradually decreased. Later instructors didn't understand how to teach and became stricter.

Interviewer: Did your men have strengths and weaknesses in their flying skills?

Saburo Sakai: Our strength was the individual skill of our pilots (i.e. how to fight one-on-one, and the marksmanship of the pilots - we didn't let our skills lapse, we kept practicing the same things over and over). That was the only strength of Japan in the war. Our weakness on the other hand was our group tactics. When you talk about features of a car or an airplane, they are just machines. They themselves don't fly. They don't try. It's the combination of pilot and machine. The pilot who can maximize the feature of the machine - that is the strong pilot. The good pilot. The Zero pilot can see three hundred and sixty degrees and can find anything much quicker. The pilot of the American fighters can't see behind him (because of the fuselage). Because of that, we targeted to the rear. But the American planes had armor to protect the pilot but the Zero, to maximize its horsepower didn't add anything like armor. The Zero pilot had to use his ability to see the enemy first, instead of armor. The American airplanes' powerful engines and the machine guns were much better than the Zero. When they received hits, the Zero often exploded or burned - it's quite fragile and easy to burn. But the American planes were very strong and were designed to protect the pilots' lives. The Japanese pilot as well as the aircraft were regarded as "consumables". That was the philosphy - a foolish philosophy. Also, the Japanese Navy placed too much emphasis on the warship. They thought the navies would fight each other by huge war vessels so they didn't place much emphasis on the airplane. The Americans had a much better philosophy -America produced more aircraft and trained more, eventually catching up with the Japanese. It was fighter against fighter in WWI, but in WWII it was group against group. The Japanese were very bad at this, but the Americans used the philosophy of American football - teamwork. Excellent.

Interviewer: Other than by actual combat, how did you learn of new enemy planes? Was there any intelligence on this? How did everyone share information on fighting against different enemy planes such as the P38, the Wildcat, the Hellcat and the Corsair? What did you think of these planes?

Saburo Sakai: The only information we were given on enemy planes was a single page of specifications of pre-war American, British, and Dutch planes. As the war went on we were also not given any information about new enemy aircraft, and were forced just to deal with them as we could when we encountered them.

Interviewer: What are your thoughts about the men you fought against? Did you find them to be skilled?

Saburo Sakai: I don't think they were as skilled in individual combat as the Japanese were. But the boom-and-zoom tactics they developed to take advantage of the Zero's inability to dive well were very effective.

Interviewer: Did the U.S. pilots use more teamwork in combat than the Japanese?

Saburo Sakai: I am confident that Japanese pilots were superior on a one-on-one basis. But the ability to work as a team both offensively and defensively that the Americans had was very impressive. Perhaps this comes from the team spirit and thinking they developed playing American football. This hit us particularly hard in the air engagements from the middle war onwards (teamwork and search patterns).

They all wanted to win. Combat makes the pilot's will to win stronger. With every fight they become much stronger. I got stronger with each victory. The first fight I didn't remember anything or understand anything. My first kill, there were many things that I should have done but I forgot everything. I didn't know what I should do. After coming back I was not rewarded: I was disciplined. I broke all the rules I should have respected and because the other pilots supported me, that's the reason why I was able to survive. I was heavily disciplined - they hit me with a wooden stick - a very heavy blow. But as I got more kills I began to have the confidence that I would never be defeated as long as I was in a Zero.

Interviewer: Did you bracket the enemy first with MG, then fire your 20mm cannon when he was in range?

Saburo Sakai: No, no no that was never true.

Interviewer: Did you set convergence on your guns?

Saburo Sakai: Yes, we had convergence. We counted on the 7.7mm because we had plenty of ammo. The ballistics was very good and fired very straight.

Interviewer: What was your convergence range for the 20mm cannon?

Saburo Sakai: In the Japanese Navy, the setting was 200 meters on the cannon. But all the pilots wanted a much closer convergence. I asked my subordinate to adjust it because it's much better closer in. So we asked the men to adjust the convergence to become much shorter.

Interviewer: At Rabaul and Lae did you fly the same plane?

Saburo Sakai: No, we changed. Two hundred hours was the maximum flying time before the plane needed an overhaul and disappear from our squadron. Therefore we switched planes often. There were no specific airplanes assigned to our pilots. They continuously switched engines in our planes and sometimes we saw change after change. Only the commanding officer had an airplane to himself, and he scarcely flew it! I never had a dedicated airplane. The first day of the war, the was a specific airplane for each pilot and was numbered according to position in the formation. But after engine trouble and damage, the planes had to be changed. So by the second day there was no order to the numbering.

Interviewer: Did you ever use radio when you flying in combat?

Saburo Sakai: The radio was useless. We knew a week before the opening of the war that it was useless. It just made bunch of noise - if there was a worst piece of equipment in the Japanese Navy, it was the radio for the fighter planes. You couldn't hear anything at all. Close to the opening of the war, we pilots realized the radio was heavy and useless so I removed mine to save weight, as well as the wooden antenna pole. I cut that off. My commander, a very difficult man, saw this and yelled, "What did you do with this airplane?" I told him, "I need to make my airplane lighter to fly to Manila. It's much better." He replied, "Please, take mine out too!"

Interviewer: Did you use hand or aircraft signals to your wingmen?

Saburo Sakai: There was nothing to communicate. We flew from practice. From the movement of the leader's head, we were able to understand what he was thinking. Once you're in a dogfight, you don't think, "Who's flying way over there?" You can never tell. You never can tell who is who in a big dogfight. If you're above a fight and announce that an enemy is behind you, then everyone in the fight will look back! You can never tell. There's nothing to talk about in a dogfight.

Interviewer: Did you have a specific bomber escort technique?

Saburo Sakai: Unlike the United States, Japan was a very poor country and had a very small number of aircraft. So we would fly a few minutes ahead of the bombers first, to the targeted area. Ninety-nine percent the Allied were sure of where we were going so they were waiting for us. When we were strong in the beginning of the war, the enemy aircraft would all retreat and we'd clean them up. That was at the very first, but later, as you know, the situation was reversed.

So we sent one group ahead and a second group flew five hundred meters above the bombers, and slightly ahead of them.

Interviewer: How would you be recognized by your superiors in the field?

Saburo Sakai: It's true that I didn't receive any award. The squadron commander knew about my achievements, but nobody else knew. It was quite regrettable. Entertainers were awarded medals and so on, but I didn't receive anything. In Germany it was very different. Pilots were awarded medals regularly during World War II but the Japanese Army and Navy - nothing.

Interviewer: Can you tell the story of the formation flight over Port Moresby with Nishizawa and Ota?

Saburo Sakai: During the Japan-China war, I was on a bombing mission when I saw one of our pilots land on the enemy's field burning. He blew up on the field. Later at Rabaul and Lae, we were fighting every day and I knew I wouldn't live long. I wanted to do something before I died, like what that pilot did when he landed on the enemy's base. We couldn't copy that, so we decided to do something as pilots - fly a great, beautiful flight to demonstrate our skills. That was our promise to each other. Nishizawa and Ota - I called them and said, if we have time and the others return to base and we have enough ammo and fuel, we can fly as a team and perform these aerobatics. So when the rest of the flight turned for home, Nishizawa and Ota joined me on my wing as number two and number three. I signaled, "Let's start" and we started. So we did a beautiful loop over the American base, but Nishizawa signaled that our altitude must be much lower! So we lowered our altitude to less than 1,000 meters - 700 or 800 meters. I signaled - three times. So we did a loop three times. I raised my arm in triumph - "ah we did it!" and we flew back. This was a secret between the three of us. Because we knew we could die at any time, we did what we wanted to do. The next day was cloudy day and a P-40 dove from the clouds and dropped a bag with a streamer attached to it.. We opened it and found a note in English. Sasai-san confronted us with note, reading it to us: "Yesterday you performed aerobatics over our base and it was really exciting. We applauded. Next time you come we'll be ready to dogfight - please come wearing a green muffler - we'll be waiting for you, wearing a green muffler as well." Sasai read this to us and yelled, "What is the meaning of this!?" We apologized profusely to him. But I'm sorry I never was able to have that dogfight. After the war, I met some of the U.S. soldiers who were Port Moresby who saw our aerobatics that day - they told me they stopped firing their guns as we did our maneuver, and stopped to applaud us.

Interviewer: About not shooting down a passenger plane full of women and children over Java-

Saburo Sakai: It was me. That was in the Dutch East Indies. This was during the bombing of Java. The order was to shoot down any aircraft over Java. I was over Java and had just shot down an enemy aircraft when I saw a big black aircraft coming towards me. I saw that it was a civilian aircraft - a DC-4. As I flew closer I saw that it was full of passengers. Some were even having to stand. I thought that these might be important people fleeing, so I signaled to the pilot to follow me. The pilot of the aircraft was courageous enough not to follow me so I came down and got much closer. Through one of the round windows I saw a blonde woman, a mother with a child about three years old. So I thought I shouldn't kill them. As a child I went to a middle school for two years, a school I was later expelled from. While I was there I was taught by an American, Mr. Martin. And his wife came to the class to teach us while her husband or the other teachers were away. She was good to me. And that woman in the airplane looked like Mrs. Martin. So I thought that I shouldn't kill them. So I flew to ahead of the pilot and signaled him to go ahead. Then the people in the plane saluted. The pilot saluted me, and the passengers. I don't know where it went: either to the United States or Australia. I couldn't find out. But a few years ago I came to find out where that plane went back to Holland. Newspapermen from Holland came to visit me to find out if it was true. Well, anyway, I didn't respect my orders that day but I still think I did the right thing. I was ordered to shoot down any aircraft, but I couldn't live with myself doing that. I believed that we should fight a war against soldiers; not civilians.

So I decreased my record by one.

Interviewer: What was the reason that Japanese pilots didn't use parachutes?

Saburo Sakai: The non-usage of parachutes has nothing to do with the Samurai code. If that is true it's foolish version of that Samurai code. In a war you fight in order to win; not to die. I said to my men, "I will not permit you to commit suicide." We came here to fight with Americans. Stay alive and come back. That was what I trained and that was the reason why some of my superiors didn't like me. But because of this many of my men survived the war.

Of course I would use a parachute. What is the purpose but to come to the battle - not to commit suicide but to fight. A human being, an individual can live only once, so you should live as long as you could. When you die you can do nothing for your country. If you become captive, the other side that captured you must protect you. There is opportunity to escape and in the future you may be able to come back to your side. You should try to survive as long as you can.

I have a shrine - I pray for the pilots: there are many who shouldn't have died so young.

Those who died were rewarded, but survivors were not recognized.

Interviewer: Can you tell me the story of the belt buckle given to you at Rabaul by Sasai?

Saburo Sakai: I was leaving Rabaul - I had to go back to the hospital, so Sasai-san took this out of his belt and gave it to me. In Japan it is said that at tiger will travel 1,000 leagues (4,000 kilometers) and will come back. Sasai-san said, "Please go back to Japan (which is 4,000 kilometers away) and please come back to Rabaul." That was his intention. But he died in Rabaul, on my birthday. He's still there.