Did you know the last Japanese airman who attacked Pearl Harbor died recently?

Masamitsu Yoshioka, the last living Japanese serviceman who participated in the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, died at the age of 106 this August. He served as a navigator/bombardier on a Nakajima B5N “Kate” torpedo bomber He dropped one of two torpedoes that mistakenly struck and sunk the battleship Utah, which was only used as a training ship by that time.

Yoshioka joined the Imperial Japanese Navy at the age of 18. After a few years spent maintaining old biplanes and other aircraft, he was eventually trained as a navigator and posted to the carrier Sōryū. While training as a torpedo bomber, he and his comrades only got to drop a single real torpedo, and had to do the rest of the training runs with torpedoes that had their warheads filled with water.
 
Yoshioka later recalled that many of his comrades would speculate about their destination while the fleet was heading to Pearl Harbor. They knew they were about to attack and start a war, but many of them were sure the target could not possibly be the U.S.A., since Japan was buying its oil from the country (until the embargo). 

Yoshioka went on to serve throughout the war, avoiding death several times. The Sōryū was sunk at the Battle of Midway, but he happened to be on leave. On one mission, he leaned forward to check his instruments in the exact moment an enemy round (or shrapnel piece) tore through the cockpit right where his head was just before. He was sent to a kamikaze unit in the last days of the war, but his plane was grounded due to a lack of part, and he survived to hear the Emperor’s surrender on the radio. (Read our earlier article)
 
Yoshioka went on to serve in the Maritime Self-Defense Force (Japan’s post-war navy) and private commercial firms later in life. When asked in a 2023 interview if he would like to visit Pearl Harbor, he thought for a moment after replying. "If I could go, I would like to. I would like to visit the graves of the men who died. [And] I would like to pay them my deepest respect."

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