Word: sakai
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Accused of killing Naka Sakai on a hilltop after luring her onto a rifle range with promises of spent brass cartridges (TIME, June 17), Army Specialist Third Class William S. Girard entered a Japanese courtroom one day last week to hear the verdict of his celebrated 86-day trial. Girard, intoned Chief Judge Yuzo Kawachi, was guilty...
...last week the death of Mrs. Naka Sakai had become an international incident. Japan demanded that Girard be tried for manslaughter in a civilian court (likely sentence: two to 15 years). The U.S., in the person of Defense Secretary Charles E. Wilson, refused to release him from Army custody "pending a complete review of the matter...
SAMURAI!, by Saburo Sakai, with Martin Caidin and Fred Saito (382 pp.; Dutton; $4.95), sweeps through the South Pacific with all guns firing as Pilot Sakai and his squadron of Zeros effortlessly shoot U.S. planes out of the sky. In five seconds over Port Moresby, four Airacobras are sent spinning into the sea. Another time the Japs down six of seven null without the loss of a Zero...
Incredible? Author Sakai, who is billed as "Japan's greatest living fighter pilot," claims a total of 64 "confirmed" kills of U.S. aircraft. His close friend, the late Hiroyoshi Nishizawa, is credited by the Japanese with over 100. Nothing to prove it, of course.* Figures aside, Pilot Sakai was quite a flyer. During the Guadalcanal campaign he was put out of action when he jumped four Avenger torpedo planes, barely made it back to Rabaul. He lost an eye in the battle, and his description of how he was operated on without anesthesia is bloodcurdling. Sakai fought again...
Much of the book reads like the memoirs of any other fighter pilots of World War II-German, British and American. But there are startling differences, as when Sakai carefully explains the Japanese reluctance to wear parachutes: "It was out of the question to bail out over enemy-held territory . . . No fighter pilot of any courage would ever permit himself to be captured by the enemy...