Masamitsu Yoshioka, the last surviving Japanese pilot who participated in the attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, died in Tokyo. This is reported by The New York Post in reference to the Japanese journalist and writer Takashi Hayasaki.
Masamitsu Yoshioka was the last of the 770 surviving pilots who participated in the operation. He was 106 years old.
Hayasaki announced Yoshioka’s death on August 28 on social media and did not provide other details, the newspaper clarifies. The writer met the former pilot last year.
For nearly 80 years after the end of World War II, Yoshioka, who lived in Tokyo’s Adachi district, visited Yasukuni Shrine to pray for the souls of his fellow combat veterans, including the 64 Japanese who died in the attack. US base in Hawaii. Japan lost 29 aircraft and five submarines.
Last year, in an interview with the English-language website Japan Forward, the former pilot said: “I am ashamed to be the only one who survived and lived such a long life.”
“Yoshioka was lucky, on this and several subsequent occasions. Not only did he survive the surprising attack on the US Pacific Fleet in Hawaii and return safely to the USS Soryu; He was also on leave in June 1942 when the ship was sunk in the Battle of Midway. He served in the Palau Islands but was recovering from malaria in the Philippines in 1944 before the bloody Battle of Peleliu. And when Japanese planes were ordered to carry out kamikaze attacks against Allied ships in the Pacific, their plane was grounded for lack of spare parts. He participated in the attack on Wake Island on December 11, 1941 and in the raid on the Indian Ocean in early 1942… But when the Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s surrender, Yoshioka was at an air base in Japan,” – says the article.
It should be noted that after the war, Yoshioka worked in the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Forces, as well as in a transportation company.
