Samurai!: The Autobiography of Japan's World War II Flying Ace

Samurai!, first published in 1957, is the war-time account of Saburo Sakai, the leading Japanese fighter ace to survive the Second World War. Sakai, born in 1916, hoped to escape the poverty of life in his rural village by enlisting in the Imperial Japanese Navy at age 16. In 1937, he graduated at the top of his pilot-training class, and soon saw combat in China. Later, against the Allies, Sakai engaged in more than two hundred dogfights, from the Philippines to Iwo Jima, and by war's end h...