“Interview: Masamitsu Yoshioka, 105, on What Happened In the Skies Over Honolulu”, 2023-06-02 ():
[how do you become the last survivor out of >770 attackers? lots of luck!] Masamitsu Yoshioka, 105, is the last survivor of those who attacked Pearl Harbor. He talks about cheating death and the lives lost on both sides of the War.
…Surviving the Deadliest War: Masamitsu Yoshioka survived the Pearl Harbor attack. He also fought across the China theater, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific. Miraculously, he emerged from the deadliest war in human history virtually unscathed.
Yoshioka’s carrier, the Soryu, was sunk at the Battle of Midway in June of 1942. It was a little more than half a year after the daring daylight attack on Pearl Harbor. However, Yoshioka had been ordered home on leave at that time, and so was safely on the Japanese home islands.
He was also on Peleliu, but came down with malaria and left that tiny Pacific islet for Cebu, in the Philippines, departing just before the United States Navy started shelling it. And, later, Marines stormed its beaches. Yoshioka had cheated death again.
During one mission, he recalls, cannon fire from an enemy plane hit his aircraft laterally. He was leaning forward at that moment, checking his instruments, when the hot metal came tearing through the cabin. Yoshioka was untouched. The straight-line hail of bullets also passed in front of and behind both the pilot and the radio operator/rear gunner. One bullet struck a fuel tank in the wing—but it was empty. “Had the bullet hit the other tank”, Yoshioka remembers, “it probably would have exploded.”
There to Hear the Showa Emperor’s Broadcast: At the end of the war, Yoshioka was with a naval air detachment at Hyakurigahara, in Ibaraki. The Tokkotai (“kamikaze”) attacks had started, but there were no parts for the planes. Yoshioka, grounded, lived to hear the Showa Emperor’s surrender broadcast on the radio.