I received a post card from Mrs. Sadako Sakamaki informing that she refrained from offering the new year greetings due to the death of her husband, Mr. Kazoo Sakamaki, in the last month (almost at the same time as of receiving her card, a few newspapers reported his death.）
He was held as no.1 prisoner of war at the Pacific War when his midget submarine was stranded on shore of Oahu Island, Hawaii, on his way to Pearl Harbor to make a torpedo attack on U.S. war ships.
When I stayed at Brazil in the end of 1972 for about a month to make a market research there, Mr. Sakamaki was the president of Toyota Brazil Motor Manufacturing Company. Mr. and Mrs. Sakamaki helped us so much by offering Japanese foods to our study team and or something like that. After he came back to the main office in Toyota city in Japan, he was appointed as a general manager of export section. Every time I met him, we had exchanged hello talks.
Once I happened to know that when he started for his mission off Oahu island, a gyroscope on his midget submarine was in trouble. As I was a Navy cadet of engineering as well as a student of engineering at a university, I was mobilized to the Kure Naval Arsenal in February 1945 and assigned to an assembling plant of torpedoes. I frequently visited a test launching site of torpedoes resulting in a good understanding of the importance of gyroscopes for torpedoes and of difficulties of adjusting them. If it is adjusted a bit wrong, the torpedo cannot go straight toward the target, sometimes it turns back to the launcher site or it goes around a circle without stop. The midget submarine had a gyroscope, the construction of which was the same as of torpedoes. Thus the small boat goes straight automatically with its gyroscope. It was brought to the sea off Oahu island, being stacked up on the main deck of parent submarine. It was launched there toward the entrance of harbor. The waves were rather high so that it was impossible to see the harbor entrance even with a seven meters high telescope at the maximum and that it had to rely on the automatic steering machine made of gyroscope for approaching the entrance, But the machine did not work. To be stranded on the shore was an unavoidable result .
If they have something in reserve, the launching of midget submarine might be postponed until the troubles were cleared away. I wrote a short essay regarding these matters to a magazine. Mr. Sakamaki appreciated it because it was the first time to be published that the troubles on gyroscope made it impossible to steer a small boat. War was a cold blooded struggle neglecting what should be done, I thought,
I pray for the late Mr, Sakamaki to rest in peace,