Japan Turned 9 Pearl Harbor Sailors Into Gods. The 10th Was a POW in Wisconsin.

On March 6, 1942, Japan turned nine dead sailors from the Pearl Harbor attack into national heroes. There should have been ten. The tenth man, Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki, was alive — and on his way to a prison camp in Wisconsin as America's Prisoner of War No. 1. This is the story of how Japan erased him, how his captured submarine toured two thousand American towns, and what happened when he finally saw it again in Fredericksburg, Texas, fifty years later.

Did someone in your family work at Camp McCoy, or see the little Japanese submarine roll through town during the war? Tell us in the comments.

CHAPTERS
0:00 Intro
1:05 Something in the Surf
2:00 The Tenth Man
3:35 The Broken Compass
5:40 Worse Than Death
6:57 Erased
8:03 Prisoner Number One
9:22 Twenty-Two Windows
10:33 The Prisoner Who Said Live
11:27 Letters From Home
12:46 Fredericksburg

SOURCES
- Kazuo Sakamaki — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazuo_Sakamaki
- Japanese submarine HA-19 — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_submarine_HA._19
- Hawaii Dept. of Defense, "1941 capture of the first Japanese POW of World War II" — https://dod.hawaii.gov/blog/1941-capture-of-the-first-japanese-pow-of-world-war-ii/
- Military.com, "Japanese Submariner Who Became America's First WWII Prisoner" (2025) — https://www.military.com/daily-news/investigations-and-features/2025/12/08/japanese-submariner-who-became-americas-first-wwii-prisoner-after-pearl-harbor.html
- Combined Fleet, "Pearl Harbor midget submarines" — https://www.combinedfleet.com/Pearl.htm
- NOAA, "Japanese midget submarines at Pearl Harbor" — https://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/maritime/japanese-mini-subs/
- Pearl Harbor Visitors Bureau, "I Attacked Pearl Harbor" — https://pearlharbor.org/blog/reading-pearl-harbor-i-attacked-pearl-harbor/
- Michigan Tech, "Fort McCoy POWs" — https://ss.sites.mtu.edu/mhugl/2016/10/15/ft-mccoy-pows-as-camp-and-local-labor-force-and-citizens-impressions/
- Naval History and Heritage Command, photo NH 62816 (HA-19 in Fredericksburg, Texas, c. 1943)

FURTHER READING
- Kazuo Sakamaki, "I Attacked Pearl Harbor" (1949)
- Ulrich Straus, "The Anguish of Surrender: Japanese POWs of World War II" (2003)

Archival film and photographs are U.S. government works in the public domain unless credited otherwise. Footage marked "Illustrative footage" shows comparable scenes, not the exact events described.

ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE
1945 Submarine Film From USS Skate (SS-305) (Internet Archive, public domain)
Army Nurse, The (Internet Archive, public domain)
December 7th (Internet Archive, public domain)
Japan Today, 1946/06/20 (Internet Archive, public domain)
Japanese Prisoners Of War, Noumea, New Caledonia, 03/1943 (Internet Archive, public domain)
KNOW YOUR ENEMY; JAPAN (Internet Archive, public domain)
May/June 1942 Newsreel: 1st War Bond Drive; Willow Run & Chrysler Tank Plants; Belmont Stakes; Maritime Day; Troops & Army Nurses Arrive In Australia; Japanese POW; AA Guns (Internet Archive, public domain)
News Parade: Bombing of Pearl Harbor (Internet Archive, public domain)
OUR JOB IN JAPAN (Internet Archive, public domain)
Our Enemy: The Japanese (Internet Archive, public domain)
Tuesday in November (Internet Archive, public domain)
White Wonder (Internet Archive, public domain)
[Amateur film: Texas Farm Family] (Internet Archive, public domain)

PHOTOGRAPHS
U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command (NH 62816, NH 47036); U.S. Navy; U.S. Army; U.S. Coast Guard; Office of War Information; Carol M. Highsmith (Library of Congress); "Ikata 9 War Heroes monument" by Amake, CC BY-SA 3.0; wartime Japanese painting of the Nine War Gods (public domain) — via Wikimedia Commons

MUSIC
"Ossuary 6 - Air" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
"Despair and Triumph" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
"Long Note Three" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
"Oppressive Gloom" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
"Ossuary 5 - Rest" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
"Long Note Two" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
"Clean Soul" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
"Echoes of Time v2" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
"Lasting Hope" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
"Long Note Four" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
"Heartbreaking" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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